The Meaning of Obama's Momentum

[Kristina]

The Meaning of Obama's Momentum
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008 By DAVID VON DREHLE 



U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama waves to supporters at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, February 12, 2008.
John Gress / Reuters

The old head-scratcher — what happens if an irresistible force meets an immovable object? — now gets its test in the Democratic presidential primary.

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The force is Barack Obama. His sweep of the Potomac primaries in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC on Tuesday gives him seven straight wins since Super Tuesday, not to mention his first lead in pledged delegates. Unprecedented amounts of money are pouring into his campaign coffers. He now has momentum that any challenger would envy in any year. Indeed, in any other year, a candidate with his numbers would have the nomination locked up tight.

But standing in his way is the adamantine Hillary Clinton, whose organization, decades in the making, is deeply rooted from coast to coast. She's as easy to knock over as the Great Wall.

"This year is something different," says Patrick Kenney, chairman of the political science department at Arizona State University, and an expert on the subject of political momentum — what it is and how it works. "Twice before, Obama appeared to have the momentum in a traditional sense, coming out of Iowa and coming out of South Carolina. In both cases he ran into an incredibly experienced and well-financed campaign led by a candidate with high name-recognition and great resilience."

Each time, the political ground shook from the impact of Obama's campaign crashing into Clinton's. In trying to decide who suffered more damage, it all came down to point of view. Was it more significant that Clinton edged out Obama in New Hampshire, or that Obama dusted himself off and kept coming? How could Clinton possibly lose the nomination after landslide victories in California and New York, the twin pillars of any Democratic electoral college strategy? And how could Obama possibly lose the nomination while winning more caucuses, more primaries, more votes and more pledged delegates?

After Tuesday night's results, many observers will be tempted to declare that his current momentum is different, and that Obama is now truly unstoppable. In Virginia, Obama won around 64% of the vote, doing especially well not just with his expected bases of independents, young voters and African-Americans, but also besting Clinton at the segments touted as her strengths — older and blue collar voters, and even women. His performance in Maryland, where he took around 60% of the vote, was equally impressive and broad-based.

Both Clinton and Obama have run textbook versions of victorious campaigns — one deftly executing the Establishment Juggernaut strategy, the other ably pulling off the Insurgent Newcomer strategy. Some years, the nominee is the one who fails the least, but not this year. Hillary Clinton has piled up more votes and more money than any previous Democrat in a contested primary. And Obama has still more of both.

Momentum is most powerful, according to political scientists, when the field is fairly evenly matched. Imagine a group of a half-dozen or so candidates, each with a mix of strengths and weaknesses — the 2004 Democratic field, for example. Most of the country knows relatively little about any of them until the first contests. If one candidate appears to be surging in Iowa and New Hampshire, that success becomes a settled and powerful reality in the minds of voters in later states. Success breeds more success. That's how John Kerry did it.

When there is a strong frontrunner, momentum is less decisive. Gary Hart discovered this in 1984. He surged out of Iowa and New Hampshire only to break his spear on the front-running campaign of Walter Mondale.

Though Obama is far stronger than Hart ever was, he remains wary of putting his faith in the power of momentum. "We certainly don't factor momentum into any of our calculations," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, on Tuesday afternoon. "We obviously did well on Saturday and Sunday but we don't think that has much relevance to what happens in the Mid-Atlantic. And whatever happens [in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia] is not going to have much impact in Wisconsin or Hawaii [next Tuesday]."

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson agreed, telling the New York Times that "there is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum."

But Professor Kenney points out that ordinary voters aren't the only ones who might be swept up by Obama fever. There are also the nearly 800 super-delegates to the Democratic convention — party officials and elected leaders who are free to vote as they choose. "I think as the momentum begins to shift again to Obama, it might have a real impact on those super-delegates. The trends appear to point to a good year for the Democrats — the war still troubles people, the economy is down, President Bush's poll numbers are low. The one thing Democratic leaders won't want is a messy convention."

Of course, any wavering super-delegates are destined to run into the powerful persuasive skills of Hillary and Bill Clinton, which leaves us once again with the eternal head-scratcher — the wave against the rock.

Turns out Einstein's physics provide the answer to that old paradox. A truly irresistible force colliding with a genuinely immovable object will produce an enormous black hole — which is, come to think of it, precisely what some nervous Democrats are starting to worry about.

