oldanforgotten
02-20-2008, 12:14 PM
So, it?s becoming more and more clear that John McCain is now operating under the assumption that Obama will win the Democratic Nomination. However, it seems rather odd to me that he is using much of the same lines of attack that Clinton has, primarily regarding experience and empty speeches. I?m not quite sure how he expects to make those lines stick when Hillary could not.
So where are we standing right now?
In terms of delegates, Obama has a 91 delegate lead. He leads currently by more than 160 pledged delegates, and has closed the gap on superdelegates to 70.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
More importantly, he has verily shut down any endorsement based momentum Hillary can achieve up through at least March 4th. Given his string of wins, a popular/influential superdelegate will have an awful difficult time justifying all of a sudden jumping on board the losing train. Since Feb 5 (when the superdelegate count was 228-105), he was received endorsements from 58 new superdelegates (which are tenuous at best, since they can change their minds after all), while Hillary has received endorsements from only 17. More importantly, 6 of Hillary?s previously committed superdelegates are now endorsing Obama.
So what did we find out in Wisconsin/Hawaii? Being it Barack is from Hawaii, little. In Wisconsin however, the voting base was supposedly tailored for Hillary. The expected turnout was more than 4-3 in favor of women, the electorate was overwhelmingly white, and the number of middle class working families in the state was the dominant voting blocs.
From:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#WIDEM
Obama and Clinton were almost tied among women (Clinton won 51-48), closing down Hillary?s strongest voting bloc.
Obama won every income level other than below $25,000
Obama won by more than a 2-1 margin voters that decided recently and men.
More than 35% of the democractic primary voters were people identified as Independants (27%) or people identifying themselves as Republicans (almost 9%, a startlingly high number), who voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama.
Obama had a slight edge among voters that identified themselves as Democrats.
17% of respondants reported that they would be unhappy with Obama winning the nomination, a number almost doubled by Clinton with 31% of the democratic voters stating displeasure at the prospects of her winning the primary.
Now, a lot of people have heard texas is moving into a statistical tie, but in all fairness, the rolling poll average shows Clinton with a still significant 7 point lead in Texas and a 10+ pt lead in Ohio.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/tx/texas_democratic_primary-312.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/oh/ohio_democratic_primary-263.html
although both leads tend to be trending down, there isn?t enough rolling data to say anything legitimately yet from a statistical standpoint.
Another burning question that seems to be causing all kinds of confusion relates to results vs prediction polls. Most polls for Wisconsin showed Obama with only a razor thin 4-5 point lead heading into last nights election, but the actual gap was 17. Virginia, Maryland, D.C also had actual results far wider than the predictor poll. In fact, From super Tuesday onward, it can be argued that Obama has been outperforming his predictor poll basis. On Super Tuesday, Obama was behind nationally by 11 points. Actual result, Clinton 50.2, Obama 49.8. In fact, rolling the averages, to this point, one would have expected Clinton to have gotten 56.2% of the vote to this point to Obama?s 43.7%.
Actual result (not including Florida): Obama 52.9%, Clinton 47.0%.
(including Florida): 51.5%, Clinton 48.5%
(including Florida and Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot): 50.7%, Clinton 49.2%
A big answer to that is in the flaws itself of the prediction polling system. More than 30% of voters in the democratic primaries in this election year have never voted in a primary before. More than 5% of the voters in the democratic primaries have never voted democrat before. More than 15% of the voters in the democratic primaries register to vote for the first time for these primaries. These are biased groups as well, voting in general by a 2-1, 3-1 or higher margin for Obama, yet they never are part of the population sample used for the prediction polls. This could play a huge spoiler for Texas, where record registration is expected in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, all areas Obama is expected to do well anyway.
General thinking is that Clinton is going to go balls-out on the attack, some calling it desperation, others calling it a needed change in strategy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080220/ap_ca/on_deadline_wisconsin
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2008/02/lost_in_wisconsin.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3401151.ece
For general clarity, here?s an article with a very nice pro-hillary spin as well:
http://www.nysun.com/article/71568
Either way, she?s gotta start winning, and winning big, or that delegate lead will be impossible to make up:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/
Party at Ilvanes!
