Super Tuesday: The Aftermath
I packed it in at 1am this morning, right after they called a tightly contested Missouri for Obama, and woke up to find that New Mexico still hadn’t picked a winner as he and Clinton are separated by just over 100 votes with four precincts and over 16,000 provisional ballots left to tally. When all is said and done, these two states mirrored the overall results of Super Duper Tuesday as Obama and Clinton effectively split the delegate count right down the middle, and if you believe the old saw “tie goes to the runner”, you could reasonably argue that Obama won the night overall and gets to move forward with his momentum relatively unchecked while Clinton’s campaign — which, prior to Iowa, often said the nomination would be decided on Feb. 5th — is starting to show some cracks in its foundation.
A couple of things came clear based on last night’s results:
- Obama has the black vote locked down but has now proven he can win anywhere, including predominantly white/red states.
- Clinton’s strongest support continues to be from those over 60 years old and Hispanics, the latter to a slightly lesser degree outside of California where they represent an atypically large percentage of the electorate.
Every other demographic, including women, is completely up for grabs at this point and each side can point to a couple of states that demonstrates their strength with a particular group, though even there, Obama can present a more compelling case for the coalition he’s building vs. Clinton’s more traditionally Democratic foundation which will likely show up in November for either of them.
ETA: MSNBC has some interesting analysis of the last night’s demographic breakdown.