With reporting by Jay Newton-Small / Washington
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1712803,00.html?xid=rss-politics-cnn

[Kristina]

Analysis: Obama runs table; McCain gains with conservatives

Story Highlights
Obama won in almost every demographic category on Tuesday

McCain still hasn't convinced Southern conservatives that he's their man

Wave of momentum carries Obama past Clinton in race for delegates

Huckabee finds results encouraging enough to stay in GOP race
Next Article in Politics »


 Read  VIDEO INTERACTIVE EXPLAINER
By John Helton
CNN
     
(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's wave of momentum got bigger on Tuesday. And while Sen. John McCain might not have turned the corner, he can now peek around it.

 
Barack Obama won the demographics on Tuesday that have been Clinton's strengths.

 1 of 2  Obama scored a breakthrough win in the Potomac primaries by cutting into Sen. Hillary Clinton's base and winning across the demographic board.

Obama won by overwhelming numbers: In the District of Columbia, he won with three-quarters of the vote. In Maryland and Virginia, he won with two-thirds.

The Illinois senator won the women vote. He won the white vote. He won the elderly vote. He won the Latino vote. He won among every income level.

Obama's sweep of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia primaries propelled him past Clinton in the race for Democratic delegates for the first time.  Watch how results change the game »

Coupled with the five contests he took over the weekend, Obama's winning streak might not make next week's primary in Wisconsin a must-win state for Clinton, but a loss there could make the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas do-or-die for the New York senator.

Wisconsin should be tailor-made for Clinton -- a rust-belt state with a large blue-collar vote -- the same kind of voters who got her campaign back on track last month in New Hampshire a few days after Obama's stunning win in the Iowa caucuses.  See CNN analysts break down results, look ahead »

But the state also has a large student population and a progressive tradition -- the kind of voters who have gone for Obama in earlier contests.

If Tuesday's trends hold, Obama could take away Clinton's strengths. She has kept pace with Obama by winning among voters age 65 and over, among women and among those making less than $50,000 a year, according to exit polls.

On Tuesday, she won none of those.

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On the GOP side, McCain finally scored a breakthrough win Tuesday by winning the conservative vote in Maryland, which could be a sign that the Northern conservative vote is coalescing around him.

Although he holds a nearly insurmountable lead over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, McCain still hasn't turned the corner with the Southern conservative vote.

McCain won the District of Columbia by an almost 3-to-1 margin and Maryland almost 2-1.

But things were different in Virginia, a state where 46 percent of Republican voters described themselves as evangelical Christians. Sixty percent of conservative voters there went for Huckabee.

McCain won Virginia on Tuesday by only a 9-point margin.  See which prominent conservatives back McCain, which don't »

Although McCain is 379 delegates away from the 1,191 he needs to capture the Republican nomination, he still hasn't convinced conservatives that he should be the party's nominee.

McCain has been battered in recent weeks by talk-radio hosts over his relatively rare but high-profile departures from GOP orthodoxy.

Huckabee found the results in Virginia positive enough to use them as a reason to stay in the race, saying that they proved Republican voters still have a desire to have a choice rather than give the nomination to McCain.


However, there were positive signs for McCain going into the Wisconsin primary next week. He won among older voters in Virginia and among those who made more than $100,000 a year, signs that the populist part of Huckabee's message isn't resonating among those voters.

McCain was favored by almost 3-to-1 as being more qualified to be commander in chief, in a race in which, after the economy, national security issues are among those Republican voters list as most important to them. E-mail to a friend

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/13/potomac.primaries.analysis/index.html

[Kristina]

Exit polls for Potomac primaries show support for Obama ran wide

Story Highlights
Obama support broad in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., primaries

Illinois senators polls well among young voters, independents, African-Americans

Obama also edges Clinton among groups the New York senator counts on


     
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama pulled support from virtually all sectors of the voting public Tuesday on his way to defeating rival Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Democratic primaries, according to CNN exit polling.



 

Barack Obama greets supporters in Washington on Tuesday. He hopes to sustain last weekend's momentum.

 1 of 2  Obama was expected to poll well among young voters, independents and African-Americans, and he did -- taking 60 to 70 percent of the votes in the first two groups and nearly 90 percent of black voters, the polls suggest.

But he also was edging out Clinton among voters 65 and older, blue-collar workers and women, all groups that Clinton was counting on as the core of her support.

Early exit polling by CNN was done with a sample of 1,246 Democratic voters in Virginia. Among those polled, Obama was winning with 62 percent of the vote to Clinton's 37 percent. In Maryland, 1,245 voters were polled, and Obama won among them, 62 percent to 35 percent.

