Irish Trojan in Tennessee

What does Obama need on Tuesday?

By Brendan Loy

Although Barack Obama is almost even with Hillary Clinton nationally, the latest polls from Super Tuesday states suggest that he's within striking distance almost everywhere, but leading almost nowhere (well, at least among the states were there are polls). And he's running out of time to "strike." With the Super Bowl on Sunday, people are pretty much going to tune out politics until Monday, and that's already Pooper Scooper Eve.

Democratic delegate selection rules are such that nobody is going to have a commanding victory in the delegate count on Tuesday; even in her best-case scenario, Hillary won't come anywhere close to "wrapping up" the nomination, mathematically speaking. But with 22 states (plus American Samoa and the Democrats Abroad) going to the polls, it's imperative for Obama to rack up some "wins" -- even though the concept of "winning" individual states is almost meaningless in terms of delegates -- in order to create a favorable (or at least not unfavorable) media storyline. If Hillary, for example, wins everywhere except Illinois and Georgia, that would be utterly devastating for Barack's momentum; people would start to write him off, and Hillary would become "inevitable" again. That would be true even if most of the races are very close and Hillary only edges him by, say, 150 delegates.

My question is, what does Obama need to do? How many states must he win? Marc Ambinder wrote on Wednesday that, based on the polls and his conversations with party insiders, he believes Obama "has an edge in Idaho, Minnesota, Kansas, Alabama, Georgia, North Dakota and Illinois." I've also read that Alaska is supposed to be Obama-friendly. Would those eight states -- to Hillary's fourteen -- be enough? Can he get away with less than that (say, 5 or 6)? Or, on the contrary, does he need 9 or 10 wins? Does he need his list of victories, however long it is, to include at least one or two non-tiny, non-Southern states that aren't Illinois? (Connecticut and Colorado, maybe?)

By the way, I'm working on a Super Tuesday Prediction Contest, so stay tuned for that. I'll probably post the entry form later tonight or tomorrow.

Will Ron Paul win the Maine caucuses?

By Brendan Loy

The little-noticed Maine GOP caucuses start today and continue through Sunday, with most of the meetings taking place tomorrow. There is some speculation that Ron Paul might win.

P.S. Maine is the devil, you know.

O-mentum continues

By Brendan Loy

Rasmussen's latest daily update is out:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Barack Obama inching closer to Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. It’s now Clinton 43%, Obama 37%. A week ago, Clinton had an eleven point advantage, 41% to 30%.

Daily tracking results are collected via nightly telephone surveys and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. The last two nights of tracking were the first without John Edwards in the race. For those two nights, it’s Clinton 44% and Obama 42% meaning that Clinton’s support is essentially unchanged. This suggests that many former Edwards supporters now support Obama, many others have yet to make a decision, and few currently support Clinton.

[You know what I bet would help those "many others" make a decision? A freakin' endorsement! Argh! -ed.]

Two day results are based upon a relatively small sample of 476 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and should be interpreted with caution. The next Presidential Tracking Poll update is scheduled for Saturday at 11:00 a.m. Sunday will be the first update based completely upon interviews since Edwards left the race.

Gallup should have an update later this afternoon. Also, Rasmussen will release its Tennessee poll later today. It'll be interesting to see whether it mirrors the Hillary landslide suggested by InsiderAdvantage.

P.S. On the other hand, with regard to those "many others [who] have yet to make a decision"... it has been suggested that the so-called "Bradley Effect," in which opinion polls mask voters' racial prejudices, is most likely to be seen "not in the black candidate’s poll numbers but in the 'undecided' category":

Here’s how the Bradley Effect works: A stranger calls you to ask how you intend to vote. You do NOT intend to vote for the African American, but you don’t want to get a lot of guff from this stranger about how you must be a racist if you won’t vote for the African American. So you answer, “Not sure.” In all the classic Bradley Effect elections (and NH fit the pattern), the polls got the vote for the African American about right, but OVERREPORTED not sure and UNDERREPORTED the other candidate’s vote.

I don't know if that's right, or if it's happening here. I hope not!

P.P.S. Gore?

P.P.P.S. Obama will be in New Mexico this evening. Richardson?

UPDATE: Gallup's out, and it's more of the same. Clinton leads 44% to 41% over the last three days of polling:

Gallup Poll Daily tracking shows Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as close as they have been since the polling program started at the beginning of 2008. Forty-four percent of Democratic voters nationwide support Clinton, while 41% support Obama, within the poll's three-point margin of error. [Derek's head asplode! -ed.] The data suggest that Obama has gained slightly more -- at least initially -- from John Edwards' departure from the race. In the final tracking data including Edwards in all three days' interviewing (Jan. 27-29 data), Clinton had 42%, Obama 36%, and Edwards 12%. Since then, Clinton's support has increased two points and Obama's five. Tomorrow's release will be the first pure post-Edwards three-day rolling average.

Sweet.

Your company has issues when:

By dcl

You need a tech support article for this.

Where is John Edwards?

By Brendan Loy

Politico's Ben Smith reports that John Edwards was in North Carolina last night for the UNC-Boston College basketball game. Is he still in North Carolina? If so, do we know that Barack Obama isn't in North Carolina, or on his way there? (The Page lists no public events for Obama until 4:15 PM.) Time is running out for my predicted Friday-morning Boyz 4 Change endorsement announcement...