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Clinton Needs Record Margins, Turnout to Catch Obama
By Catherine Dodge and Kristin Jensen
Bloomberg
Monday 21 April 2008
To overtake Barack Obama in the nationwide popular vote, Hillary Clinton needs
a bigger win in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary than she has had in any major
contest so far. And that's just for starters.
After more than 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama, the Illinois senator,
leads Clinton by more than 800,000 votes. Even if the New York senator wins
by more than 20 percentage points tomorrow - a landslide few experts expect
- she would still have a hard time catching him.
Clinton needs "blowout numbers," says Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant
who isn't affiliated with either campaign. "The wheels would have to come
off the Obama bus, and the engine would have to blow."
A popular-vote victory is vital to Clinton's chances because she is likely
to end the primaries still trailing Obama, 46, in the race for delegates to
the Democratic National Convention.
According to an unofficial tally by the Associated Press, Obama currently leads
by a margin of 1,645 to 1,504 among pledged delegates and those superdelegates
- elected and party officials who get an automatic vote on the nomination -
who have indicated a preference. It will take 2,025 delegates to win the nomination.
One or the Other
"I am a big believer that she needs either one, the popular or the delegate
count," in order to make a case for why she should be the nominee, New
Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a Clinton backer, said in an interview.
Supporters say that winning more votes than Obama, plus her primary victories
in populous states such as California and Ohio, would prove she'd be the stronger
candidate against Republican John McCain in the November election.
"Popular vote matters," says Steve Grossman, a marketing executive
and one of Clinton's top fundraisers. "If there is an opportunity for her
to pick up enough popular votes, that is a powerful calling card to the superdelegates
to say the will of the people is a split decision."
To earn that split decision, though, Clinton would need a 25-point victory
in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky
and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in
Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon - a prospect that's
not at all certain.
Record Turnout
More than just big margins, Clinton would need record voter turnout too. In
Pennsylvania, she would need a turnout of 2 million, about half the state's
registered Democrats; in the 2004 primary, about 800,000 voted. She would also
need turnout to almost double in other states where she leads, and reach some
1 million in Puerto Rico, which is about how many Democratic- leaning voters
went to the polls in a 2004 gubernatorial election. The territory, known for
its high turnout, didn't have a presidential primary that year.
In Pennsylvania - where a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll gave her just a
five-point margin last week - Clinton would need to win a strong majority of
the state's suburban voters, about half of male voters, three-quarters of the
rural vote and probably 70 percent of white voters, says Chris Borick, director
of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. She would
also have to erode Obama's strength among black voters and college students.
And she would have to do all this coming from a fundraising disadvantage. Obama
began April with $42.5 million in cash for the primary elections, or about five
times more than Clinton, according to figures released by their campaigns yesterday.
"Near-Perfect"
"The analogy I would put out there is she has to have a near-perfect game
in baseball," says Borick. "If she squeaks out a couple-point win,
the math goes from bad to awful."
To shrink Obama's 800,000 popular-vote margin, the Clinton campaign argues
for the inclusion of votes cast in Michigan and Florida. Those two states lost
their right to send delegates to the convention by scheduling their contests
earlier in the year than party rules allowed.
Clinton and Obama agreed not to campaign in the two states, and Obama took
his name off the ballot in Michigan. Clinton won both uncontested races, and
now says they should count in the nationwide popular-vote calculations.
Florida voters "expressed their views," Clinton told the Newspaper
Association of America in Washington on April 15. "They have had their
vote certified by the Florida secretary of state; it's part of the popular vote."
No Sale
There's almost no chance that party officials will give credence to those results.
"No one is going to buy the argument that you have to count Michigan and
Florida," says Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American
University in Washington. "Those were not contested primaries."
Instead, Clinton's slim prospects may rest on persuading enough of the 795
superdelegates that she has the better chance of defeating McCain. The superdelegates
"first and foremost vote for the candidate they think is ready to be president
and win in November," says Doug Hattaway, a Clinton campaign adviser.
Polls on the general election don't support the case that Clinton would make
the stronger national candidate; they show little difference in head-to-head
match-ups between McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator and presumptive Republican
nominee, and either Clinton or Obama.
National Surveys
According to the average of national surveys compiled by Pollster.com, McCain
leads Clinton by 46 percent to 45 percent, and is tied with Obama at 45 percent.
The results are within the margin of error.
Obama "hasn't stumbled in a big way that makes him look unelectable in
the fall," says Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason
University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Still, says Fenn, Clinton will be looking to make the "momentum argument"
if she can pull off victories in most of the remaining primaries - arguing
that would prove that hers is the campaign that is now "clicking on all
cylinders."
That argument, he adds, is "a hard one to make if you don't have the popular
vote and you don't have the delegate count."
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