FYI re Pennsylvania expectations from The Field

Pirate Smile

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Mar-12-08 10:33 AM
Original message

FYI re Pennsylvania expectations from The Field

Go read this analysis of Pennsylvania so we can help fight against the push to make Penn. the be all, end all. It isn't and we need to keep that spin from taking hold. The Obama campaign is clearly fighting it:

Now that Mississippi is behind us, we move on to the next ten contests. The Clinton Campaign would like to focus your attention only on Pennsylvania – a state in which they have already declared that they are “unbeatable.” But Pennsylvania is only one of 10 remaining contests, each important in terms of allocating delegates and ultimately deciding who are nominee will be. Senator Obama campaigned in Pennsylvania yesterday and will do so again later this week, but he will also campaign aggressively in the other upcoming states – he will travel to other upcoming states in the very near future.

We have activated our volunteer networks, are putting staff on the ground, and building our organization in every one of the upcoming states. The key is not who wins the states that the Clinton campaign thinks are important. Throughout this entire process, they have cherry-picked states, diminished caucuses, and moved the goal posts to create a shifting, twisted rationale for why they should win the nomination despite winning fewer primaries, fewer states, fewer delegates, and fewer votes.

Delegate Math Guarantees Clinton a “Big, Big Pennsylvania Victory”

-snip-
...it’s clear that the Clinton camp is quite confident about the Pennsylvania battleground, as it should be.

The press will try to make a race of it. There will surely be polls showing the race tightening, perhaps even suggesting that Obama could win it. But that’s just part of the predictable song-and-dance to sell newspapers and up ratings (and hit counts, for the political blogs and news sites that sell ads). The way the odd-numbered delegate districts break down, the demographics, the fact that it’s a closed primary (no Independent voters allowed), and its long border with the senator’s New York state make it a lead-pipe cinch for Clinton; to the extent that Obama supporters enter the “no, but yes, we can win it” narrative they’ll be walking into a trap.

Clinton has now moved 250 staffers (about 13 for each of Pennsylvania’s 19 Congressional districts) into the Keystone state and is opening two dozen field offices. She has the support of Governor Ed Rendell and his considerable machine, not to mention a phalanx of mayors including Michael Nutter of Philadelphia. They’re carrying a straight flush and they’re betting everything on it. That makes it tempting for Obama fans to seek a knockout punch, but all their candidate really needs to do is survive to the next round – North Carolina, two weeks later – without having fallen into a rigged expectations game to clinch the nomination.

The new SurveyUSA poll (Clinton 55 percent, Obama 38) tells part of the story.

But a bigger part of the story was already told in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District. That’s the long, thin border district with West Virginia that The Field called the “Pennsyltucky” district. The Obama campaign outspent Clinton on TV and media advertising there, and Obama dedicated his final Ohio appearance in Athens, within that district (as well as sending rockers Arcade Fire to stoke up the youth vote on primary eve), but the Appalachian demographics were against him from the start: Clinton won there with 72.4 percent to just 27.5 for Obama.

That means that Pennsylvania’s “Pennsyltucky” districts with 4 delegates will go 3-1 for Clinton, while districts with 5 delegates will go - just as Ohio’s 6th CD went - 4-1 for Clinton. And in those regions she will rack up an insurmountable 13 delegate lead under any reasonable scenario… and the rest of the state ain’t beanbag either.

Even if Obama narrows the gap - as Ohio’s 18th CD went (Clinton 68.3 percent to 31.6 percent) – it would carry the exact same delegate split, perhaps minus one delegate.

The Field now offers its preliminary math on the entire state.

Pennsylvania (see map, above) offers six CDs with an even number of delegates – 5, 6, 10, 16, 17 and 19 – and thirteen more with an odd number of delegates (meaning, they can’t be fought to a delegate tie).

The Field – six weeks out – predicts the following outcomes (which will not change beyond a delegate or two if Clinton posts anywhere from 55 to 60 percent of the vote):

