First thoughts: Contest No. 45

Posted: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:20 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: First Thoughts

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro
*** Contest No. 45: Six weeks, a political eternity given the cycle’s front-loaded calendar, have passed since the last Democratic contest -- the Mississippi primary -- which Obama won, 61%-37%. And as we’ve said before, so much (most of it process) has happened in between: Geraldine Ferraro’s comments, the Wright controversy, Obama’s speech on race, Bosnia sniper fire, the Clintons’ tax records, Mark Penn’s ouster, Bittergate, and the debate over the debate. Well, the wait for another Clinton-Obama contest finally ends today as Pennsylvania voters head to the polls, which opened at 7:00 am ET and close 8:00 pm ET. There are 158 pledged delegates at stake.

*** Keys to the Keystone battle: There seem to be four possible outcomes to tonight’s contest, and two of them will need little spin because the media won't need the "help" to interpret their meaning: 1) a double-digit Clinton victory in which she beats Obama by a greater margin than she beat him in Ohio; and 2) an outright Obama victory. But here are outcomes that will force the campaigns to go into spin overdrive: 3) a Clinton victory by less than five points, which would give Obama an opening to declare "victory" of sorts and create renewed pressure on Clinton on the future of her campaign; and 4) a Clinton victory by more than five but less than 10, which is the most likely result if some of the better polls are to be believed. This would be considered a solid victory, but would it be big enough to fundamentally change the dynamics of the race? Could Clinton claim Obama was losing ground if he performed better in Pennsylvania than he did in Ohio? This is why Axelrod and his team and Wolfson and his team will earn their money today. The Clinton campaign is desperately trying to ratchet back expectations. Early on, Rendell and his folks were predicting an easy victory. Those predictions, however, are what created this expectations-game problem for Clinton today. She's now in a position where only a blowout is going to give her the momentum she needs to make folks believe she still has a shot at the nomination.

*** Where we stand: Obama leads in pledged delegates (1417 to 1251), overall delegates (1655 to 1513), the popular vote (13.4 million to 12.7 million), and total number of contests won (29 to 14). Note: We’re not including Texas in this last total, given that Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucus and netted the most delegates. Here are some other numbers to chew on: the Quinnipiac poll taken around the time of the Mississippi primary had Clinton up by 12 (53%-41%), the RealClear average has Clinton leading by six points (49%-43.1%), the now-famous Obama memo that Bloomberg News received after Feb. 5 projected Clinton to win the state by five (52%-47%), and assuming a turnout of 2 million, a 55%-45% Clinton victory would cut Obama’s lead in the popular vote from 700,000 to 500,000.

*** The pledged delegate game is essentially over: No matter tonight's popular vote result, the delegate count isn't likely to move in either direction substantially. Why? The disproportionate number of delegates awarded in areas Obama is likely to do well could very well mean that Clinton's percentage point net victory will be greater than the number of delegates she nets. Look no further than Ohio, where she won by 10 points but netted just seven delegates. A similar phenomenon is likely tonight. While neither campaign can get to 2,025 without superdelegates, after tonight, it will be virtually assured that Clinton cannot catch Obama for the pledged delegate lead. In fact, there's a strong case to be made that if Clinton nets fewer than 10 delegates, she may not even be able to get his pledged delegate lead below 100 by June 3.

*** The popularity contest: That brings us to the popular vote... According to our turnout estimates (based on past results and talks with the campaigns and also assuming a bump), it is unlikely that Clinton will completely erase Obama’s lead in the popular vote without factoring in Florida and Michigan. Here's a fairly rosy scenario for Clinton, which assumes big wins in her states and somewhat narrow wins for Obama in his states of the contests that remain.

So that projection gives Clinton a net gain of 167,500 popular votes for the rest of the remaining primaries -- if everything plays out by the projections above. Obviously, we encourage folks to play around with these numbers themselves. So Team Clinton couldn't get there with also adding Florida; they'd need Michigan, too... and maybe even try and count total Puerto Rico votes -- which, turnout-wise could look like Oregon, but in reverse. So MAYBE she could net another 60,000 votes out of Puerto Rico. Of course, if Clinton gets a big win out of Pennsylvania, she might be able to narrow the gap in places like North Carolina and Oregon and then suddenly her net popular vote take could increase. To have ANY chance of selling legitimacy to this popular vote game, she'll need to cut his lead without the use of Michigan. Maybe, she can include Florida; there are a chunk of superdelegates who would give her that, but most will not give her Michigan. So she needs to more than double the projected popular vote totals we've come up with to even start the popular vote conversation.

*** Some ‘splaining to do? No matter tonight’s result, keep this in mind: Obama spent an enormous amount of money on TV -- and we mean ENORMOUS. He spent so much that he will have a very hard time explaining a double-digit defeat, despite what the campaign might say. Sure, they can claim he started out more than 20 points behind in some polls. But to lose by more than 200,000 votes after all the money he spent would be embarrassing and could rightfully get superdelegates nervous about his durability. Also, this is the first vote since Rev. Wright and the "bitter" comments, and if he simply performs as well or a tad bit better among white voters than he did in Ohio, the campaign can argue to supers that he wasn't damaged with these voters for the long term. But if his numbers are worse than Ohio (he lost by 10 points) then, in the words of Ricky Ricardo...  he'll have some 'splainin' to do. 

*** When watching tonight’s returns: Keep this in mind: While the Philly region has reported its vote fairly quickly the last two election cycles, before 2004, the vote count has been very slow from the area. If the vote count is slow in this area tonight, then expect a couple of things: 1) the networks and AP will hold off on calling this race too quickly and 2) Clinton could have what appears to be a VERY big lead in early returns since most of Obama's vote is in the Philly media market.

*** Bill is back! And don’t miss Bill’s comments to Philadelphia’s WHYY radio (an NPR affiliate) regarding his South Carolina reference to Jesse Jackson: “I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along… I frankly thought the way the Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson. And I called him and asked HIM if he found anything offensive and he just laughed and said, ‘OF COURSE I don’t. We all know what’s going on… You gotta really go some to play the race card with me – MY office is in Harlem.” More on this below…

*** On the trail: Clinton makes a local stop in Philadelphia and holds her election night party in the city of Brotherly Love; McCain makes the second stop on his “Time for Action” tour in Youngstown, OH; and Obama makes stops at polling places in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and then holds a rally in Evansville, IN after polls close in Pennsylvania.

Countdown to North Carolina, Indiana: 14 days
Countdown to Election Day 2008: 196 days
Countdown to Inauguration Day 2009: 273 days
 
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