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Obama is speaking in North Carolina now. At least as far as we can tell, everybody behind him is white. Only one person is male.
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Right now, Clinton’s best shot at winning the nomination is to overtake Obama in the popular vote. But Obama’s strong North Carolina win could kill Clinton’s chances of winning that metric.
Obama currently leads Clinton by about 650,000 votes. (Real Clear Politics is heroically updating its popular-vote tally as tonight’s results roll in.) That lead is cut waaay down to about 85,000 if you count the Florida and Michigan votes, which Clinton hopes we do. At the beginning of tonight, Clinton appeared to be within striking distance—wins in North Carolina and Indiana, plus in the remaining states, could have narrowed that gap significantly.
But look at the size of the two states: North Carolina has 115 pledged delegates at stake; Indiana has 72. It’s hard to gauge turnout, but predictions of 1 million-plus people going to the polls in Indiana don’t appear to be exaggerated. In North Carolina, almost 500,000 votes have been logged with only 15 percent of precincts reporting, which suggests massive turnout. (Not that precinct percentage is in any way proportional to voter turnout, but this is a rough guide.) So even if both Obama and Clinton win North Carolina and Indiana by similar margins, Obama will get a lot more delegates and votes out of it. But his margin appears to be much bigger than hers—about 14 points in North Carolina compared with about seven in Indiana, by one count—which will put him even further ahead in the popular vote.
If Clinton can’t win the popular vote, that means she won’t have a single metric to back up her claim to superdelegates that she deserves the nomination. (Obama has pledged delegates and number of contests, as well.) Without that, hers will be a tough case to make, no matter how many more dumb things the Rev. Wright says.
Update 11:29 p.m.: With 96 percent of precincts voting, Obama leads Clinton in North Carolina by 220,000 votes. With that, he erases her popular vote gains in Pennsylvania, where she netted 215,000 votes.
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Barack Obama was always supposed to win North Carolina. Twenty-one percent of the state’s population (Republicans and Democrats) is black; independents (but not Limbaugh-following Republicans) were allowed to vote; and Obama won both of the neighboring states’ primaries. Despite all this, his win, which exit polls suggest will be by double-digits, feels like a pretty big deal. Why?
Because Obama hasn’t won anything—not even a news cycle—since he won Mississippi on March 11. That was nearly two months ago, and since then he’s lost nearly every news cycle to Clinton. The Rev. Wright, bitter-gate, a lackluster debate, negative attack ads, the Rev. Wright redux—all of that has happened in the last seven weeks. It’s been the equivalent of middle school for Obama—bad things just keep happening, and everything seems like the most important and dramatic event ever.
Obviously that’s not to say that Obama hasn’t had good news to report—throughout his dry spell he was picking up superdelegates at a faster clip than Clinton. He won his battles here and there—the gas tax is a perfect example—and Clinton never spun the broader narrative away from Obama is the front-runner; the math is daunting for Clinton.
But Obama wasn’t exactly laughing his way to an easy victory in North Carolina over the last few weeks. His lead in the polls was steadily deflating, John Edwards stayed mute, and the state’s governor endorsed Clinton. If his win is by double-digits, as is expected, it will be an impressive feat—even if it wouldn’t have been one a month ago.
Sure, the victory isn’t perfect. Obama still struggled with white voters (grabbing only 36 percent) and relied heavily on African-American support (91 percent of all black voters supported him). Half of the voters said the Rev. Wright issue was important, and 60 percent of those voters supported Clinton. But he won every socioeconomic bracket besides voters who earn $50,000 to $75,000, he’s seen as the more trustworthy candidate, and the majority of new voters sided with him.
Exit polls aside, Obama’s win feels momentous because of how different the alternative would have been. If Clinton would have won North Carolina, the wind wouldn’t have just been taken out of his sails—he would have been sailing in a vacuum. One Slate staffer even suggested that if Clinton won both Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination on the Hillary Deathwatch should jump to 50 percent. But now, with a hearty victory in populous North Carolina, he likely has bumped the popular vote out of Clinton’s reach. Finally, Obama has something to smile about.
Read more of our live-blogging coverage of today's primaries.
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Exit polls out of North Carolina suggest that Obama has won the state by about 14 percentage points. While CNN does not report the overall percentages for each candidate, we can divine them by weighting the demographic breakdown between the candidates by each demographic’s turnout. For example, here’s the exit poll data for gender:
|
Clinton |
Obama |
| Male (43%) |
40 |
56 |
| Female (57%) |
42 |
54 |
From here, we deduce:
Clinton = (40% of males) * (43% male voters) + (42% females) * (57% female voters) = 41 percent of the vote
Obama = (56% of males) * (43% male voters) + (54% females) * (57% female voters) = 55 percent of the vote
We can do this for any of the exit poll categories and we’ll get similar results.
