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Looking Ahead

Assuming Obama does as well as expected in today’s primaries, the media narrative seems to be that his momentum is becoming unstoppable and Clinton’s only hope of derailing him is to build a firewall in Ohio and Texas on March 4th. I’m not so sure of that. I think next week’s Hawaii and Wisconsin contests could prove more difficult for Obama than expected.

In Wisonsin, an ARG poll last week still had Clinton up 50 to 41. A PPP poll from yesterday basically reversed that, giving Wisconsin to Obama by a margin of 50 to 39. I imagine Obama will take the state, but I’m guessing it will only be a 5-7% margin. On it’s own, that would obviously feed into the Obama momentum storyline, but I think Hawaii will change that. I think Obama might actually lose his birth-state.

This primary campaign has (unfortunately) been rife with identity politics - Obama has dominated the African-American vote, while Clinton has been drawing substantially more women and Hispanics. What hasn’t been commented on that much, however, is the fact that she’s absolutely crushing him with Asian voters. In California, the Asian-American demographic voted for Clinton by a 3 to 1 margin. A similar (though lower) proportion voted for her in New York as well. With that in mind, it’s worth noting that rougly 60% of Hawaiins are of Asian descent. It’s always dangerous to generalize, but those numbers simply do not bode well for Obama next Tuesday.

So, if Clinton pulls out an unexpected win in Hawaii and a smaller-than-expected loss in Wisconsin, the narrative could change. The media loves a close campaign, so instead of running stories about Obama being unbeatable, they’d probably start focusing on Clinton’s strength in Texas and Ohio and asking whether things are beginning to shift back to a more even fight. *shrug* I don’t know. Just a theory.

~ Matt