North Carolina and Indiana minus one week

Minus one week and two days, to be precise. Next Wednesday our time, North Carolina Democrats will elect 115 delegates, 77 by district-level proportional representation and 38 by statewide PR*. Indiana will elect 72 delegates, 47 by district-level and 25 statewide. Both are primaries, which have been doing better for Hillary Clinton that caucuses. However, the polls have Barack Obama ahead in both states – commandingly so in North Carolina (51.3 per cent to 35.8 per cent, according to Real Clear Politics’ fortnight average), narrowly in Indiana (46.3 per cent to 43.3 per cent). North Carolina will have a “modified” primary open to independents and registered Democrats; Indiana will have an open primary, meaning all voters can participate. And let us not forget Thursday’s caucuses for the Pacific island of Guam, at which three delegates will be selected by a closed caucus.

* Correct me if I’m wrong here (or anywhere else), somebody.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

822 comments on “North Carolina and Indiana minus one week”

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  3. Dear oh Dear KR @1371,

    “Your own logic is that Hillary is in front of the nomination race because she is behind!”

    Lie.

    Have never said Hillary is in front. However, have said she could get there in the end with the assisatance of the SDs. Have also been known to point to polls or scenarios that have her in front in various situations.

    Then follows bluster, bluster, bulldust, bluster. (We certainly know what you’ve got your hand on).

  4. Pancho, can I add:

    According to electoral-vote.com, in Indiana :

    Obama ties with McCain
    Clinton is behind McCain by 5%

    in North Carolina:

    Obama ties McCain
    Clinton is behind McCain 11%

    So, which candidate looks more likely to take out McCain?

  5. Actually, KR, some Hillarians will concede she is not winning. The maths really don’t add up, no matter how it is spun.

    But apparently losing the popular vote, having fewer delegates, and generally losing nationwide polls against Obama, makes Hillary more electable!

    It’s the stuff of true insanity.

  6. Mathematically, it would be highly improbable for Clinton to win. If they are tied in Indiana, and all other states have Obama in front, she would have to rely on superdelegates. I cannot see the supers wanting to trump the popular vote.

  7. 3
    Greeensborough Growler

    Are you making abusive remarks or are you actually discussing electoral-vote.com and the breakdown of the state match up polls?

    Oh, that’s right, you have difficulties when the numbers are scrutinised.

    That’s OK, GG, I’ll tell you again:

    Obama threatens McCain in more states and more closely than Clinton.

    If, when the nomination is settled, and Obama wins, he can then start his campaign against the Republicans. No doubt you’ll be arguing their case there too?

  8. [I cannot see the supers wanting to trump the popular vote.]

    DP, that’s what bloggers have been saying for weeks now, but Hillary supporters just won’t have a bar of it. They seem to think that even if the SDs stepped in and handed the nomination to Hillary, Democrat voters would gladly throw their support behind Hillary and not feel cheated.

    It’s the stuff of true naivety.

  9. DP – if you take into account the fact that supers have gone about 80 to 10 in favour of Obama since early Feb, and the fact that there is a continuous drip of them towards him at present, it would seem that they too know which way the wind is a blowin’…

  10. Another point:

    If the total EV count was a simple,cut and dried matter of tallying all 50 state polls, then why aren’t Supers flocking to Clinton?

    One of numerous reasons is that they can actually break down the 50 individual state races and see that Obama is bearing down on the Republicans in a way Hillary Clinton is not.

    I’ll concede this is a more nuanced way to analyse the results, but let remember that there are 50 races and not one.

    Also, HRC has consistenly poor polls in general, and many people will not vote for another Clinton. Obama will not put off swinging voters anywhere near the way Clinton will.

    All this stuff gets poured over on a daily basis, but the trend has NOT changed.

  11. I was watching the Dem analyst Bob Bechel on Faux News earlier today. He is one of the guys who introduced these Superdelegates in 1984.

    He said it is absolutely certain that the Supers will make their decision by mid June at the very latest.

    He said the scary scenario however, is that Hillary won’t accept the decision and will push onto the convention anyway.

    The Clintons megalomania is scaring even the hardest of hardheads inside the Party. It’s becoming increasingly more obvious that the Party’s interest run a distant second to the Clinton’s interest in their own twisted little world.

  12. KR@4 – those numbers are interesting, given that the primaries are open. While you would expect the North Carolina numbers, the Indiana ones would indicate that Hillary is not doing well with Independents and Republicans in that state, particularly given the Sen. Bayh factor and his support for her. It may mean nothing, particularly if Limbaugh and his cronies are able to get any sort of ‘project chaos’ going again, but it might also be the final nail in her coffin.

  13. [He said the scary scenario however, is that Hillary won’t accept the decision and will push onto the convention anyway.]

