Did Obama or Clinton win Super Tuesday?
By John Dickerson
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008, at 1:55 AM ET
A spooky ad that ran repeatedly during CNN's Super Tuesday coverage suggested that you should contemplate your life as if you had only one month to live. If you do that, expect to exit without knowing the Democratic nominee. After Super Tuesday voting, the clearest thing about the race on the Democratic side is that it's headed into March—and quite possibly beyond.
Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns emerged from Super Tuesday with bragging rights. Clinton trounced Obama in Massachusetts 56 percent to 41 percent. It was a thrashing that almost matched the one he gave her in South Carolina. She had been ahead in polls in the state, but for the last week Barack Obama has had about the best press imaginable there. He was being compared often to JFK by Kennedy family members, who did everything but play touch football with him on the lawn. Obama also had the support of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
Clinton also won the toss-up state of New Jersey and the largest popular-vote prize in California, where she was able to stop Obama's movement with two crucial blocs of voters. She won Latino voters by 32 points even though Obama was endorsed by the state's largest Spanish-language newspaper. She won by 18 points among women despite a widely publicized rally attended by Michele Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Caroline Kennedy, at which California First Lady Maria Shriver made a surprise appearance and endorsement.
Obama, for his part, can brag about picking up Connecticut, a state in Clinton's own back yard. He also stole more votes from her home state of New York than she took from him in Illinois. And Obama claimed his share of the toss-up states, winning the popular vote in Colorado and Delaware. These wins, plus his victories in Georgia and Alabama, allowed Obama, like Clinton, to claim a geographically diverse set of victories. By several measures, Obama was the victor: He picked up 13 states to Clinton's eight, and he won more pledged delegates. This gives him additional momentum going into some promising-looking primaries over the next couple of weeks. The contests in the next two weeks in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12 followed by Wisconsin and Hawaii on Feb. 19 all favor him. His $32 million fund-raising record in January shows that he will have more money than Clinton to wage a protracted campaign. Obama will also have time to become better known—particularly for the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas—than he did in the 22 states in which he competed today.
http://www.slate.com/id/2183819/?GT1=10935more at link
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