First, let’s just say that Vermont is expected to go for Barack and Rhode Island for Hillary.

After that, everything is up in the air. Hillary was ahead in the polls (for what they’re worth) in Ohio and they’re tied in the polls (for what they’re worth) in Texas.

Virginia looked to be close in polls leading up to the primary and it was a 29% blowout for Obama.

Here’s what I expect from the three scenarios…

– If Obama wins both, it’s over. Hillary may not drop out immediately but super delegates will start announcing their support for Barack faster than folks will be able to count. Soon, he’ll have the 2,025 he needs for the nomination and she’ll be forced to leave. I believe she’ll stay in it until loss is inevitable.

– If Clinton wins both, she’s back and would have the momentum to probably win the nomination. Here’s why: she will claim her firewall states as a “comeback” and more importantly, it will reinforce the negative, desperate, fear-mongering campaigning from the Clinton camp in the last week. The one thing they will learn from all this is that the dirtier the fight, the better and any reservations they have about launching nukes at Obama will go away.

– If it’s a split decision, we continue on. Assuming the polls are right (not a good idea but the most likely measure to suggest how the states might split) and Obama wins Texas and Clinton wins Ohio, the Clinton camp will declare Texas an “insignificant red state” and instruct their surrogates to repeat ad nauseum how important Ohio is in the general.

The biggest factors in all this are the undecideds, flaws in polling and weather. There are enough undecideds (or as Bill Maher wisely calls them, “morons”) to make it impossible to predict the outcomes. Undecideds tend to trend toward Hillary - I think that makes sense since I don’t believe the majority of undecideds are torn between the two candidates they just haven’t paid attention yet and the Clinton name is a justifiably strong one in the Democratic party. As for the flaws in the polling - most polls are of likely voters - Obama’s voters are unlikely voters - new voters and younger voters. The weather in Ohio is supposed to be terrible today - that plays to Obama as Clinton’s supporters tend to be older (Mark Penn of Clinton’s team cited that as a possible additional factor in the Virgina blowout).

So, I have no idea. It may be a late night.

But hope springs eternal.

I’ll follow up tonight.

Two new strips were posted and today’s strip - the 100th Socks and Barney strip - will be posted tonight after the results come in.

The comments function has been turned on if you want to share your thoughts on the race. I’m interested in what you think. As always, you can write me directly if you don’t care to post.

– Steve

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.