I don't know that the pollsters had him on an even playing field in MA. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...ssachusetts_democratic_primary-539.html#polls Obama won just 1 of the last 8 polls - and that by 2%. 6 of the 8 showed Clinton up double digits, mostly up by 20+. The last 3 polls showed Obama by 2, Clinton by 17, and Clinton by 24. Here was Obama's movement the last week or two (post endorsement as well as when the campaigning started): California's polls were much closer, with several showing a +/-2 in either direction. The interesting question here will be if we ever learn the differential between early votes and voting day votes. One benefit Obama has going forward is that he seems to have overcome a good chunk of the white vote gap. He has a huge hispanic vote gap, but California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico have already voted. The only remaining major hispanic state is Texas. We'll see if he can overcome the gap a bit here - if not, that could be a problem on March 4.
I have to disagree with you with this one. I think the longer it goes, the better it is for Obama, although I have no business in supporting him. The key is the media. I have never seen such Media bias towards a certain candidate in the primary before. They cover him up so well that any criticism towards him are portrayed as dirty politics. Right now this guy is the golden child of liberal left wings. He shall not be touched. That is why I think he is favored to win the Democratic nomination. Not sure if it could work in the general. GOP don't have to concerns Clintons have and they will attack him and expose him as much as they can. Let us see how he responds by that time.
Media does play a big role. CNN now becomes "laughter of the day" for breakfast time. They are trying so hard to shove down your throat. It's not about win or lose in a state, it's about how they "break it down" to you; it's about how they tell you that you should perceive the win/lose. For example, CNN has been trying week long to tell you how Obama "wins white voters", that's always the first sentence in their breakdowns. But they don't want to mention those are "white MALE voters", I guess they don't want to inject race and gender into it. Then they will tell you how Clinton is winning white BUT FEMALE voters, of course that's just simple honest break down without any implying of gender. In the last sentence of their breakdown, they will briefly mention that black votes went to Obama overwhelmingly, but won't mention about the actual number of 80%+, of course they don't want to inject race into it. But, in California, they will tell you in the first sentence that majority of Latinos and Asians are voting Clinton, which can offset black votes. CNN has been telling you non-stop how 50+% voters with college degrees are supporting Obama, and how young people are supporting him as well. You get the picture, right? Wow, only old and uneducated people are supporting the old establishment. Right, they won't tell you that how young people going to college more and more because of old establishment, how much of those college educated actually have 3+ years of working experience. You ask every single inexperienced job seeker, they will tell you that experience doesn't matter, and they have the vision of hope to get the job done. Speaking of college graduates, I am pretty sure they also have break downs of advanced degrees and real working experiences, but they won't show you anything, because they don't want to inject age/education to divide voters. That Martin on CNN is supposed to be a senior analyst, certainly a very "professional" one. So is that Gloria. I guess they forgot to carry their huge flags and signs. On the end, no matter how media try to influence the voters, it's voters' choice whether to accept that. You can't blame swiftboating for everything, the voters wanted someone likable and inexperienced, they deserved Bush for 8 years. If the majority want Obama or Clinton or McCain or anyone, they deserve them. That's how you take consequence of your actions. Of course, if you vote "present" or don't show up, you can still play the blame game later on, but you still deserve the result.
how has the media covered up any of obama's faults compared to any other candidate in this election? that's a ridiculous criticism that really needs to be stopped. while I agree that the media may declare winners to soon, and therefore unfairly cover some candidates more than others (look at the way they wrote off huckabee) but to say one candidate is being protected is flat out ridiuculous and more wignut paranoia
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html Obama claims delegate lead By: Mike Allen Feb 6, 2008 08:24 AM EST Updated: February 6, 2008 11:09 AM EST With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830. In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night. The Obama camp now projects topping Clinton by 13 delegates, 847 to 834. NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party's complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton. Clinton was portrayed in many news accounts as the night’s big winner, but Obama’s campaign says he wound up with a higher total where it really counts — the delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at this summer’s Democratic convention. With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show. The running totals for the two, which includes previous contests and the party officials known as “superdelegates,” are only about 70 delegates apart, Russert said. The bottom line is that the two are virtually tied. On Wednesday morning, the battle was on to shape public perceptions about Tuesday. The Clinton campaign said it was crunching its delegate numbers but was not sure it was correct that Obama got more. The Obama campaign sent an e-mailed statement titled: “Obama wins Super Tuesday by winning more states and more delegates.” Campaign Manager David Plouffe said: “By winning a majority of delegates and a majority of the states, Barack Obama won an important Super Tuesday victory over Sen. Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary.” “From Colorado and Utah in the West to Georgia and Alabama in the South to Sen. Clinton’s backyard in Connecticut, Obama showed that he can win the support of Americans of every race, gender and political party in every region of the country,” Plouffe said. “That’s why he’s on track to win Democratic nomination, and that’s why he’s the best candidate to defeat John McCain in November.” The Obama campaign attached an Excel spreadsheet containing “state-by-state estimates of the pledged delegates we won last night, which total 845 for Obama and 836 for Clinton — bringing the to-date total of delegates to 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton.”
Again, I don't think polls that happened two weeks ago, before the Kennedy endorsement, have much relevance at all. And SurveyUSA found reason for error in their Clinton by 24 poll, which is why it was redone and reduced to Clinton by 17. In the three independent polls conducted in the final week, it was Obama by 2, Clinton by 6 and Clinton by 17, for an average of Clinton by 7. At least some early exit polls had Obama winning Massachusetts yesterday. It wasn't completely even -- I'll admit, that was a stretch -- but certainly, the expectation was for it to be closer than it was.