CNN did not conduct exit polling in Washington, D.C.  Watch Obama take his message to Wisconsin »

Voters who described themselves as independents made up 22 percent of those who cast a ballot in Virginia's Democratic primary and 13 percent in Maryland, according to the polling. Those voters favored Obama by a margin of 66 percent to 33 percent in Virginia and 68 to 24 in Maryland.

Virginia has an open primary system that allows voters to choose a primary without declaring themselves a member of either party.

"Obama is drawing a lot of independents -- that is a legitimate claim," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "But to suggest that an enormous number of Republicans are changing party registrations and coming to his banner just isn't true."

Don't Miss
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Results of 'Potomac primaries'
Map of national and state polling data
ElectionCenter 2008
But there was a slight uptick in what the Illinois senator has dubbed "Obamacans" on Tuesday. Seven percent of voters in the Virginia primary described themselves as Republicans -- and 70 percent of those polled voted for Obama.

According to CNN exit polling, 3 percent of people who voted in Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday described themselves as Republicans -- most of them backing Obama. That same percentage of Maryland voters in Tuesday's Democratic contest identified themselves with the GOP.

Just shy of 90 percent of Tuesday's black voters polled said they voted for Obama, a native of Hawaii whose father is Kenyan and mother is from Kansas. African-Americans made up 29 percent of voters in the Democratic primary, according to the early polling.

And young voters flocked to the Obama campaign, the polls suggest. Seventy-five percent of poll respondents under 30 and 67 percent of those under 45 voted for him in Virginia. Those numbers were 68 percent and 71 percent in Maryland.

However, Obama also edged Clinton -- 52-47 -- among voters over 60 in Virginia and 50 percent of those voters in Maryland, compared with 46 percent for Clinton.

And he split white votes about 50-50 with Clinton in both states -- edging her 50-49 in Virginia and trailing 51-46 in Maryland. That's a big change from previous contests in which Clinton held a big lead over Obama among white Democrats.

"We haven't seen that happen this strikingly before, and this in a Southern state," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

Older voters, women, Hispanics and working-class voters are the core the Clinton campaign has said are backing her in the Democratic primaries -- along with those who feel her experience makes her the best suited to handle international affairs.

"She'll be able to block the national security card from being played," Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, said Monday night. "She'll have a stronger appeal to voters who will make a difference in the general election, and she is ready and able to take on Sen. McCain."  Watch Clinton look forward to the Ohio primaries »

While national polls suggest Clinton remains strong on those fronts, Tuesday's polling results didn't bear that out.

In Virginia, Obama led Clinton 59 to 41 percent among the women who were polled. He also took 57 percent of the votes of respondents who said they earn less than $50,000 a year and 59 percent of those who said someone in their household is a member of a union.

Among those voters in Maryland, 59 percent of women backed Obama, 65 percent of those making less than $50,000 voted for him and 61 percent of those in union households supported him.

He was the winner among respondents who said the economy, the Iraq war or health care -- a trademark issue for Clinton -- was the most important issue to them.

"This is the new American majority," Obama said at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, where he declared victory in the three contests. "This is what change looks like from the bottom up."  Watch Obama speak in Wisconsin after his victories »

In Virginia, Clinton took an overwhelming 96 percent of the support from voters who said experience was the most important quality a candidate should have. In Maryland, that number was 91 percent.

Not enough Hispanic voters were polled to make the results meaningful.

The projected wins continue an impressive run of victories for Obama -- who swept Clinton in five contests over the weekend and scored in several key states to hang close with her in February 5 Super Tuesday voting.

But Clinton -- the Democrats' presumptive front-runner for months -- scored victories in key states like New York and California on that day.

Her campaign had worked to tamp down expectations for Tuesday's races, saying they're banking on upcoming primaries in delegate-rich states like Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania to bounce her back to a solid lead.

At stake in Tuesday's three contests are 168 Democratic delegates.

Clinton and Obama began the day in a virtual dead heat. In total delegates, Obama now tops Clinton 1,208 to 1,185, including superdelegates, according to CNN estimates.


Obama also leads 1,052 to 951 in pledged delegates -- people who can't change their minds at this year's Democratic convention.

