Wednesday, February 06, 2008

After Super Tuesday Time is on Obama's Side

As more people become familiar with Barack Obama the more support he gets. His support surge had started to reflect in recent polls in California but many votes were already mailed in before his recent rise in that poll. The Latino vote had been largely behind Clinton, and it seemed to hold true for her in the most populous state of California. Interestingly, Obama did get the majority of the white male vote in that state, and an extremely huge chunk of the black vote there. Had Obama had more time to campaign his momentum may have tipped the Latino vote in his favor. Hillary has more of the female vote at this time. That and the Hispanic vote won her California.

In the meantime, he has won 13 of 22 states, an incredible showing for him against a former first lady and Washington veteran. At the time of this post New Mexico was still undecided (he was at 49%, she was at 48%). He has the money and now more time to appeal to more states in the remaining primaries. Hillary currently has less cashflow for advertising. The big states are out of the way, New York and California. Hillary won them, but overall the delegate count is close. She was expected to win those states, and now it is more of a bare knuckles fight for the rest of the states. As time passes Obama is inching closer to Clinton, and even passing her in the polls.

The U.S. election process is as clear as fog, but Democrats need 2,025 delegates to win the party nomination. As it stands now, Hillary has an overall total of 783 delegates compared to Obama's 709.

The momentum of his message and appeal is spreading, and looking more attractive to voters, particularly newer ones. Hillary is an already familiar face, that many know much about. People are still learning about Obama, and it appears, liking what they are hearing.

In some not so obvious predictable states like Missouri, it was a nail biter right to the very end. With 99% of the vote in, the split was 49.02% for Obama, and 48.18% for Clinton. It finally went to him.

The real war begins now as Obama's ground troops and supporters will need to use their second wind to bolster him in every way, and fuel the momentum he has going.

Super Tuesday's results only some months ago, seemed like it was going to be a coronation for Clinton, however, the tides have turned, and the flow is part of the Obama wave. The next contests are on Saturday in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington.

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