by WonkoKevin

With his win in Mississippi, Barack Obama is now ahead of Hillary Clinton in delegates by 1610 to 1496 (according to Chuck Todd; this includes superdelegates), and in popular vote 13,402,903 to 12,705,360 (does not include FL or MI).  The ratio between them is nearly identical in both cases–Obama has 51.8% of delegates and 51.3% of votes.  Just how big a lead is that?  In order to put these numbers in some perspective, consider the following analogies:

1. If Hillary shot a 72 even par on the golf course, Barack would have come in with a 68, 4 under par.

2. If Hillary finished the baseball season hitting a solid .300, Barack would have been in the top 10 with a .316 mark.

3. Barack’s basketball team beat Hillary’s 100 to 95.

4. Barack got hired into the position for $100,000, while Hillary is about $94,800, not including benefits.

5. If Hillary got 20 presents under the Christmas tree, Barack got 21.

6. Hillary’s clique in the local church has 200 members, while Barack’s has 211.

7.  Hillary wrote a blog 346 days out of the year, but Barack did one every day.

by WonkoKevin

County-level results from Texas suggest that Republican cross-over voting may have well given Hillary Clinton a victory in the Texas primary, thus enabling a narrative that has allowed to her to remain in the race.  This has been reported in the WSJ, but my number crunching indicates the so-called Limbaugh effect may be significantly larger than is being estimated.  First, from Washington Wire: (more…)

by WonkoKevin

Hillary Clinton is now pulling the majority of liberal buzz in Wonkosphere, beating Obama 53 to 47% yesterday. Conversely, conservatives are still leaning towards Obama as the likely nominee, as Obama wins their attention 54 to 46%. On the Republican side, John McCain continues to enjoy significantly positive sentiment from conservative bloggers; his buzz from conservatives is considerably more positive than liberal’s buzz on Clinton and Obama, supporting the hypothesis that continued in-fighting degrades public sentiment of both candidates.

by WonkoKevin

An important analysis by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek shows it’s virtually impossible to compose a scenario where Clinton ends up with more delegates than Obama going into the convention: “…it’s on to Wyoming on Saturday, where, let’s say, the momentum of today helps her win 53-47. Next Tuesday in Mississippi—where African-Americans play a big role in the Democratic primary—she shocks the political world by winning 52-48. Then on April 22, the big one, Pennsylvania—and it’s a Hillary blowout, 60-40, with Clinton picking up a whopping 32 delegates. She wins both of Guam’s two delegates on May 30, and Indiana’s proximity to Illinois does Obama no good on May 6, with the Hoosiers going for Hillary 55-45. The same day brings another huge upset in a heavily African-American state: enough North Carolina blacks desert Obama to give the state to Hillary 52-48, netting her five more delegates.

“Suppose May 13 in West Virginia is no kinder to Obama, and he loses by double digits, netting Clinton two delegates. The identical 55-45 result on May 20 in Kentucky nets her five more. The same day brings Oregon, a classic Obama state. Oops! He loses there 52-48. Hillary wins by 10 in Montana and South Dakota on June 3, and primary season ends on June 7 in Puerto Rico with another big Viva Clinton! Hillary pulls off a 60-40 landslide, giving her another 11 delegates. She has enjoyed a string of 16 victories in a row over three months. So at the end of regulation, Hillary’s the nominee, right? Actually, this much-too-generous scenario (which doesn’t even account for Texas’s weird “pri-caucus” system, which favors Obama in delegate selection) still leaves the pledged-delegate score at 1,634 for Obama to 1,576 for Clinton. That’s a 58-delegate lead.

“Let’s say the Democratic National Committee schedules do-overs in Florida and (heavily African-American) Michigan. Hillary wins big yet again. But the chances of her netting 56 delegates out of those two states would require two more huge margins. (Unfortunately the Slate calculator isn’t helping me here.) So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal. For all of those who have been trashing me for saying this thing is over, please feel free to do your own math. Give Hillary 75 percent in Kentucky and Indiana. Give her a blowout in Oregon. You will still have a hard time getting her through the process with a pledged-delegate lead. The Clintonites can spin to their heart’s content about how Obama can’t carry any large states besides Illinois. How he can’t close the deal. How they’ve got the Big Mo now. Tell it to Slate’s Delegate Calculator.”

by WonkoKevin

Congratulations to John McCain for making his nomination official.  In the end, McCain won not so much because he forged a conservative coalition a priori, but because he ran the best campaign.  After a messy start, he cleaned house and did well in all important dimensions: retail, fundraising, press relations, and consistency.   These are all things that will continue to bode well for him into the fall.  A positive word also has to be said about Mike Huckabee, who has formally dropped out of the race.  Huckabee, not Ron Paul, was the pentultimate Politics 2.0 candidate.  The blogsphere fell in love with him early on, provided grass roots support, and in part fueled his Iowa performance; in the end, the blogosphere is also responsible from being him down with 6 weeks of negative buzz following his climb in the polls.  I doubt Huckabee could have gotten this far pre-Internet.

