Reuters: John Gress
A certain weariness has set in among people I know about the entire Democratic Presidential race. My son says he doesn’t even bother listening to television coverage anymore. A friend says he just wishes it would be over because he is bored because the media don’t seem to want to talk about the real issues. Another friend says if he hears one more mention of a certain reverend he is going to puke.
These admittedly subjective opinions make me wonder if this weariness might not be impacting the voters in Indiana and North Carolina. So one thing you will need to watch tonight is turnout. Which of the two candidates can guard against their supporters becoming bored? Also, if the turnout among regular Democrats is low that leaves a larger opening for Limbaugh’s dittoheads. It would be a cruel joke if the Democratic nominee were to be decided by Rush Limbaugh.
An associated factor I have heard is that with the race at its present point we have a bizarre situation in which the remaining primaries no longer really matter. Unless one of the candidates can run the table and also win by fairly large margins, the primaries are not going to decide the winner. This has also created some apathy among Democrats who feel that from here on in it will be in the hands of the superdelegates and Democratic Party bigwigs.
This important question will not be part of the exit polls but it should be. If tonight’s race ends up as close as the polls predict, neither candidate will have delivered a knockout blow and with only a few primaries left, the chances for that grow slimmer.
North Carolina
As everyone knows, the networks have projected an Obama win in North Carolina. The final totals are not in, but the Obama’s margin of victory is obviously safe.
Indiana Exit Poll Data
Exit poll data are in for Indiana and here is what it looks like on our analysis chart:
Let’s walk the chart across and see how each column is influencing the race. First, note the extremely high number of crossovers. Remember this includes both Republicans and Independents. The breakdown for this 11% Republican and 23% Independent. However, nineteen percent said they would vote for McCain in November, so the GOP total may be much higher. It would suggest almost an even split between GOP-leaning voters and true Independents which is not good for Obama, given the vocal campaign being waged by Rush Limbaugh and others to urge GOP voters to cast their ballots for Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic contest.
The African American total is extremely good news for Obama. That is about is much as he could have hoped for in Indiana. Preliminary data show him winning an incredible 93% of this vote which again is outstanding.
Where Obama has some cause for worry is that number of younger voters is below what he needs. If this turnout does not increase it will be difficult for him to win.
On the other hand, Clinton has to be pleased by the turnout of older voters, women and union voters. They have been her core constituency through most of this contest. The interesting data is that right now Clinton is only narrowly winning this vote: 53% to 47%–in contrast with her earlier victories. The union total is even higher if you count union households: 35%.
Based on these early data, it appears Clinton will eke out a narrow victory [note: it was 7:30 when I wrote this], but the race is too close for me to call at this point.
Analysis
CNN has Clinton with a healthy twelve point lead with about one third of the precincts reporting. This suggests what many feared would be the worst possible outcome–a split. Obama’s big win in North Carolina gives him back some momentum. Right now projections have him winning easily–by almost 20 points. However, if Clinton can hold a double-digit lead in Indiana–which is unlikely, that will be a decisive win for her.
A question I have at this point is how much the Republicans are helping Clinton in Indiana. Clinton gets 87% of McCain voters and 53% of the Republicans. Obama’s staff had hoped they might land some of what they term Republicrats–Republicans who are dissatisfied with their party.
Projection: A Clinton Win [Time: 8:00--THE FIRST BLOG OR MEDIA TO PROJECT THE WINNER]
This may be another night like Pennsylvania where the networks want to draw this out so they can keep viewers on the hook. The data show Clinton with all the piece sin place for a win, so I am going to project a Clinton win. Why? Obama has turned out as much of the African American vote as he could have possibly hoped for. I do not see this number increasing too much more, and certainly not enough to overcome Clinton’s lead. The younger voters who had helped him win earlier primaries again have deserted him. He needs a sizeable increase here to have an impact. Finally, the Republican cross-overs appear to have neutralized the third key Obama constituency–Independents.
Meanwhile, while Clinton has not turned out her core constituents to the degree she did in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she has turned out enough of them win.
I am not ready to project a percentage.
Second Data Set [Time: 9:30]
The fact the data have remained exactly the same with 50% of the vote tallied in Indiana, suggests the projection of a Clinton win still stands. In fact I am ready to project a percentage: 52% for Clinton. This would be slightly closer than Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Analysis
First, there are reports from Indiana, mostly anecdotal at this point, that the voter ID law may be responsible for holding down the total of young voters.
Second, based on Clinton’s winning 87% of the 19% of Indiana voters who said they will vote for McCain in November, it may well be that Hillary Clinton won this state because of Republican cross-overs. What is interesting to me is that none of the talking heads seems to be mentioning this. One would think that Obama’s spin-meisters would be bringing this up.
The bottom line is that the door has all but closed on Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama is only 200 or so delegates away from the nomination. Clinton cannot cut into this margin with the remaining primaries. The question at this point is not whether she will drop out, which I do not think she should do, but whether she will stop the scorched earth policy?