But Clinton is winning 234 to 156 among superdelegates -- current and past Democratic politicians and other party officials who promise their vote to one candidate or the other, but have the right to change their minds. E-mail to a friend

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/12/dem.polls/index.html

[Kristina]

THE VOTERS
Shifting Loyalties
Cracks in Clinton Coalition May Mark a Turning Point

Video
Post's Balz Analyzes Potomac Primary Results
Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz discusses the results and implications of Tuesday's Md., Va. and D.C. primary elections going forward.
» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER
 
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Who's Blogging» Links to this article 
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; Page A01

For more than a month, the grand coalitions of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama battled to a draw: women, rural Democrats and the white working class pairing almost evenly with African Americans, young voters and affluent, educated whites.

This Story
DEMOCRATS: Winning Streak Extends To District, Md. and Va.
Eleanor Holmes Norton on Potomac Vote
THE FUTURE: In Virginia, Results Signal A State in Play for November
THE VOTERS: Shifting Loyalties
ON TO TEXAS: Clinton Says Nothing About Losses
The Candidates React -- Obama
The Candidates React -- Clinton
Transcript: Barack Obama's Remarks on Feb. 12 Primaries
Transcript: Hillary Clinton's Remarks on Feb. 12 Primaries
Post's Balz Analyzes Potomac Primary Results
Mayor Fenty on Obama's Strength in D.C. Primary
Wednesday's Post Politics Podcast
Wednesday, Feb. 13 at 11 a.m. ET: Post Politics Hour
Wed., Feb. 13, 1 p.m. ET: Potomac Confidential
VOTER TURNOUT: In Primaries, The Political Process Is the Biggest Winner
AT THE POLLS: Voters Persevere Despite Ballot Shortages, Lines
THE DISTRICT: Obama Scores a Resounding Win Over Clinton in the City
On an Icy Day, A Challenger Wins Her Heated Contest
Hillary's Ladies Of Leisure World
View All Items in This Story
View Only Top Items in This Story
Then came Virginia and Maryland.

Obama's thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack, three weeks before she reaches what will probably be more friendly territory in Ohio and Texas.

Obama won among men, among women and among union voters. He won big among the affluent, educated voters in the District's suburbs, but he also won convincingly among rural voters and small-town Democrats.

Celinda Lake, an independent Democratic pollster, noted that the class divide that once demarcated the Obama-Clinton battle lines was obliterated in Virginia and Maryland. In Virginia, Obama carried the vote of those earning less than $50,000 by 26 percentage points. In Maryland, the gap was 24 percentage points.

Clinton still pulled more votes from white women, but that advantage was neutralized by Obama's popularity among white men. Even Latinos, who helped deliver Nevada and California to the senator from New York, split about evenly between Obama and Clinton -- although the number of Hispanic voters was much smaller.

"Certainly he broadened his coalition," Lake said. "The question is whether that's a one-state phenomenon or a broader phenomenon, because it definitely changes the landscape."

The Clinton campaign has been banking on working-class Ohio and Texas, which has many Hispanics, on March 4 to stop Obama's momentum.

But Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) cautioned yesterday that Texans never thought their primary would make much of a difference, so they are only now starting to tune in. And Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said neither Clinton nor Obama has had to really contest a struggling industrial state in which voters are focused almost wholly on the economy.

"Voters in my state will not care about who won Iowa, New Hampshire, or this Washington Post-created Potomac Primary that is supposed to be a microcosm of America," he said. "Political momentum doesn't much matter to a middle-class family that's struggling."

But Obama supporters saw the Virginia results in particular as a turning point in the standoff between their candidate and Clinton. "It looks to me like the more Senator Obama wins, the broader the ranks of people who are supporting him are," said Rep. Rick Boucher, a conservative Democrat from western, rural Virginia. "He has been crossing the categories ever since Iowa, and he's doing so more and more."

"Barack Obama's challenge is to relate to average, blue-collar citizens that his message will make a difference in their lives," said Edwards, whose GOP-leaning central Texas district includes President Bush's Crawford ranch. "If that message was heard in rural Virginia, it could be a precursor to Texas."

To be sure, Obama's victory in Virginia was not a clean sweep. Clinton did capture the most rural region of the state, in the mountain hollers of Western Virginia and valleys of Southwest Virginia.

But he did not have to lean on any one region, any one race or any one demographic to take the state decisively, said Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.), an Obama supporter whose district stretches from Newport News to Richmond. Obama packed 18,000 cheering spectators into the Virginia Beach convention center and countless others were turned away. But this time, unlike in New Hampshire and California, those crowds seemed to portend something real.