Man was I wrong on my Obama sweep prediction.  Kudos to Clinton who actually outdid their own expecatations and who gained the right to claim victory this morning.  My prediction of Obama wins was based on the fact that in the last 2 months of primaries, Obama’s poll numbers have been significantly underestimated.  Not this time.  Instead, I should have paid attention to the Wonkosphere data.  Check out Hillary’s buzz share in the last two weeks (conservative-red, liberal-blue).  Note how it spiked up starting 2/29.  Let’s see what kind of buzz-legs her victories have for her now.  Will she retake the lead from Obama in liberal buzz share?  Will she again become the primary target for conservative bloggers?  All this and more, stay tuned!

by WonkoKevin

Most people and polls are predicting close races in tomorrow’s primaries, with conventional wisdom giving Obama wins in Texas and Vermont, and Clinton wins in Ohio and Rhode Island. I am going so step out on a limb and make a bolder prediction: Obama will win Ohio by 5%, Texas by 12, Vermont by 24, and will even pull off a 1-point squeeker win in Rhode Island, forcing Clinton to withdraw by Thursday or Friday. My basis? Well, Wonkosphere buzz share numbers are hard to call right now. Clinton’s buzz share amongst liberal bloggers has overtaken Obama’s in the last several days, but most of that is death march stuff. My prediction is based on my observation from the last round of primaries that the polls, on average, seem to be biased against Obama by 10 points, effectively missing the superiority of his ground game. I think this will be all the more evident in Ohio and Texas where Obama appears to have benefitted from early voting, as his supporters have organized en masse voting marches. Eight polls over the last week have Clinton up by 4.5% in Ohio, and 11 polls have Obama up by 2% in Texas. Sure, conventional wisdom is they both come out even and Clinton presses on, but my money is that we’ll be hearing Taps sometime late Tuesday night.

by WonkoKevin

Every four hours each of the candidates’ Wonkosphere buzz page is re-generated, and it gives you a snap-shot of the 30 most representative posts about the candidate over the last several days (biased towards recent posts). We identify those posts that are most representative by using computerized text analysis, which measures how “close” each post is to another, and then selects those posts that are on average the most similar to all other posts. You’ll note that the 30 the computer chooses are independent of affiliation, so we can look at the ratio of red to blue to get a sense of which side is being more focused.

For example, in today’s buzz for John McCain, there are 7 liberal posts and 21 conservative posts (and 2 independent)–that means the conservative posts outnumber the liberal posts 3:1–in this small subset of the most representative posts. That means conservative bloggers are best describing what the collective buzz is. The same is true for Mike Huckabee’s most representative posts, where the conservative posts outnumber the liberal posts almost 3:1. What is interesting is that the same ratio holds for Barack Obama, 3:1! This means conservative bloggers are also shaping the Obama dialogue right now; liberal bloggers are still more numerous in their posts about Obama, but their dialogue on him is more varied, i.e. less focused. This will be an interesting development to watch because it’s the same “problem” we saw with liberal dialogue about Kerry in 2004–no central message, and no message discipline.

by WonkoKevin

A quick study of today’s Wonkosphere buzz tone charts (Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Obama) indicates that 3 of the candidates have had a rough ride in the last two weeks. It’s probably part tightness of the Dem race, and part campaign fatigue amongst the campaigns, media, and bloggers alike. Only one came out looking sweet, Mike Huckabee.

SPIKE DOWN–Clinton remained at neutral levels the last 2 weeks (all results discussed only reflect the tone of the partisan blogs), but spiked down to dangerous territory yesterday with the “dressed photo” story.

STEP DOWN–McCain was riding a wave of highly positive sentiment until the lobbyist story broke, which pulled him down in neutral territory.

SLIDE–Obama has slid from slightly positive to being on the border of significantly negative. With Obama and Clinton at roughly the same negative level, I think both are getting pulled “down” by the current news cycle.

SMILE–Huckabee’s tone went from neutral to off-the-charts positive, coinciding with his SNL appearance. Lesson for other three: Do more improv comedy? P.S. & BTW–I won’t embarrass them by naming them, but how could some bloggers have thought that Huckabee’s skit was not a skit?

by WonkoKevin

In every disaster movie we see individuals caught in a deathly struggle. Sometimes the ones who die are the ones who are completely ineffectual or selfish; but sometimes the ones who die are just a victim of bad luck, bad timing. Obamania has crashed over the bridge of the American political ship. Would it really have mattered much whether Hillary Clinton had continued to run a “perfect” campaign? As Clinton’s nomination hopes fade, there is no shortage of explanations why. The SC debacle. The driver’s license debate flub. Personality. Etc. To me an equally relevant question is: Would it have mattered?

My short answer is: yes, she was out-candidated. Her standing in the polls early on was largely driven by name recognition, and high favorables amongst Democrats. In Iowa, where people were paying the most attention, they never made Clinton inevitable. Clinton’s subsequent wins in NH, CA, MA, and NY showed she still had a strong base and could compete, but I think the loss in SC (and to Ted Kennedy) was the turning point because it gave Obama presidential confidence. You can see the qualitative difference in the way he talks and carries himself since that victory. So Hillary allowed Obamania to emerge from SC. Given its emergence, I don’t think it makes any difference what she has done or will do.

by WonkoKevin

Is there any U.S. politician besides a Clinton that could still be considered “alive” after losses of 23, 29, and 17 points? The news for Clinton is distinctly funereal in its nature this morning. Many different survival scenarios are posited, but the delegate mathematics suggest the nomination is pretty well wrapped up for Obama. You want to know how over it is? The betting odds for Obama to win the presidency are now better than even, while McCain is 2:1 and Clinton is 6:1.

One emerging pattern of interest is how much the state-level polls are underestimating Obama strength, or perhaps turnout. I went through all the polls done a week before the Virginia, Maryland, and Wisconsin primaries, and the conclusion is that if you want the best prediction, add +5 to Obama’s percentage and subtract 5 from Clinton’s. In Wisconsin, 5 polls had Obama by +5.5%, and he won by +17%. In Maryland, 6 polls had him up +16%, and he won by +23%. In Virginia, 7 polls had him up +18%, and he won by +29%. SurveyUSA has Clinton at +5% in Texas and +9% in Ohio. Assuming the primaries were tomorrow, we might be better to predict an Obama win of +5% in Texas–and, you knew it was coming!–a squeeker in Ohio.