________
TURBO (http://www.bmw-tech.org/wiki/BMW_Turbo)
So where are we standing right now?
In terms of delegates, Obama has a 91 delegate lead. He leads currently by more than 160 pledged delegates, and has closed the gap on superdelegates to 70.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
More importantly, he has verily shut down any endorsement based momentum Hillary can achieve up through at least March 4th. Given his string of wins, a popular/influential superdelegate will have an awful difficult time justifying all of a sudden jumping on board the losing train. Since Feb 5 (when the superdelegate count was 228-105), he was received endorsements from 58 new superdelegates (which are tenuous at best, since they can change their minds after all), while Hillary has received endorsements from only 17. More importantly, 6 of Hillary?s previously committed superdelegates are now endorsing Obama.
So what did we find out in Wisconsin/Hawaii? Being it Barack is from Hawaii, little. In Wisconsin however, the voting base was supposedly tailored for Hillary. The expected turnout was more than 4-3 in favor of women, the electorate was overwhelmingly white, and the number of middle class working families in the state was the dominant voting blocs.
From:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#WIDEM
Obama and Clinton were almost tied among women (Clinton won 51-48), closing down Hillary?s strongest voting bloc.
Obama won every income level other than below $25,000
Obama won by more than a 2-1 margin voters that decided recently and men.
More than 35% of the democractic primary voters were people identified as Independants (27%) or people identifying themselves as Republicans (almost 9%, a startlingly high number), who voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama.
Obama had a slight edge among voters that identified themselves as Democrats.
17% of respondants reported that they would be unhappy with Obama winning the nomination, a number almost doubled by Clinton with 31% of the democratic voters stating displeasure at the prospects of her winning the primary.
Now, a lot of people have heard texas is moving into a statistical tie, but in all fairness, the rolling poll average shows Clinton with a still significant 7 point lead in Texas and a 10+ pt lead in Ohio.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/tx/texas_democratic_primary-312.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/oh/ohio_democratic_primary-263.html
although both leads tend to be trending down, there isn?t enough rolling data to say anything legitimately yet from a statistical standpoint.
Another burning question that seems to be causing all kinds of confusion relates to results vs prediction polls. Most polls for Wisconsin showed Obama with only a razor thin 4-5 point lead heading into last nights election, but the actual gap was 17. Virginia, Maryland, D.C also had actual results far wider than the predictor poll. In fact, From super Tuesday onward, it can be argued that Obama has been outperforming his predictor poll basis. On Super Tuesday, Obama was behind nationally by 11 points. Actual result, Clinton 50.2, Obama 49.8. In fact, rolling the averages, to this point, one would have expected Clinton to have gotten 56.2% of the vote to this point to Obama?s 43.7%.
Actual result (not including Florida): Obama 52.9%, Clinton 47.0%.
(including Florida): 51.5%, Clinton 48.5%
(including Florida and Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot): 50.7%, Clinton 49.2%
A big answer to that is in the flaws itself of the prediction polling system. More than 30% of voters in the democratic primaries in this election year have never voted in a primary before. More than 5% of the voters in the democratic primaries have never voted democrat before. More than 15% of the voters in the democratic primaries register to vote for the first time for these primaries. These are biased groups as well, voting in general by a 2-1, 3-1 or higher margin for Obama, yet they never are part of the population sample used for the prediction polls. This could play a huge spoiler for Texas, where record registration is expected in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, all areas Obama is expected to do well anyway.
General thinking is that Clinton is going to go balls-out on the attack, some calling it desperation, others calling it a needed change in strategy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080220/ap_ca/on_deadline_wisconsin
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2008/02/lost_in_wisconsin.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3401151.ece
For general clarity, here?s an article with a very nice pro-hillary spin as well:
http://www.nysun.com/article/71568
Either way, she?s gotta start winning, and winning big, or that delegate lead will be impossible to make up:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/
Party at Ilvanes!
________
TURBO (http://www.bmw-tech.org/wiki/BMW_Turbo)