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Your guide to the Pennsylvania primary

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Monique Faulkner
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« on: April 22, 2008, 11:05:59 am »

Your guide to the Pennsylvania primary

Story Highlights
NEW: CNN poll of polls: Clinton leading Obama by 9 percent

Pennsylvania primary is viewed as "must win" for Sen. Clinton

Obama expected to do well in Philadelphia area and surrounding suburbs

Clinton expected to do better in Pittsburgh and rural areas


Next Article in Politics »


 Read  VIDEO
     
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pennsylvania voters will finally get to weigh in on the Democratic presidential race Tuesday, the first contest on the primary calendar in six weeks.



Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigns in Pittsburgh, Monday, one day before Pennsylvania's primary.

 Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be competing for 158 delegates.

Obama currently leads Clinton 1,648 delegates to 1,504, CNN estimates. Neither candidate will pick up the 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination before the convention, likey leaving Democratic superdelegates to decide the Democratic presidential nominee at the party convention in late August. Superdelegates are Democratic party or elected officials who can vote at the national convention. They choose their vote and are not required to commit to a particular candidate before the convention.

In the six weeks since the Mississippi primary, the Democratic race has taken on a particularly negative tone, with both candidates launching waves of robocalls, tough mailers and matching attack ads.  Watch how the race has turned nasty »

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The two candidates also spent millions on television advertising. Since the beginning of the year, the Obama camp has spent over $8.5 million in television spots in the state, while the Clinton camp spent $3.6 million.

Most political observers say Pennsylvania is a must-win for Clinton if she is to cut into Obama's lead in the overall delegate count and the popular vote and win the support of superdelegates.

Calls for Clinton to drop out of the race have increased from within the party as the candidates have stepped up attacks on each other. The increasingly pointed attacks have stoked fears among some Democratic leaders that the bruising primary battle could hurt Democratic chances in the general election.  Watch what is at stake for Clinton »

Thus, not only must Clinton win, one of her biggest supporters in the state said, she must win convincingly if she is to stay in the race. "Well, she has to," Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, told CNN. "That's all there is to it."

"If Clinton wins by more than 10 points, which was her margin in neighboring Ohio and New Jersey, her campaign will have new momentum and she will soldier on," said Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst. "If Clinton wins by single digits, we're in a political twilight zone. Nothing changes."

A CNN "poll of polls" of likely Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters calculated Monday shows Clinton leading Obama 51 percent to 42 percent with 7 percent unsure.

The poll of polls is an average of three polls conducted by Zogby, Suffolk University and Quinnipiac University conducted between April 18-20. No margin of error can be calculated for the poll of polls.

Clinton may be helped by the fact that Pennsylvania conducts "closed" primaries, meaning that only registered Democrats will be allowed to vote. Obama has benefited from the support of independent voters in previous primaries.

Clinton may also benefit from the fact that Pennsylvania has the second oldest population in the United States, behind only Florida. A Quinnipiac poll conducted April 18-20 has Clinton leading Obama 54 percent to 40 percent among voters 45 and over. Obama leads Clinton 57 percent to 41 percent among voters under the age of 45. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.1 percentage points.

Obama is expected to do well in Philadelphia, which has a large African-American population, and the suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia, home to many upscale voters that in past primaries have tended to back the Illinois Democrat.


Clinton, on the other hand, is expected to do well in the more blue-collar city of Pittsburgh, located in western Pennsylvania, as well as the largely rural area in the middle of the state.

Pennsylvania will also hold a Republican primary, but Sen. John McCain has already won the 1,191 delegates needed to win the GOP presidential nomination, making the Pennsylvania Republican primary meaningless. E-mail to a friend
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Monique Faulkner
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« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2008, 11:11:12 am »



Clinton, Obama tussle for 158 delegates
Pennsylvania's the big prize for Democratic presidential candidates. There are 10 primaries left, but none has as many delegates up for grabs as Pennsylvania has today.
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Monique Faulkner
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« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2008, 11:12:57 am »

Pennsylvania voters get say in key primary

Story Highlights
NEW: CNN's "poll of polls" finds Clinton ahead of Obama by 9 percentage points

Most political analysts agree that a victory for Sen. Hillary Clinton is crucial

Pundits: If Clinton wins by fewer than 10 points, nothing changes in race

Her campaign could gain needed momentum with double-digit win


Next Article in Politics »


 Read  VIDEO INTERACTIVE
From Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director

     
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- The fate of the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination may be on the line Tuesday as voters head to the polls in Pennsylvania's primary.



If Sen. Barack Obama were to win the primary, it would put immense pressure on Clinton to bow out, pundits say.

