Thursday, 24 April 2008
Hillary Still Has A Chance
I know that many people believe that Obama has wrapped up the Democratic nomination. He leads in delegates and he leads in the popular vote. Hillary can't win. Why would Hillary still be hanging in the race? Is she just trying to be obstinate? Does she not want to face up to reality? Or could she really still have a chance?
I think she has a chance. While Obama currently leads the popular vote by 500,000 votes, those results don't include Florida and Michigan. I think it would be silly to include Hillary's votes in Michigan since Obama wasn't on the ballot. But the same is not true for Florida. They were both on the ballot. Therefore I think it is perfectly reasonable to count Florida's votes in the totals. If you do the Hillary is only trailing Obama in the popular vote by 205,581 votes.
That is still a lot of votes to make up in with only 8 primaries left. None of them outside North Carolina (which Obama should win) have large voter populations. The remaining primaries are North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota. Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics provides a spread sheet of the remaining primaries along with potential outcomes. If we take the totals from the remaining states excluding West Virginia and Kentucky you get a pickup of 115,000 votes for Hillary. Most of the votes come from the huge victory she will probably win in Puerto Rico.
That still leaves her 100,000 votes short of what she needs to surpass Obama. Now let's look at West Virginia. Hillary has been winning most of Appalachia by 40 points. That trend continued in the Pennsylvania primary. It is highly probable that the pattern will continue in West Virginia. I wouldn't be surprised if she won the there by at least 35 points. That would giver her nearly 100,000 votes from West Virginia alone.
Kentucky will be another pro-Clinton area. The eastern portions of Kentucky are in Appalachia where she wins big. In addition the urban parts of Kentucky have large lower class white populations that Hillary has dominated which will easily offset the heavy black areas. All in all, the demographics point to a big Hillary win in Kentucky. In fact recent polling shows her up by 30 points. I think Hillary will win Kentucky by at least that margin, but let's be conservative and say she wins by 25 points. If so then she will still pick up another 110,000 votes.
With the votes from Kentucky and West Virginia she will easily outpace Obama in the popular vote when Florida is included. That is all she will need to take her case to the super delegates. And if Obama continues to flail on the trail, I wouldn't be surprised if the super delegates cling to these counts as justification for nominating Hillary. So don't count Hillary out just yet.
Update: I tried to write this up Wednesday night, but didn't have the time. I noticed today that Michael Barone doesn't think this is such a crazy scenario either.