    I know its pure speculation at this stage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillary did push onto the convention, even after she has lost on all fronts. I didn’t believe it before, but I am beginning to think Hillary is determined to make life as difficult as possible for Obama, even if this means McCain wins POTUS.

    It is the only way she can have one more stab at POTUS in 2012, because if Obama wins, he is more than likely to be the Dem. nominee in 2012 as well.

    But of course, the trail of destruction left behind for the Democrats would create an enormous amount of anger amongst Democrat voters, so even if McCain wins, Hillary would be unlikely to get far in 2012.

    Conclusion: It’s over. Hillary knows it. Her supporters know it. The only question left is: Will Hillary now do the honorable thing by the Democrats (and Obama) or try to handicap her own party?

    So far, it seems to be the latter.

  14. I think I’m going to start a new business selling ‘final nails’. According the PB traffic the ongoing demand suggests that they are in high demand and that volume will be sustainable for several months.

  15. KR,

    I know you don’t like the numbers at 1354 because they demonstrate that Obama is not necessarily the most likely victor come November. So you gotta bluster and bulldust. I understand, really I do.

    A simple message made complicated by the resident obfuscator of political correctness. You don’t fool anyone you poor old scallywag.

    Some other recent Indiana polls to further muddy the waters.

    http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/Apr26.html

  16. Pancho

    Do you support Democrat POTUS Trumans’ decision to nuke Japan in 1945 ?

    Do you support a POTUS nuking Iran if it had already launched nukes at Perth ?

  17. Noocat – while I think she’s out, the win in PA has definately bolstered Hillary. I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt, at least until Indiana. In the same way I don’t think it is tenable for supers to overturn the public will at the end of the primary season, it would be very difficult for them to tell the 9 point winner of PA that she has to go without engendering a lot of bad blood in the party.

    The behaviour of the Clinton campaign after 6 May, depending on the result, will give us a good idea of how far this is gonna go. If she loses both contests that day, I think she’ll find it very hard to continue, as none of her various arguments will really hold.

  18. Catrina,

    Very industrious of you. Someones got to keep the economy ticking while we PBs busy correcting each other.

    Cheers.

  19. Ah Ron, I was gonna let that one slide. That question is really getting off track, but indicative of your evolving debating style on here I think. People are for Hillary or Obamabots. Writers are pro-Obama or not. Peaceniks or pacifists vs. hawks. Helicopter vs. Hemmingway.

    And now you want a one word response to the death of hundreds of thousands of people as a way to find out what side of a political debate one is on? You don’t need to draw a line down the middle of everything and define all in terms of that. It is confrontational partisanship which probably doesn’t aid debate.

    I have said my piece – Hillary’s comments about ‘totally obliterating Iran’ were incredibly stupid. This is a pretty common assessment. And they have nothing to do with Truman (nor nuking Perth??????) whether or not you wish to see that.

  20. Ron

    After America nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, do you think it would be a good thing if Tokyo “obliterated ” the U.S.A.?

    It’s kinda a silly argument to be having isn’t it.

    Isn’t it better if leaders of countries and prospective leaders don’t indulge in ridiculous presumptive rhetoric?

  21. Harryd’H and Noocat,

    You guys have got to get with the program. No quoting of sites like Fox. Apparently, they are full of modcons

    EC and KR have decreed.

  22. Rronronron – You’re moving very quickly to the good old debating trick of the ‘ticking bomb’ example as famously discussed by Charles Krauthammer in 2005. I have no interest in engagement on the issue, but here is a link that should give you hours of solo pleasure:
    http://www.slate.com/id/2132195/nav/tap1/

    In the meantime I would only add that in my opinion anyone left-of-centre who supports Hillary’s loose cannon statements on obliterating the Iranians has achieved the distinction of an attitude in tune with US neocons responsible for the Iraq debacle. Congratulations. What’s the air like up there? Pretty thin I’d reckon.

  23. If we are to believe the Huffington Post, Hillary now has the support of the big media players in the U.S.
    Don’t expect any issues to be debated. In fact, the only debate is whether there should be another one. After the last one Barack won’t even go for an open format without moderator dominated questions.
    Anyway McCain’s camp have decided Obama is the Hamas candidate and also supports higher petrol taxes. Presumably he eats babies as well, or is that just the Clintons. They should get Alexander Downer and Tony Abbott’s help if they want some first class sleazy mudslinging. God save the queen!

  26. If the allocation of Democratic nomination delegates for each state were winner take all, like the General Election, who would be winning?

    Just interested to know. Especially with Clinton winning California, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

  27. #23 – [If we are to believe the Huffington Post, Hillary now has the support of the big media players in the U.S.] – gee, poor, poor Obama, now that he is being abandoned by the “big media players” and i wonder why. What has he done to deserve this. Poor baby.

  28. Sceptic – Hillary would be winning.

    And just to show how badly this would reflect the wishes of the electorate – a similar formula would have seen the return of the Howard government in a hung parliament on the back of the support of Bob Katter

  29. FG #28

    Doesn’t say much for the election of the President at a general election.