1 of 2 Polls opened at 7 a.m. ET and will close at 8 p.m. in the state, which has 158 delegates at stake.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both would love to come out of Pennsylvania with a win, but most political analysts agree that a victory is crucial for Clinton.

Obama leads in the delegate count, the popular vote and the number of states won so far this primary season. If Clinton is victorious, it would allow her to make a small dent in Obama's lead, and more.

"If she wins Pennsylvania by a hefty margin, she can prove she can win the traditional Democratic constituencies needed to win the election, mostly white working-class voters," said Gloria Borger, a CNN senior political analyst.

Many Clinton supporters agree with that observation.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, a top Clinton surrogate, said the former first lady has to carry the state impressively.

"Well, she has to. That's all there is to it," Murtha said.  Watch how the results could be judged »

Could a double-digit victory make the senator from New York the comeback kid once again?

"If Clinton wins by more than 10 points, which was her margin in neighboring Ohio and New Jersey, her campaign will have new momentum and she will soldier on," said Bill Schneider, also a CNN senior political analyst.  Watch how the polls show Clinton leading »


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"If Clinton wins by single digits, we're in a political twilight zone. Nothing changes."

A CNN "poll of polls," which averages the three latest surveys in Pennsylvania, calculated Tuesday placed Clinton ahead of Obama by 9 percentage points, 51 percent to 42 percent, with 7 percent of voters undecided.

But if Obama scores an upset, "Clinton will face tremendous pressure to end her campaign rather than damage the party," Schneider said.  Watch Clinton on her final day of campaigning »

An Obama win also could push many of the remaining undecided superdelegates into his camp. Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination by the end of the primary season in June.

Obama leads Clinton in the overall delegate count 1,648 to 1,504, CNN estimates.  Call races for yourself and see how delegates add up »

The superdelegates -- Democratic governors, members of Congress and party leaders and officials -- then could decide the nomination.

In recent weeks, Clinton has fended off calls to drop out of the race as the increasingly bruising primary fight raised worries from within the party that the daily cycle of charge-and-countercharge could hurt the Democrats' chances in the general election.

Clinton, however, said the party would unite once the nominee emerged.

"I think this is on balance a pretty civil and positive campaign compared to many we have seen in the last years, and it is fair to compare and contrast the differences between us," Clinton told CNN Monday. "And voters got to make up their own minds."

"At the end of the day, we're going to have a unified Democratic Party. Whatever differences there are between my opponent and I pale in comparison to the differences we have with Sen. McCain and the Republicans," she said, referring to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

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Both campaigns tried to lower expectations Monday. Obama outspent Clinton by a 2-1 ratio in the state, but he said Monday he's not going to win.  Watch as Obama vies for blue-collar votes »

The Clinton campaign said Obama spent so much money in Pennsylvania that a loss would bring his electability into question.

Pennsylvania seems to be Clinton country, judging by demographics. The state has a lot of older, working-class and Catholic voters, all of whom have made up Clinton's base so far.

Clinton also has the backing of many of the state's top Democrats, including Gov. Ed Rendell and the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the state's two largest cities.  Watch where the crucial voting areas are »

But there are some factors that help Obama. He's favored to win Philadelphia, with its large African-American population, and he could do well in that city's suburbs, thanks to upscale voters who tend to support him.

Obama also could benefit from the large number of new voters who have registered, and he has the backing of the state's only Democratic senator, Bob Casey Jr.

It has been six weeks since the last Democratic contest, Mississippi on March 11. The long gap made for the longest campaigning in a state since the Iowa caucuses kicked off the primary season January 3.


After Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina hold votes in two weeks as the primary season rolls on toward its end in June.

Then the wait until the national convention begins. E-mail to a friend

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Penny
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« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2008, 02:03:33 pm »

 
 
What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary
 


Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton locks hands with her daughter, Chelsea, during a rally at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Monday night.

The primary may be just another day of voting for Democrats. Or it could be the beginning of the end for one of the candidates.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 22, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Today in Pennsylvania's hard-fought Democratic presidential primary, there will be a winner and a loser. But the winner might not be the one with the most votes.

With neither Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barack Obama able to secure the nomination without support from the so-called superdelegates who will cast decisive votes, many dynamics are at work beyond who comes out on top in one day of balloting.
 
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In what may seem like a paradox, the Clinton victory predicted by nearly all public opinion polls might actually turn out to be a loss if she doesn't win by a significant margin. And if Obama keeps the results closer than some surveys suggest, he could be considered victorious -- unless it appears that Clinton's campaign has succeeded in casting doubt on his credentials to be commander in chief or his ability to win support in the fall from white, working-class voters.

"The margin of the vote is equally as important" as who posts the highest vote total, said former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, one of the nearly 800 party activists and leaders whose votes as superdelegates will put the winning nominee over the top at this summer's party convention.