By 5:30 p.m., the same number of people had voted in Scott's home precinct in Newport News that had voted in the November 2006 James Webb-George Allen senatorial campaign -- a number that far surpassed the turnout for the 2005 gubernatorial election.

Scott was most heartened by one statistic -- Obama's 56 percent win among white males, according to exit poll data.

"If you can split the white male vote, you can win this state in November," he said. "We believe now we can carry Virginia for the Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964."

It is far too early to discount another Clinton comeback. Tad Devine, a Democratic campaign consultant, said Clinton can still break through if she can turn to the issues of the economy, health care and an end to the Iraq war, and prove to voters she has the expertise to bring the change Obama promises.

"She needs a big debate on big issues, not a small debate on politics and tactics," he said.

Brown said the candidate who finds one big idea to change the direction of the economy -- a message that resonates with the middle class, which feels left behind after nearly eight years of GOP rule -- will take Ohio. Neither candidate has found it yet, he added.

Obama has scheduled a speech on the economy today at a General Motors Corp. plant in Janesville, Wis. Clinton stressed the economy in a series of interviews with local news outlets.

Among some conservative Democratic politicians last night, there was an almost palpable sense of relief that Obama showed he could win over their constituents -- the blue-collar, rural whites who, they feared could bleed over to the GOP in the fall.

"It's not Senator Clinton's fault, but the baggage she carries is the divisiveness of the 1990s," Edwards said. "People are wanting to turn the chapter to the future rather than going back to the last chapter. It's not fair but that is the reality."

[Kristina]

ON TO TEXAS
Clinton Says Nothing About Losses

Video
The Candidates React -- Clinton
Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) addresses her supporters from El Paso, Tex., after Tuesday's Potomac Primary election results filter in.
» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER
 

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Who's Blogging» Links to this article 
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; Page A22

EL PASO, Feb. 12 -- As news of her triple defeat in the Potomac Primary sank in, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did what has become a specialty in recent weeks: She headed someplace else.

This Story
DEMOCRATS: Winning Streak Extends To District, Md. and Va.
Eleanor Holmes Norton on Potomac Vote
THE FUTURE: In Virginia, Results Signal A State in Play for November
THE VOTERS: Shifting Loyalties
ON TO TEXAS: Clinton Says Nothing About Losses
The Candidates React -- Obama
The Candidates React -- Clinton
Transcript: Barack Obama's Remarks on Feb. 12 Primaries
Transcript: Hillary Clinton's Remarks on Feb. 12 Primaries
Post's Balz Analyzes Potomac Primary Results
Mayor Fenty on Obama's Strength in D.C. Primary
Wednesday's Post Politics Podcast
Wednesday, Feb. 13 at 11 a.m. ET: Post Politics Hour
Wed., Feb. 13, 1 p.m. ET: Potomac Confidential
VOTER TURNOUT: In Primaries, The Political Process Is the Biggest Winner
AT THE POLLS: Voters Persevere Despite Ballot Shortages, Lines
THE DISTRICT: Obama Scores a Resounding Win Over Clinton in the City
On an Icy Day, A Challenger Wins Her Heated Contest
Hillary's Ladies Of Leisure World
View All Items in This Story
View Only Top Items in This Story
After flying from Virginia to Texas for a rally on Tuesday night, Clinton did not publicly acknowledge, even in passing, that three significant primaries had taken place that day and her campaign had not issued a statement hours after results were announced.

Clinton has made a habit of ignoring contests she loses. On Monday, she cited Louisiana's large African American population in explaining her defeat there. At other times, her campaign has suggested the results of caucuses in general should be discounted.

But on Tuesday, she did not even do that much.

"You know, there's a great saying in Texas -- you've all heard it. 'All hat and no cattle,' " Clinton told a large audience here. "Well, after seven years of George Bush, we need a lot less hat and a lot more cattle."

She continued, in an apparent swipe at both President Bush and Sen. Barack Obama, the candidate gaining momentum in the Democratic race: "Texas needs a president who actually understands what it's going to take to turn the economy around, to get us universal health care."

When Clinton mentioned having differences with Obama over health care and the mortgage crisis, she was booed. Her comments continued past 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, as the polls in Maryland closed and the race was called for Obama, but in the giant arena, with a crowd her campaign estimated at 12,000, it seemed as though the defeat had not happened.

"It's the first day of the Texas campaign," said Doug Hattaway, a campaign spokesman.