Accord to Slate’s Delegate Calculator, a 14-point win for Obama in North Carolina will grant him a 66-49 advantage in pledged delegates in the state for a net gain of 17. Clinton netted 12 pledged delegates in her nine-point win in Pennsylvania, though it’s worth noting that the estimates of pledged-delegate leads are more likely to shrink than grow as the results from individual districts are reported.
If, however, Obama does end up posting a win in North Carolina of this magnitude, he is well positioned to at least cancel out the progress in delegates Clinton made in Pennsylvania.
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Some highlights from the (sketchy, unreliable, not-to-be-trusted) exit polls:
How’d Wright play? Thirty percent of voters said the Rev. Wright’s comments were “very important” to their vote. Of them, 69 percent voted for Clinton. Fox News concludes from this that it’s “clear” Wright has hurt Obama. But beware of false causation. Someone already planning to vote for Clinton is more likely to be “very” affected by Wright, just as an Obama supporter in Pennsylvania was more likely to be affected by Clinton’s sniper story. It’s a stretch to conclude that Wright caused all these people to vote against Obama.
It’s the economy. Two-thirds of Indiana voters and almost as many in North Carolina identified the economy as the most important issue. You’d think this bodes well for Clinton, given her recent populist stances. And indeed, Clinton performed better among these voters in Indiana. But Obama wins this group in North Carolina. And in Indiana, both candidates are about even on the question of who is most likely to improve the economy.
Limbaugh effect. With anecdotal evidence circulating that some Republicans are voting for Clinton—it's an open primary, so indies and GOPers can vote—exit polls in Indiana show the GOP vote going to Clinton, 53-45. Apparently, Limbaugh is already taking credit.
Race/gender. Demographics break down pretty much as you’d expect: In Indiana, Obama won 92 percent of blacks, and Clinton won about 60 percent of whites. The numbers are roughly the same in North Carolina. On the gender front, both candidates win men and women by about the same numbers, with a slight advantage to Obama for men and to Clinton for women.
Attack of the attacks. More Indiana voters answered “yes” when asked whether Clinton attacked unfairly (64 percent) than did those asked whether Obama did (44 percent). But when asked which candidate attacked unfairly, a plurality of voters answered “both.” So although more voters may see Clinton as an unfair attacker, both candidates are held responsible.
Gas-tax referendum? Did the gas debate influence the vote much? Unlikely. About three-quarters of Indiana voters said they made up their minds before last week, when the gas-tax controversy was just brewing. Late deciders were even more rare in North Carolina, with about 80 percent of voters saying they decided before last week.
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As we’re waiting for the Hoosier/Cackalack results to come in, what better time to talk long-shot hypotheticals? Let's look at Hillary Clinton’s best-case scenario tonight and what it would mean for her campaign.
She wins Indiana by double digits and North Carolina by single digits. Not only will rural whites have shied from Obama in greater numbers than before, but blacks won’t have come to his rescue. "Why can’t Obama close the deal?" becomes not just a quip but a rallying cry. Demographic abandonment helps her make the case that Obama is weak and getting weaker.
She tightens his delegate lead. Right now Obama leads by 154 pledged delegates—his strongest case against her. There’s no plausible way she can close this gap, as the Obama campaign delights in pointing out. What she can do, though, is close his lead so far—say, to within 100 delegates—that a popular vote win could swing the tide in her favor.
She wins the popular vote. This seems unlikely, barring disaster in Obamaland. Clinton has Kentucky and West Virginia in her pocket, but it would take a real zeitgeist shift for Oregon and South Dakota to swing her way. But if they did, she’d be within striking distance of Obama’s current 610,000 vote lead. To overtake him, though, she still needs to make sure …
Florida and Michigan count. Clinton can’t overtake Obama in the pledged delegate count, even if she persuades the DNC to seat these two delegations. But getting their delegates seated gives her an excuse to count their combined 1.7 million votes toward the popular vote tally. Right now, counting these two states, Obama leads her only by 123,000. Combined with wins in the remaining contests, she could well surpass him.
She persuades superdelegates Obama can’t win. If the last four things happen, then Clinton might get the remaining superdelegates to support her in large numbers. (We’re talking 60 percent to 70 percent of the uncommitted superdelegates.) Those currently supporting Obama could defect, too. Her case in a nutshell: Sure, some metrics might be on his side. But nominating him would be like racing a horse with its legs pre-broken. And who knows what "October surprise" lies in store.
