Election Night: Obama wins Mississippi, Carson holds IN-07 for Dems

As expected, Barack Obama won the Mississippi primary. Exit polls indicate that Clinton could have crossed 40%, and while we will have to wait for the final results to know the delegate spread there is a possibility that she can cut her losses since she kept it close in the state's white regions, while Obama ran up the margins in the predominantly black areas.

The vote was as racially polarized as we have seen all year: Obama got 92% of the black vote (to Clinton's 8%), and Clinton 70% of the white vote (to Obama's 26%) -- that's a 128% racial gap. That also means that Clinton's margin of defeat was probably as good as Clinton could have hoped for. She has not gotten that much higher among the African-American vote throughout the primaries, but she has never ended up with this big a share of the white vote.

More confirmation of how the two electoral coalitions differ: The third of the electorate that has a good impression of McCain votes overwhelmingly for Clinton, the two thirds that have an unfavorable one go overwhelmingly for Obama. And 3/4th of Clinton backers in Mississippi said they would be dissatisfied if Obama was the nominee, a much higher proportion than what we are used to seeing. Clearly, Mississippi's conservative (white) Democrats do not trust Obama and do not want to see him as the nominee, most evidently because of racial factors.

Meanwhile, the special election in IN-07 has not been called yet -- and with 42% of the vote it is very tight. Carson is leading 50% to 47%, which is only about 700 votes. It's not possible to know how many of the ballots come from Indianapolis since all the results are from Marion County; late ballots tend to be more urban so that should favor Carson as more ballots are counted. Needless to say that if Elrod were to win that would be a huge relief for the NRCC a few days after their loss in IL-14, and merely keeping it close will allow them to argue that special elections are unpredictable and that no trend should be read in Foster's victory. For a background of this race, check here.

Update: Carson did increase his lead as all ballots got counted. He won 54% to 43%, a 9,000 vote margin. And he therefore holds the seat for Democrats, some of which were slightly worried about what might happen here. This makes Carson the second Muslim representative ever elected to Congress.

In Mississippi, Obama won 61% to 37%, so Clinton failed to cross the arbitrary 40% threshold I had proposed for her. But as I predicted after seeing exit polls, Clinton managed to cut her losses among delegates, a rare case in which it is her rival and not her that is hurt by the delegate attribution rules. Because Obama failed to cross the 62.5% threshold he splits the statewide delegates 6-5. Overall, Clinton kept it close in the state's white regions (she won the 1st congressional district), so Obama ends up with a 5 delegate lead: 19-14.

Mississippi votes, and candidates argue about the race card... again

It's Mississippi's turn to go to the polls today -- the last Democratic contest until April 22nd. For the first time of this entire campaign season, I will not be able to liveblog the results since I am traveling. A detailed analysis will naturally be posted first thing in the morning.

The polls close at 8pm CT, and Barack Obama is the overwhelming favorite to win this race. Mississippi could be the primary featuring the highest proportion of black voters, though that will also probably mean that the electorate will be that much more racially polarized (a poll last week suggested that Clinton could get as much as 70% of the white vote). And two new polls released today show Obama comfortably ahead -- though perhaps by less than what he is allowed to hope for:

• ARG shows him up 54% to 38%. That's an 8% improvement for Clinton over a few days, as she was led 58% to 24% in the previous ARG poll. 65% of whites vote Clinton, and only 15% of blacks.
  
• Insider Advantage comes out with the opposite trendline but ends up with roughly the same lead for Obama: They had the Illinois Senator only up by 6% last week, though they specified that they were finding many undecided black voters who were likely to end up in Obama's camp. And indeed today's results show Obama up 54% to 37%.
  

Despite the lack of suspense, the results will be very important; as always, the margin of victory is just as significant as the victor. Clinton's challenge will be to hold Obama's margin as little as possible; a good result for her could be to break 40% (she got 27% in SC and 31% in GA). Mississippi only awards 33 delegates, so she could then limit the delegate spread more than we are used to seeing from Southern states. And don't underestimate the importance of any extra delegate Obama gains here: Clinton is playing an improbable game of delegate catchup, and she did not really accomplish anything to this end on March 4th. At this point, she needs every single delegate she can get.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign is losing control of Geraldine Ferraro, known as the first female VP candidate of a major party back in 1984. The Torrance Daily Breeze published an interview of her yesterday in which she said that Obama was only winning because he was a black male:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

This instantaneously created a controversy, with most commentators deriding the suggestion that Obama was having an easy time as a black candidate with a name that Republicans are so excited about repeating in its full form. Obama aide Axelrod clamored for Ferrero's head ("Ferraro should be denounced and censured by the campaign") but the Clinton campaign refused to do anything about the comments, with Hillary granting a "It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides, because we’ve both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this on the issues."

The Clinton campaign proceeded to imply that Obama was seeking to divide the country, i.e. that he was purposefully playing the race card here to once again accuse the Clinton camp of racism and build up sympathy. This is an argument they had use in South Carolina as well, angry at what they saw as a media frenzy to distort the Clintons' words and frustrated that Obama was willing to feed that frenzy. And to some degree the Clinton's push-back was legitimate. I noted back in January that Hillary's quote on King and Johnson had been cut of an important qualifying part and that Bill's fairytale speech was very explicitly devoted to the Iraq War and nothing else.

But Ferraro is taking the argument much further than Clinton ever did, turning the "Obama is playing the race card" push-back into its own caricature and thereby undermining her own credibility. Here's how Ferraro reacted to the controversy today:

Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?