About 300 of the superdelegates are still uncommitted, including Romer, and many of them will pore over the finer details of today's results to gauge how each candidate might fare in the fall and, as a result, which one deserves the nomination.

"I keep absorbing information," Romer said.

Here are some factors that, in addition to who wins the vote, will help decide whether the Pennsylvania primary is one more way station on the road to the final primaries in June, or whether the nomination fight might come to a quicker conclusion:

The spread: Clinton needs to win by at least 10 percentage points -- the margin she posted over Obama in Ohio's March 4 primary -- to show that she has not lost her touch in the industrial Rust Belt, several uncommitted superdelegates said.

If she is successful, she will be able to point superdelegates to the fact that she trounced Obama despite being severely outspent on television and radio advertisements in Pennsylvania by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

If Obama can keep the race to within 10 percentage points, or even win, he would claim that he has shown surprising strength in a state that is Clinton's demographic home turf, with many of the lower-income Democrats who have supported her in earlier primaries. That kind of result would give Obama momentum heading toward the May 6 contests in Indiana and North Carolina, where a sweep would make a Clinton nomination feel all the more unrealistic.

The demographics: A loss by a narrow margin would help Obama argue that he had overcome the two biggest setbacks of his candidacy: the controversies over his pastor's racially explosive sermons and his own remarks that economically "bitter" voters in small towns "cling" to guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Both dust-ups threatened to upend Obama's appeal to the white, working-class voters that formed the core of Clinton's base in her Ohio victory and which are seen as crucial to a Democratic victory in the fall.

Superdelegates want to see that Obama, who has struggled to extend his base beyond black voters and wealthy, educated whites, is able to compete against Republican John McCain for those swing voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

"I'll be interested to see how Sen. Obama's comments affected the race," said Montana's state party chairman, Dennis McDonald, who said he planned to sift through all of the exit poll data as he watched election results today from his cattle ranch.

The Clinton campaign signaled Monday that it would not be shy in arguing that nominating Obama would risk alienating certain white voters. In a conference call with reporters, campaign pollster Geoff Garin spoke in blunt terms about how the racial divide in Democratic contests -- with working-class whites clearly preferring Clinton over Obama -- makes her a stronger general election candidate.

"The Obama campaign has simply not done a very effective job connecting with blue-collar and middle-income voters, and they are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party," Garin said. He added later that Obama's "appeal among white voters typically has been among the people who are the most affluent" and best educated. It is unusual for the campaign to talk so directly about racial divisions among Democratic voters.

The delegates: Many superdelegates will be hard-pressed to vote for Clinton if she trails Obama among the so-called pledged delegates, those who are selected by the primaries and caucuses.

Even if Obama is thumped by 10 to 20 percentage points in Pennsylvania, Clinton would not pick up enough delegates there to cut substantially into Obama's lead. According to the Associated Press, Obama has 1,648.5 pledged delegates and superdelegates to Clinton's 1,509.5. A candidate needs 2,025 to clinch the nomination.

Obama strategists said Monday that they expected to announce a series of additional endorsements by uncommitted superdelegates shortly after Pennsylvania votes. A strong showing by Obama in Pennsylvania would give superdelegates more comfort in coming forward, but a bad loss might send them back to the assessment stage.

The electability question: After a grueling, six-week campaign, Pennsylvania voters have the unusual job of picking between two bruised candidates.

Previous contests have focused on the electorate's excitement over each of these two history-making contenders, with some party elders even calling for the two to share the ticket in November. But during the course of the Pennsylvania primary, Obama faced criticism for his relationships with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and Bill Ayers, a onetime member of the Weather Underground; for not wearing a U.S. flag pin on his lapel; and for his comments about small-town voters, which some people took as elitist.

And Clinton took heat for exaggerating the danger she faced as first lady during a trip to Bosnia.

Each candidate increasingly has attacked the other for these perceived missteps. And the excitement of electing the first black president or the first female president in a Democratic landslide has turned to concern that the eventual nominee instead will limp into the fall campaign -- dragging his or her dirty laundry for every Republican ad maker and opposition researcher to see.

The question is whether these exchanges have turned off any sets of voters and diminished the eventual nominee's chances in the fall.

As Democratic strategist and uncommitted superdelegate Donna Brazile put it Monday, Pennsylvania might show whether the "tone and the tenor of the campaign has worn voters down."

Arizona superdelegate Don Bivens, who has not endorsed a candidate, said he would be watching the exit polls closely today to measure how each would do in his state in the general election.

"I do pay attention to the drilling down in the numbers," he said. "You look at how they will do in your own state and region: How did women come out, how did blacks come out, how did whites vote and Hispanics?"

peter.wallsten@latimes.com



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