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Posted
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 1:24 AM
| By
Christopher Beam
On Monday, we predicted
Clinton's margin of victory in Pennsylvania: "Clinton will win by eight
points—just high enough for her to stick around, just low enough for
Obama supporters to claim she's done." As it turns out, we were off; it
was more like 10 points. But our conclusion still stands: Clinton now
has an excuse to drag her delegate-hemorrhaging candidacy around for a
few more weeks. But despite the gloomy prospects, we're hiking her
chances of winning the nomination up 0.8 points to 10.7 percent.
Why
the raise? Two words: popular vote. As we and everyone who can read
knows, Clinton has no shot of closing Obama's pledged-delegate lead.
Her candidacy therefore depends on convincing superdelegates to vote
for her despite that lead. But vague claims of "electability"
aren't enough. She needs numbers on her side, and the popular vote is
her last shot at beating Obama by a legitimate metric. With
Pennsylvania under her belt—the primary netted her a little more than
200,000 votes—Clinton now trails Obama by about 500,000, according to RealClearPolitics. And that's before
the spin. If you count Florida's and Michigan's votes, which she no
doubt will, Obama's popular-vote lead shrinks to about 100,000. Whether
or not she closes that gap, she's close enough to argue that they're
tied.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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