Hillary Clinton has run a classic Republican wedge campaign, which has been valuable in the sense that it has prepared Obama for what lies ahead. However, it has also driven up the negativity factor in the Party. Thirty percent of Indiana voters said they would be satisfied only if Clinton wins. Even if one throws in the possibility that 10-20% of those voters are actually Republicans, it is a disturbing finding.
One conclusion one can draw from this is that Clinton is not so much attracting additional voters with her negative campaigning, but only angering her own followers. That, of course, is classic Karl Rove: stir up your own people so much that they hate the other candidate.
It is time for the elders of the Party to have what we call up here a come-to-Jesus meeting with Hillary Clinton and her staff. They need to tell her it is time to stop the negative campaigning because it is hurting the Party. She has not only angered her own supporters but also Obama’s. If she wants to win the Presidency she cannot win it now unless she mends fences with Obama’s supporters.
The time has come to talk about McCain’s reverend. The time has come to talk about McCain’s health care plain. The time has come to talk about McCain’s tax cuts. The time has come to talk about McCain’s ties to George Bush.
Final Thoughts
It is now midnight in the Midwest and the networks are still refusing to call the Indiana race which has now tightened to 51-49. What accounted of the difference from the previous spreadsheet was one major change–the African American vote is now 18%. That is over double the African American population in the state. In short it is a powerful demonstration for the Democratic Party that African American voters will vote if given a reason to do so and that the Democratic Party cannot win in November without them.
Also not two other changes highlighted in red which help explain why the race became tighter (although I still called it within one percentage point four hours before the media finally called it). Notice the slight increase in younger voters coupled with a slight decrease in older voters.
The final summary for Indiana, then, spotlights that Clinton won because:
- The Indiana voter ID law caused problems for younger voters. Democrats will need to remedy this by November.
- Republican cross-overs clearly provided the margin of victory.
- Race (see below) factored in her victory in a negative way.
In the end Hillary Clinton’s story becomes a tragic one, for in a desperate attempt to win the nomination she played the race card and it backfired on her. She argued that she was the only electable candidate, but because she has alienated African American voters she is now unelectable. Forget the BS about African Americans having nowhere to go in November because if Clinton is the candidate that is where they will go–nowhere.
Even more startling is that Clinton’s usual constituency turned out for her, but did not support her very strongly. She barely won the female vote–51-49. Even more startling is that union voters who had been going as much as 60% for Clinton in other primaries went for Clinton only 51%-49%. Clinton’s former strong support among older voters also waned so she only won the 45-59 age group by the same 51-49 margin.
As for Obama, for the first time he won among voters making less than $15,000. He also made substantial gains among the less educated. Earlier in the evening the Clinton talking heads on CNN were arguing that Obama could not reach out to low income, less educated and blue-collar voters. They obviously either did not read their own polling data or they were flat out lying. Indiana, a largely white state, makes all those remarks nothing more than hit air.
Indiana is going to be seen as the state where Clinton may have won the battle, but lost the war. The outcome is so narrow that she is projected to gain only a handful of delegates. Her margin of victory is only 23,000 votes. More pointedly, it is clear that she won because of Republican crossovers. We will never know how many of these were Limbaugh dittoheads, but there must have been 23,000 of them plus the data tend to point in that direction.
So now Hillary Clinton carries the albatross of Rush Limbaugh around her neck, something much more substantial than a certain reverend. Notably Clinton never disavowed this support. In an Interview with George Stephanopoulos she was asked about Limbaugh’s support. Her reply:
He’s always had a crush on me. (laughter)
Limbaugh had great fun with this, but real Democrats don’t talk like that. Real Democrats do not take triangulation so seriously that they are willing to accept the help of Rush Limbaugh in order to win a primary. Had the outcome been more decisive for Clinton, Democrats could have written off the Limbaugh support. But not now.
Without Limbaugh this race for the Democratic nomination would have been over because Obama would have run the table. With his support for Clinton the deciding factor, it’s over because Hillary Clinton revealed just how far she is willing to go to win an election. Interestingly this shows up in the exit polls. Almost half the voters in the Democratic primary said Clinton was not honest and trustworthy as opposed only 30% who said the same thing about Obama. But the startling data show that a quarter of Clinton’s own supporters do not think she is honest and trustworthy.
The negatives appear in other questions. Eighteen percent of Clinton’s supporters say she does not share their values. Forty-two percent of her own supporters thought she attacked Obama unfairly. There is a dark side to all this. Of the 10% of white voters who said the race of the candidate was important to them an astounding 70% went to Clinton. This begs the question of whether Clinton won Indiana not because her supporters particularly liked her, but because they would not vote for an African American candidate. I’m waiting for George Stephanopoulos to point this out instead of carping about reverends and flag pins.
They say that people’s true character comes out during a crisis. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more stark in this crucial test. We may well look back on Indiana as the watershed moment in this election when the voters finally realized this.
Ironically, Operation Chaos may have finally brought clarity to the Democratic Presidential nomination.
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