Crushing Victory for Clinton

Clinton scores another crushing victory over Obama tonight, giving her four of the last five contests. Her popular vote margin in Kentucky is 249, 374, which is 39,603 votes more than Obama's total vote count. Think about that - the margin between them was bigger than his vote total. Her win over him was larger than the difference between them in North Carolina.

I'm returning to my extrapolation of the percentages of who woul/wouldn't vote for which nominee in November by comparing them to a 100,000 baseline.

	Total	Clinton	Obama	Undecided
Clinton	77,000	54,670	21,560	0
McCain	16,000	8,800	4,480	1,760
Abstain	5,000	N/A	N/A	N/A

Out of 100,000 Democratic voters, 77,000 would vote for Hillary were she the nominee. 21,560 of those voters are currently supporting Obama. 16,000 would vote McCain, a smaller number than all the Obama voters who would support her, and numerically sshe would lose more votes from her own supporter's defections than from Obama's supporters, oddly enough. This means just l;ess than 9% of Clinton voters would go McCain, not quite 4.5% of Obama supporters and just shy of 2% of undecideds.

	Total	Clinton	Obama	Undecided
Obama	50,000	21,500	27,500	500
McCain	32,000	27,200	2,240	1,600
Abstain	15,000	14,550	1,050	300

If Obama were the nominee, he would get approximately half of the Democratic votes, and would get almost as many votes from Clinton supporters as she would get from his supporters. His own supporters would not give him that much more in terms of raw vote. Almost as many Clinton supporters would vote against him and for McCain as his own supporters would vote for him. The big number is the high level of abstentions, which could go either way for returning to Obama or defecting to McCain.

The other interstiong question of the evening was should the nominee pick the other person as their VP? When asked if Obama should pick Clinton, there was a definite majority who said Yes:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Yes	56,000	43,120	12,880
No	42,000	21,420	20,580

Many more Clinton supporters liked the idea than Obama supporters. However, more Clinton voters than Obama supporters as a proportion of Democrats said he should not pick her. When the tables were turned, the pattern intensified:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Yes	45,000	24,300	20,700
No	52,000	40,040	11,960

Most people did not want Obama on the ticket with Hillary, with Obama supporters more eager for him to be picked by Hilalry than for Hillary to be picked by him. Hillary supporters really don't want anything to do with Obama. I look at these numbers and see a much stronger resistence to Obama from Hilalry supporters than to Hilalry from Obama supporters, which also indicates that there is a greater chance for Hillary to win back disaffected Obama supporters than for him to get her supporters. Not that this is any great surprise to anyone following the polls.

I also think this indicates that Clinton would make McCain have to contest Kentucky, wasting resources and time there, while Obama would be an instant loss.

I'm off to have dinner while the Oregon results come in. So far, Obama's big counties are the ones reporting in and he's not as far ahead as he should be, given the hype and the money.

Anglachel