Tuesday's Potomac primaries
Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia vote in primaries tonight
February 12, 2008
By Kelsey Hayes
Before We Start...
Arizona Sen. John McCain is still trying to prove that he's conservative enough to deserve the nomination. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee insists on staying in the Republican race, saying his appeal proves that there's a niche in the Republican race that he can fill.
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has already all but conceded defeat in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC tonight. She's already in Texas, campaigning there in anticipation for the state's March 4 primary.
CNN and Fox are reporting high voter turnout in all three contests. Virginia will be the first state to report results; its polls close at 6 p.m. central time. Maryland and Washington DC don't close until 7 p.m. I'll post results and comments as they come in. 238 total delegates are at stake for the Democrats, as well as 119 GOP delegates.
Virginia Primaries
6:00 p.m.
With a whopping 0 percent of the vote in, CNN is already calling Virginia for Sen. Barack Obama. We'll see if the victory is legitimate, and by how much he won, later on when solid numbers come in.
CNN's exit polls show that while 90 percent of blacks voted for Obama, so did 48 percent of whites. Blacks made up less than a third of Virginia's Democratic primary voters. Obama also carried both genders. Obama won on the issues of the economy and the Iraq War. Clinton had been polling better on economic issues.
The bigger story is that Virginia looks competitive between Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. John McCain. McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, but apparently no one told that to social conservatives. Virginia was also supposed to be a McCain stronghold, given strong military ties. Huckabee has his own base, however, with social conservatives tied to Pat Robertson's Focus on the Family organization.
6:22 p.m.
With 1 percent of the vote in, Obama leads Clinton 56 percent to 43 percent, and Huckabee leads McCain 59 percent to 33 percent. Having said that, these numbers are kind of meaningless at the moment. You don't get a good idea of how it'll really turn out until at least 25-50 percent of the tally comes in.
CNN analyst Bill Schneider just called people over the age of 60 "McCain's peeps." Represent, yo.
6:40 p.m.
Still a few minutes before Maryland and Washington DC come in. Obama's lead looks to be substantial, and Huckabee continues to out-pace McCain. Let's be honest: Huckabee can reasonably do no more in this race than piss McCain off. But it's so entertaining.
7:01 p.m.
With a quarter of the vote in, Huckabee and McCain are in a virtual tie. Good lord! Bad news for Huckabee: His strong areas, in rural western Virginia, are already in. McCain's areas in Virginia are still trickling in, allowing him to run his numbers up.
7:33 p.m.
McCain is projected to win the Republican primary in Virginia, by the hair on his chinny-chin-chin. With about 51 percent of the vote in, McCain has 47 percent to Huckabee's 45 percent. While McCain gets all of the state's delegates, this should be a wake-up call to him: He has a battle on his hands with social conservatives, and if he's the nominee (and he will be), they might decide to just not show up in November.
9:30 p.m.
It looks like the final numbers in Virginia will be 64 percent to 36 percent in favor of Obama on the Democratic side, and 50 percent to 41 percent in favor of McCain over Huckabee. Turnout again favors the Democrats; Obama had more votes than McCain and Huckabee combined in this traditionally red state.
Maryland Primaries
6:43 p.m.
Maryland is going to take a while. A judge has extended Maryland's polling time by 90 minutes because of poor weather in the state. So, no info from Maryland until about 8:30 p.m. This should not affect Washington DC's results.
8:30 p.m.
CNN projects that Obama and McCain will carry their respective primaries in Maryland. Solid numbers will follow. It's important to note that news outlets will only call states if exit polls or other data point to a substantial margin of victory.
9:06 p.m.
With 3 percent of the vote in, Obama leads Clinton 64 percent to 35 percent, and McCain leads Huckabee 57 percent to 32 percent.
Washington DC Primaries
7:00 p.m.
Washington DC's polls closed about thirty seconds ago. With no exit polling, we're left to hang in suspense as actual results come in.
8:45 p.m.
CNN and Fox both project that Obama and McCain will win the Washington DC primaries. With a little under half the vote in, Obama has a whopping 75 percent to Clinton's 23 percent. No Republican numbers yet.
9:00 p.m.
McCain is leading Huckabee in Washington DC 67 percent to 16 percent with 49 percent of the vote in.
10:03 p.m.
The final numbers from Washington DC are as follows: Obama wins with 75 percent to Clinton's 24 percent, and McCain wins with 68 percent to Huckabee's 17 percent.
Candidates Speak
8:20 p.m.