Yeah - I definitely agree that he underperformed. I just meant to suggest he wasn't expected to win. He did not perform well in the northeast in general. Did well in the south and midwest, OK in the west. I don't know what that tells us, unfortunately! By the way, with 98% reporting in New Mexico, Obama leads by ... 71 votes (65,036 to 64,965). Wow.
Not that it really matters, but this is the kind of biased media coverage that infuriates me. What network tallies are these? CNN projects Clinton to have won more delegates last night. To my knowledge, CNN and MSNBC are the only two sources to project -- yet this article makes it sound like there's a consensus among all sources.
Except for the fact that states, like California and Arizona, had early voting, which was a large proportion of the vote. Spin, spin, spin...
So then polls that "happened" two weeks ago are relevant everywhere besides Massachusetts. Thanks for clarifying...
Case by case basis. Each state has its own circumstances, and Major and I were having a discussion about the Massachusetts primary. You're the one who attempted to turn that limited discussion into a hard rule nationwide, and you're accusing me of spin?
Adventures in vote counting... http://www.koat.com/news/15230516/detail.html ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Democratic Party officials in New Mexico resumed counting votes Wednesday after a higher-than-expected turnout proved problematic for caucus voters and left the state as the last one undecided from Super Tuesday for Democrats. With 181 of 184 precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton led early Wednesday morning with 65,845 votes, a mere 117-vote lead against Barack Obama's tally of 65,728 votes. Still outstanding are votes from three polling sites in Rio Arriba County: Espanola Middle School, Hernandez Elementary School, and Chimayo Elementary School. Democratic party officials said they cannot reach the Rio Arriba County Chair for the returns. Also outstanding are votes from the Sandoval County site of Our Lady of Sorrows Church in the town of Bernalillo. Officials said they were having difficulty deciphering votes from that location. A contributing factor is determining which congressional district the votes are to be attributed to, since votes collected at that site come from two different congressional districts. Complicating the caucus further is the matter of 16,871 outstanding provisional ballots throughout the state. These were ballots that were cast at caucus sites Tuesday but need to be qualified before they are counted. Provisional ballots can occur when people vote somewhere that is not their official caucus site. Because of the long lines in some polling sites Tuesday, some voters went to alternative sites and cast provisional ballots. Provisional ballots can also happen when a voter's name is not on the official voter registry for their particular caucus site or when voters who requested an absentee ballot say they did not receive it. Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colon said the provisional ballots would start to be counted at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. He also said that officials would work to resolve the outstanding Rio Arriba County ballots. He couldn't say how long either process would take.
Who has more momentum? If you take "momentum" out of the picture, Hillary got the bigger victory last night IMO. 10 point win in NJ, 17 point win in NY, 10 point win in CA, 15 in MA. These are big, populous states with lots of delegates. I haven't done the math, but if the Dem primaries and caucuses were 'winner take all', then Hillary's bigs states would trump Obama's more numerous victories in smaller states. I could be wrong, though. Pretty close. In the end, it's delegates that matter. And there is little rhyme/reason to how those are calculated. Keep in mind that the estimates of delegates we're getting from news outlets are just that- estimates. It may be a little while before the complicated math of delegates from each state has a real and exact count. It's not just % of popular state vote = % of delegates. Remember Clinton "won" Nevada but Obama got one more delegate than her from that state. Most estimates I've seen have Clinton with a lead of 100 or so delegates. Now, if we do take "momentum" into consideration, I think Obama has the edge. TheCat has an interesting point, that the most recent polls over the weekend showed Obama pulling close or even taking the lead in some big important races like CA and NJ- but he lost by 10 in both. In his opinion Obama has lost momentum because he underperformed re: the most recent polls. But it's an illusion. The fact is that Zogby had Obama higher in many states and was dead wrong, especially CA- but there were lots of other polls that disagreed. If you took the average of all the polls, you would not see Obamas results as underperforming. Notably SurveyUSA, who not only pegged CA dead on (52-42), but also pegged several other states' races as well. (I'll be watching SUSA a lot more closely after their remarkable performance last night.) The Zogby polls made more noise in the media because the numbers were crazy, swinging all over the place on Sat, Sun and Mon. It also made more noise because Obama taking any kind of lead, or pulling even with Hillary in CA, would have been a huge upset. We saw massive swings and variance not just in Zogby but in other polls all weekend. If you take the average you don't see a huge numbers for Obama that he didn't meet. But a month ago, there wasn't huge variance in the numbers- and they favored Hillary, big time. Nationwide. It wasn't long ago that Hillary was favored to easily win most states. We're not talking about 3 months ago, either. Just six weeks to one month ago. Keep in mind that the Clinton machine was the biggest, well-organized democrat organization around. Remember that Bill Clinton was the biggest fundraiser for Democrats. The pundits said there was no way Obama (or anyone) could organize a machine to compete with a monster like the Clintons. There was no way they could raise money to compete with them. Obama has raised 32 million in January to Hillary's 13 mil. Obama's biggest fundraising day was after New Hampshire- when he lost. Hillary's setbacks are met with less cash- Obama's bring more. I can see why, personally. I've never contributed money to a political campaign in my life. I donated to Obama after New Hampshire, and I'm going to again today. Hillary's supporters aren't passionate about her the way Obama's supporters are passionate about him. Hillary has more money from lobbyists than McCain & Romney combined. Obama has an incredible percentage of cash from individuals like me. The next month is filled with races that Obama will win the majority of, leading up to Ohio and Texas. That's why Clinton wants a debate every week- they need some kind of media coverage other than the losses she's about to pile up. If OH and TX were tomorrow, I think she'd win both. But after another month of huge fundraising from Obama and numerous wins for a whole month, it will be close.
The delegate count seems to be off. Even Hillary's camp is saying that it will be closer than 100 votes.