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Before the networks call the winners in a primary, they don't have much to talk about beside exit polls. (Neither, frankly, do we.) The exit polls are notoriously unreliable, especially because the networks update their numbers as new waves of data come in. (This helps them adapt their calculations as they learn more information about turnout, votes by region, etc.) But in a state like North Carolina, where nearly 500,000 people have already voted early, are exit polls faulty because they don't survey early voters?
No—not even a little bit. The name "exit poll" is misleading in states that have early voting because the pollsters don't just survey voters as they're exiting the polls. The same outfit conducts exit polls for all of the networks, and that outfit has already interviewed 400 people by telephone in North Carolina. Given past results and current projections, they're expecting early voters to make up 30 percent of all voters. So if turnout is around 1.33 million, which makes early voters 30 percent of the electorate, the exit polls will accurately incorporate early voters. If turnout tops 1.33 million, which some observers say it may, then they'll have to adjust their model.
Either way, the bases are covered. That's one reason fewer to distrust the exit polls. Many more to go.
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Welp, here we are, 124 days after Iowa caucus-goers had their say, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still campaigning to make sure the sun rises tomorrow morning. They’ve made more than 100 stops in Indiana and North Carolina, and, after tonight, there are more uncommitted superdelegates to be coerced than there are pledged delegates to be earned. For Clinton, the two states can improve her still-distant chances of winning the nomination. Obama, meanwhile, has been closing in on the nomination for weeks, but superdelegates won’t let him get there without the approval of the Hoosiers and Tar Heels.
From where we sit, the primary can split in four different directions, depending on tonight’s results. As usual, it all depends on the margin of victory. Below, we offer up four scenarios based on over-unders of the margins in each state.
Over-Under in North Carolina: Obama by 10 points.
Over: A double-digit victory in North Carolina—where 1.5 million people might vote—would send Obama’s popular-vote tally out of Clinton’s reach, even if Florida and Michigan were included. The popular vote is a flawed metric, especially when Michigan and Florida are factored in, but Obama's popular-vote dominance would eliminate Clinton's last quantitative piece of evidence that she is the deserving victor. Uncommitted superdelegates wouldn’t be able to ignore the numbers any longer. Depending on the outcome in Indiana, there would either be a slow trickle or a steady flood of superdelegates in Obama's direction. That doesn’t mean Clinton would withdraw—quite the opposite, if she wins Indiana—but, rather, the arithmetic disadvantage would eventually end her candidacy.
Most importantly, a big Obama win in North Carolina would mean white voters have returned to the fold; 40 percent of the 400,000 early voters have been black, and observers suggest that in the end, African-Americans will have cast about 35 percent of all votes in the primary. Given that Obama's expected support among black voters is north of 85 percent, he probably would hit double digits only because 40 percent of white voters saddled up with him. That’s a number he didn’t hit in Ohio or Pennsylvania, and it’s a threshold that may show superdelegtes that Obama has moved beyond the Rev. Wright imbroglio.
Under: North Carolina was always supposed to be Obama’s state, and a single-digit loss or a Clinton win would mean that she still owns the white vote. Even if she lost the state, she and her surrogates would have enough grist to stall superdelegates. Coupled with a win in Indiana, Clinton could make the case that Obama’s lead still isn’t safe.
Over-Under for Indiana: Clinton by One Point.
Over: If Clinton wins, she won’t drop out. Instead, she’ll continue to draw out the election until at least June 3, when the final states vote. (At that point, most superdelegates will presumably decide once and for all whom they support.) Sure-thing victories in Kentucky and West Virginia in the weeks to come will only help her cause. She’ll hit the phones hard, trying to persuade the superdelegates that nominating a Democrat who is too flashy to win rural votes in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio is like marrying somebody who will only disappoint you when it’s time to pay the bills. Messy breakups ensue in both scenarios.
Under: If Obama wins Indiana, that means he’ll have gotten his groove back among white voters and that Clinton’s populist appeals worked about as well as they did for John Edwards. The media will view the loss as a referendum on the gas-tax holiday, and Obama will emerge as a nominee that superdelegates can be comfortable with. Even if Clinton doesn’t drop out, the superdelegates will move toward Obama. A loss in North Carolina—all the more unlikely if he wins in Indiana—will delay the race's resolution by a month or so, but for all intents and purposes, Obama will already be the nominee.