    If Clinton is the nominee the Dems would lose the black vote & young vote in spades. She would lose swing states with larger pockets of these constituencies, like Florida.

    But will the Democratic heartland vote for a black liberal like Obama? I’m not sure.

    John McCain must be a strong chance of pinching the presidency.

  30. Another way to teach children is with pictures, so these two graphs are revealing:

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_clinton-224.html

    They show McCain and Obama and McCain/Clinton poll averages.

    McCain is red in both.

    See how much red has been above Clinton’s blue as compared with Obama’s?

    See how much higher McCain’s red has been above Clintons blue?

    Another way to look at what is, afterall, a lot of tea leaves, but they show who’s really strongest against McCain over the polled period.

  31. Thanks for the mature analysis Finns.
    That would explain why Obama seems to be getting the endorsement of most major newspapers wherever he goes.
    Another red herring

  32. Change?

    Indiana already has:

    After the rally, local Democrats gathered in the courthouse square for a cookout. Gospel music wailed from a speaker while children danced on Adams Street. A young man from Philly set up a T-shirt stand. The campaign for America’s first black president had arrived at the very spot where the last lynching north of the Mason-Dixon Line took place. On August 7, 1930, sledgehammer-wielding whites battered their way into the county jail to kidnap two black prisoners accused of shooting a white man and raping a white woman. A photograph of the gleeful mob appeared in Life magazine, inspiring the song “Strange Fruit.”

    When the Rev. Al C. Green moved to Marion from Mississippi in 1969, the hanging tree was still standing, with a ring of rope embedded in the bark. Since then, the tree has been cut down, Grant County elected the first black sheriff in Indiana, biracial basketball teams won state titles, and, on that day, both races gathered to cheer Barack Obama.

    Salon

  34. 29 Sceptic
    Not on the polling figures – and this is before the dems have even begun their campaign against him.

  37. Catrina

    #1179

    You asked me in #1179 last night to answer 8 questions about the Iran/nukes issue. Subsequently you again asked me to answer them

    I have prepared answers to your questions with a preface if you still wish a reply ?

  39. 38
    Ferny Grover

    nah, I’ve been reading a US blogsite.

    And you think we’ve got a problem with ranting potty-mouths! LOL

    I’m intrigued by the whole thing. Here’s a race with an old white guy, an aging white woman, and younger black man, all contending to be president of the USA.

    The god’s must be crazy!

  42. Funny sort of wrap up at the end of 4 Corners. I did find the difference between the younger and older generations in their takes on race relations interesting. Particularly the younger’s desire for engagement. Perhaps not surprising when juxtaposed against some of the older ABC footage. And seeing some of that footage first-hand does really make me smile at some of the irrelevant and snide comments about kumbaya politics here.

  44. The old white guy:

    On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

    In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

    We have spent months debating Barack Obama’s suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain’s proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

    I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage. I also agree with much of what else he said in that speech in Los Angeles. But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/134317

    …this article, by Fareed Zakaria is a zinger.

  45. There is a 187 delegates up for grabs next Tuesday. The rest of the contests are basically chicken feed. If it comes out as 93-94 each then (given that Obama is $1.08 favorites in NC I would suggest this is the very best Clinton can do), it is impossible for Clinton to make up the numbers. A more likely result is 105 to 82.

  46. Pancho

    #19

    Your answer is indicative of the Obamabots. When a question is asked that exposes your poor argument in defending an Obama flaw you avoid answering and instead supplying a personal comment or claim the question is off track. Well it was not , but your answer would have been.

    If a POTUS is asked if Iran ACTUALLY did launch nukes at Perth , would he nuke Iran. The answer is yes (for 90% of Australians) but apparently not for you
    Same question substituting London , then same answer for 90% of English) Same for Israel. The 90% stat will be generous to your group

    Same question re Truman who did nuke Japan , Trumans alternative was to have dead one million Aussies , US , British etc solders dying in a land invasion

    It seems the Obama & his supporters have a problem in properly defending an Ally Country or support pacifism or dislike Hillary so much or dislike Israel so much , or think nukes cann’t be talked about using despite India , North Korea & Pakistan having them , or probably all of these

  47. Tip for you boss – no one’s gonna nuke Perth. If we are playing hypotheticals, and I was a pollie given such a question, I would tell whoever posed it to stop being a moron. Make of that what you will.

  48. FG – [I guess we’ve all been watching 4 Corners] – yes, a question that i have asked continuously – who is Obama?

  50. j/v

    #22

    You are clearly not of the Labor Party , perhaps the Greens. The votes of the elitist view base are accepted by the Party but with a sneer but that is all that is accepted

    As for falsely accusing Hillary as you have done despite a video proving your claims are false , shows how phony the Obama new politics are

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