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Hillary to Succumb to Rudy-ism?

Posted on Sat, 02/09/2008 - 9:54pm by Eric Hysen

Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana have been called for Obama tonight. In addition to that, Obama's expected to score big in Maryland, DC, and Virginia in the Potomac / Chesapeake / Beltway / Pundit Primary on Tuesday (seriously, could they give it any more names?). Maine tomorrow could be closer, but Obama's strong showings in caucuses (winning 9 of 10 so far) mean that he'll probably pull off a win there too.

Following Tuesday, there are three remaining contests this month on February 19 - primaries in Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Washington state (although Washington's primary won't count; all of their delegates will be apportioned according to the results of tonight's caucuses). Obama will more than likely do well in Hawaii - the state of his birth, while Wisconsin is less clear.

The Clinton campaign has been saying lately that they plan to focus on the March 4 contests in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont, where the demographics favor her. What happens, though, if Obama goes into March having won all or all but one of the contests since Super Tuesday? Clinton could start to look a lot like Rudy Giuliani did during the early primaries. Rudy's campaign wrote off Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, and they couldn't survive a month of absolutely no media coverage and no momentum after he received next to no votes in those states. Once Rudy lost his "firewall" state of Florida, he dropped out.

This same thing could happen with Clinton. If Obama has strong wins in the remaining February primaries, as it looks like he will, Hillary's current demographic advantages in the March 4 states could evaporate in favor of Obama momentum. If this race is going to go all the way to the convention, as many are predicting, Hillary needs to at least be competitive in the remaining February states.

Update: Louisiana's been called for Obama.

Update 2: And a 90% of the vote, 3 of 3 delegate sweep in the Virgin Islands.

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I think it all hinges on to

Posted on Sat, 02/09/2008 - 11:04pm by Markus Kolic

I think it all hinges on to what extent momentum, as vs. delegates, matters. If momentum is really decisive, then yeah, a solid month of Obama would be significant; but this race increasingly seems more like a numbers game, which would suggest that Hillary's wise to focus her resources on large states (OH, TX) with big delegate prizes. We'll just have to watch and see how it plays out.

True, but that's almost

Posted on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 12:51pm by Eric Hysen

True, but that's almost exactly what Rudy's campaign said - they figured that focusing on the big, later states would overwhelm the few delegates accumulated from the early states.  Obviously, they found that they couldn't maintain their early polling leads in the big states after Huckabee, McCain, and Romney started to build up momentum.  Hillary will probably get more media attention than Rudy did during January, but it feels like the same dynamic in play.