What precisely in the Tuesday results showed Obama to be the most electable?

[Zynx]

I had been going with the assumption that Obama did have some appeal in rural areas, mistakenly due to the Kansas and Nebraska caucuses until I saw the results out of Texas and Ohio on Tuesday. Take for example Lawrence County, Ohio, which is right along the Ohio River. Here Hillary beat Obama 78% to 19%. The overall rural vote broke against him 70-26% according to the CNN exit poll. Outside of the rural issue, take also middle class suburban counties such as Summit County Ohio, which voted for Clinton by 12 points, a margin greater than the state as a whole, despite having a population that is roughly 13% African American, which largely voted as a bloc for Obama.

It is fine to run up big totals in the big cities, but that simply isn't enough. If you get completely blown out in the suburban counties and the rural areas, there is no chance you can win. When you break down the exit polls from 2004, you find the following:
30% live in Urban areas
46% live in Suburban areas
24% live in Rural areas
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

Kerry still got 42% of the rural vote. Without those votes he would not have been comeptitive. I now have very serious questions about Obama's ability to win rural votes as a result of the primary results last night. These are Democratic voters who can cross the aisle easily and vote Republican as they tend to be moderate or even conservative.

I just don't see the evidence of some earth shattering, world changing Obama vote that will transform the electoral map. Am I missing something here?

[thevoiceofreason]

1. Yes, you are

The rural democrats will turn out for Obama in the fall. Hillary's rural numbers will not be inflated in the fall with the crossover vote (there will be few, if any, indies and repubs crossing over to vote for her -- Limbaugh's "campaign against McCain" will go mysteriously silent. All the current vote totals show is that Hillary is somewhat more popular than Barack among democrats in rural areas. It doesn't provide you a metric for the fall against McCain. What the metrics also show is record numbers coming over and voting democratic. That is attributable to Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton.

[Zynx]

2. Hillary has nearly as many votes as Obama.

Also, I know of plenty of Republicans who voted in the Wisconsin primary to simply bury Hillary, but have no intention of voting for Obama.

Obama's vote centers, the big cities, are much more likely to stay in our column than these areas of rural Democrats. They have abandoned our party before, to our peril.

[Kittycat]

3. You're assuming that anyone that voted for Clinton won't vote for Obama

your reasoning is flawed. You can't compare Primary results to GE results.

[Zynx]

4. I was waiting for this.

I am assuming a large portion of these voters might not. After all this is the logic used by Obama supporters to say Hillary would not win the African American vote in the fall. ;-)

[Zynx]

5. Also, more Democrats said they would only be happy if Hillary won versus Obama.

These are more moderate and conservative voters. They might consider McCain in the fall.

[Kittycat]

6. 25% to 10%. And that number will likely flux in either scenario.

That still gives him the numbers.
edit to remove snark :)

[Orsino]

7. You're not missing anything.

It's a close race between two popular candidates. Why would you suspect that there would be any runaway numbers?

[Vinca]

8. The fact he wasn't attracting the Rush Limbaugh crowd the way

Hillary did. I heard 8% cited as the number of Limbaugh voters who came out for Hillary in Texas. (Don't ask for a link - it was on an MSNBC newscast.) If the "bring down Hillary" plan wasn't already in the works, Obama would have won Texas. Of course, now that all the delegates are being added up, it appears he did win Texas.

[Warbler]

9. His Genesukwa