CD 1: Clinton 3, Obama 4 (+1 Obama)
CD 2: Clinton 3, Obama 6 (+3 Obama)
CD 3: Clinton 4, Obama 1 (+3 Clinton)
CD 4: Clinton 4, Obama 1 (+3 Clinton)
CD 5: Clinton 3, Obama 1 (+2 Clinton)
CD 6: Clinton 3, Obama 3 (+0)
CD 7: Clinton 3, Obama 4 (+1 Obama)
CD 8: Clinton 3, Obama 4 (+1 Obama)
CD 9: Clinton 2, Obama 1 (+1 Clinton)
CD 10: Clinton 3, Obama 1 (+2 Clinton)
CD 11: Clinton 4, Obama 1 (+3 Clinton)
CD 12: Clinton 4, Obama 1 (+3 Clinton)
CD 13: Clinton 3, Obama 4 (+1 Obama)
CD 14: Clinton 4, Obama 3 (+1 Clinton)
CD 15: Clinton 3, Obama 2 (+1 Clinton)
CD 16: Clinton 2, Obama 2 (+0)
CD 17: Clinton 2, Obama 2 (+0)
CD 18: Clinton 4, Obama 1 (+3 Clinton)
CD 19: Clinton 2, Obama 2 (+0)

Subtotal of pledged delegates by Congressional district:

Clinton 59, Obama 44 (+15 Clinton)

If the statewide vote is Clinton 55 percent, Obama 45 (meaning that Obama wins all undecided voters between now and then), Clinton will pick up a net gain of +3 at-large delegates (Clinton 19, Obama 16) plus a net gain of +2 pledged elected officers (PLEO) delegates (Clinton 11, Obama 9), for a net gain of +5. Under that best possible scenario for Obama Clinton will come out of Pennsylvania with a 20+ advance in pledged delegates.

But the more likely scenario is that Clinton wins the state with 60 percent of the vote, leading to an at-large/PLEO delegate advance of +11 (21 at-large delegates to Obama’s 14, and 12 PLEOs to 8 for Obama).

Total projected district and statewide delegates:

Clinton: 92 pledged delegates
Obama: 66

That will be a net gain of +26 delegates.

This projection presumes that the Obama campaign will do everything right, by the way, to shore up its vote and take the six Congressional districts in Philadelphia and its suburbs by a total of +8 delegates. If he fails to do that, Clinton will clear a +30 delegate take out of Pennsylvania.

This estimate presumes that Clinton will narrowly win Pittsburgh and suburbs (the 14th Congressional district), pick up +6 delegates along the New York border (CDs 10, 11 and 15), get that big 13-delegate lead in the Pennsyltucky districts, and that Obama will fight the Central southeastern rural/suburban districts – CDs 16, 17 and 19 – to a delegate tie (again, if he doesn’t do everything right, he’s not even guaranteed that).

And just because Pennsylvania is a closed (Democrats only) primary, don’t presume that the Rush Limbaugh factor won’t also help Clinton out again, as it did yesterday in Mississippi (they were the better part of the 15 percent of Clinton voters that told exit pollsters that they would be dissatisfied with a Clinton nomination (compared to just 4 percent of Obama voters on their candidate).

From Rush Limbaugh’s “Rush In a Hurry” daily newsletter yesterday:

“We don’t need Hillary to win until Pennsylvania, so there’s no need for Mississippians to crossover. In fact, let’s hope Obama takes it. That’ll lead to more chaos in Denver.”

The fact is that Limbaugh commands a huge Pennsylvania listenership, among them registered Democrats that wouldn’t normally vote in a Democratic primary between a Clinton and an Obama. He will get them out. (To give an idea of the monster he has created, even as he told his listeners yesterday that, “there’s no need for Mississippians to crossover,” he’s made it too fun for them to stay away.) And don’t think that Geraldine Ferraro’s blitzkrieg bop media tour and Bill Clinton’s appearance on Rush’s show (with a guest host) last week weren’t explicitly aimed at stoking those fires.

Simply put: If Obama (and supporters) set expectations for a knockout punch in Pennsylvania, they will be giving oxygen to a gasping Clinton machine on its last breaths. But if they keep Pennsylvania in perspective (no single state has determined the nomination, although New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio were all frantically seen and spun as such in their moments), they’ll emerge from the coming Pennsylvania Clinton victory – a kind of Last Hurrah for the politics of the last century – to cross into the 21st century beginning in early May.

Important in that equation is to keep in mind: Democratic primary results, state by state, or region by region, have never correlated with general election results in the same places. The “big state” argument is pure fallacy and invention. Clearly, Obama and his supporters will, and need to, fight for every vote and delegate in Pennsylvania, and do what they can to keep the popular vote margin down. They’ll continue donating and making calls to try to narrow the gap from a +26 delegate lead for Clinton to perhaps a +20 lead (and to keep the dial from moving in the other direction), but they should be under no illusion – no matter what the final barrage of polls and tail-wagging pundits tease – that a closed primary in Pennsylvania, with the regional delegate breakdown that exists, is somehow winnable, short of a Spitzer-like moment for Senator Clinton between now and April 22.

http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=888#comments