Clinton is speaking to supporters in El Paso. She seems to be hitting on a lot of populist economic issues, an area where she's losing ground to Obama. Solid Latino support in Texas may be critical for Clinton if she's to remain viable. Texas doesn't vote until March 4, but Clinton, foreseeing a bleak rest-of-February, is hitting there hard already.
8:40 p.m.
Obama is speaking to supporters in Madison, Wisc. Wisconsin votes a week from today along with Hawaii. Though she skipped it on the campaign trail, Wisconsin is a state that's considered to be in play. He's speaking about the wide geographic and socioeconomic nature of his electoral victories so far. It seems like his standard stump speech.
9:04 p.m.
McCain is speaking to supporters in Alexandria, Va. Like Obama, he swept all three of his party's contests tonight. His speech, like most of his that I've seen, is focused on his Democratic rivals, and not on Huckabee. I guess since McCain is the de facto Republican nominee, he can look ahead to the general election. As expected, he's speaking mostly about defense and the war.
But What Does It All Mean, Basil?
Democrats
The cold, hard truth: Hillary Clinton needs to win, and win big, in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania to have a prayer of keeping up. It won’t be enough to carry one or even barely carry all three. Nothing else in February will favor her. To be honest, I think her Giuliani tactic of waiting out the storm until she finds a favorable state will backfire, like it backfired against Giuliani in Florida. Texas may, quite literally, be her Alamo. I have no doubt that Clinton will stay in the race until March, but think of it this way: Clinton has lost eight races in a row. If Obama had lost eight races in a row, Clinton would be calling on him (logically) to step down. Think on that.
Obama has surpassed Clinton in total delegates, including superdelegates. When you consider that her superdelegates outnumber his roughly 2-1 and take them out of the equation, his lead grows. He not only won tonight; he won by a very large margin. Clinton can’t hope to hang onto the next big three states when Obama has a stack of wins and three weeks to make inroads. There was evidence tonight that Clinton is losing ground with women, older voters and Latinos.
Here’s the rub, though: The delegate count is close enough between the two candidates that one of them MUST pull off convincing (as in, at least 55 percent) wins in the remaining contests in order to reach the threshold of 2,095. If either keeps winning by slim margins, neither will reach the finish line. Obama has roughly 1,200 delegates, and Clinton has roughly 1,180 delegates. It’s looking more and more likely that this thing will be decided by the superdelegates, who aren’t bound to anyone until the convention.
This could get sticky, though. Here’s a scenario. Clinton may have fewer pledged (that is to say, won in caucuses and primaries) delegates than Obama, but could conceivably be pushed past the threshold by superdelegates (party bigwigs with influence). Or vice versa. Basically, the DNC would be telling voters that their votes didn’t count by putting forth the lesser candidate. This could happen, and has before. In 1984, superdelegates pushed Walter Mondale ahead of Gary Hart. Mondale went on to be, um, slaughtered by Ronald Reagan in the general election.
Rationally, the superdelegates will gravitate toward the candidate with the most momentum and thus the most pledged delegates, and this won’t be a problem. If anything, they’ll help the leading candidate gain that liiiiittle push they need to go over the top. However, if either candidate is able to come from behind only with superdelegate help, expect the Democratic party to basically implode, voter morale to sink and the Denver convention to be the most vicious battle royale since the 1968 convention in Chicago, where people were literally punching each other in the aisles and protestors clashed with police. Ironically, the '68 fiasco led the party to decrease the importance of superdelegates and increase the importance of primaries and caucuses.
To prevent this, I'd like to hope that the candidate lagging after Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania would see the writing on the wall and bow out, for the sake of the election and the party.
Republicans
McCain is only about 300 delegates away from sealing his nomination, which shouldn’t be hard given that the Republican contests are winner-takes-all. Huckabee, bless him, is staying in the race, even though there isn’t a whole heck of a lot he can do at this point.
However, McCain should be doing some soul-searching at this point. He won Virginia by a comfortable margin, but lost big in rural areas populated by more working class, socially conservative evangelicals. If these voters don’t trust him by November, they’ll likely stay home, leaving McCain to rely on a base of moderate Republicans and independents to give him the White House. A man who’s a genuine American hero and a class act is practically vilified by the very demographic he wants to represent. Gosh.
The best thing McCain can do now is recruit popular conservative figures who will vouch for his credentials and soothe the distrust much of the party seems to have for him. Pres. Bush has offered to speak on McCain’s behalf. McCain, with his wits about him, would do well to run the other way. Screaming.
Up Next
The Democrats have a caucus in Hawaii and a primary in Wisconsin in one week, on Feb. 19. The Republicans have a contest in Guam on Saturday, Feb. 16, and a primary in Wisconsin on Feb. 19.
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