That the Clinton campaign is refusing to denounce Ferraro (without really going as far as defending her) suggests she might be content to be letting the race issue back in the conversation... not that it really worked last time. Is this part of making a play for white ethnics and other groups of voters who might sympathize with Ferraro's comments? We saw in Ohio last week that that is the constituency that could save her, after all. Frankly, Ferraro's attacks seem way to transparent to give the impression of being part of a coherent strategy but we will know in the coming days how the Clinton campaign chooses to deal with this.

Obama wins the Wyoming caucuses

Obama scored one more caucus victory today by winning Wyoming. With 19 out of 23 counties reporting (including the state's 3 largest), Obama is leading 59% to 40% -- and that's a total of about 7,000 votes. The 4 remaining counties are only starting their caucuses now, and the results will be known in the coming hours. It is refreshing to deal with a caucus in a state that actually releases its results, unlike Texas where the count is stuck at 41% of precincts reporting.

Wyoming awards 12 delegates, and Obama has to cross 64% to obtain a 9-5 split. Considering that the remaining counties award fewer state convention delegates, it seems very unlikely that he will manage to do so, and the state's delegate breakdown will most likely be 7 delegates for Obama and 5 for Clinton. This represents somewhat of an improvement for Clinton, as one of the main reasons she is in so much trouble right now is that she was repeatedly crushed in caucuses -- especially in deep red states such as Wyoming. She got 17% of the vote in Idaho (for a 15-3 delegate split!), and was 20 delegates behind in Colorado and 24 in Minnesota.

Unlike most of these previous contests, Clinton did actively try to move numbers in Wyoming, as her husband campaigned there on Thursday and she did on Friday -- something she had not done in other caucuses, which she often deliberately shunned. There is no question that this is one of the biggest strategic blunders any presidential candidate committed in this cycle, and it is very surprising that it came from the seasoned Clinton campaign. More than anything, it speaks to their belief that the campaign would end on February 5th, whereas Obama knew that his only to win the nomination was to survive Super Tuesday and then take the lead in subsequent contests. The Clinton campaign now can only imagine what might have been if they had ran one or two ads in the cheap Idaho market or sent Clinton to Colorado and Minnesota for a few events.

Meanwhile, candidates are turning their attention to other upcoming states, starting with Mississippi (on Tuesday) but also those voting on May 6th (North Carolina and Indiana). It looks like Obama's strategy might be to minimize the importance of Pennsylvania on April 22nd to avoid making that state's primary -- in which Clinton looks to be starting with an edge -- decisive. Rasmussen came out with two interesting surveys today:

• In Mississippi, Obama is ahead 53% to 39%. Obama is ahead by 68% among black voters, and Clinton is up 47% among whites voters -- a stunning racial polarization that confirms the findings of yesterday's polls from ARG and IA.
• Meanwhile, Rasmussen found Obama leading 47% to 40% in North Carolina.

Both candidates have some good news in these surveys. Obama will clearly win in Mississippi and has an early edge in North Carolina. But Clinton can be reassured that she is not being blown away in Mississippi the way she was in some other Southern states, and that she has a fighting chance in North Carolina, a state that appeared to be rapidly moving away from her a few weeks ago. This is the second poll showing her trailing only narrowly, and especially if she benefits from momentum out of Pennsylvania she could hope to have a good night yet again on May 6th.

Friday polls: Diverging margins in Mississippi, and the state of do-over primaries

The Democratic candidates are preparing for two more contests in the next few days -- Wyoming and Mississippi -- on which there has been no public polling. Until today, that is. Two polls were released of the Mississippi primary, which is expected to go heavily for Obama. The share of the African-American population in this primary could be higher than in any other contest's -- but these polls suggest that the higher a state's black population the more whites vote for Clinton. We had witnessed this racial polarization in South Carolina and Georgia, and now here it is in Mississippi:

• ARG shows Obama leading 58% to 34%, a very large margin that hides big disparities: Clinton wins white voters 61% to 22%, while Obama carries African American voters 87% to 11%.


• Insider Advantage -- which has had a very good track record in most states it has polled, and which picked up Clinton's Texas rise first -- shows Obama up only 46% to 40%. Now, IA itself acknowledges that Obama's margin is likely higher because a full 20% of black voters tested in this poll are undecided, putting Obama at 66% -- he will almost certainly be much higher on Tuesday. But IA also shows Clinton winning an astonishing 71.8% of the white vote.


• Another very strange result in which both polls are consistent is that Clinton does better among men than among women, which suggests that Mississippi white men are not willing to back a black candidate...

If this level of racial polarization holds on Tuesday, it would provoke some very strange delegate distribution scenarios, as Clinton and Obama would both be close to being shut out in different parts of the state depending on the racial make-up of different districts.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen came out with two very interesting polls today from Florida and Michigan, testing the two candidates in possible do-overs. The results are very different:

• In Michigan, Clinton and Obama tie at 41%. In January, Clinton had gotten 55% of the vote without any opposition.
• In Florida, Clinton gets 55% to Obama's 39%, which is a healthy lead. On January 29th, Clinton had beaten Obama 50% to 30%.

It goes without saying that Clinton is likely a few points below Obama in a Michigan caucus if she can only tie him in a primary, so that poll is not a good sign for the Clinton campaign. One of their most important arguments is Obama's inability to win the largest states, and an Obama win in Michigan -- particularly after Clinton broke 50% on January 15th -- would make it much more difficult for Clinton to put forward her big state edge.

Another interesting poll this morning -- also from Rasmussen -- tests the South Dakota presidential race:

• McCain beats Clinton 50% to 38%, and beat Obama 48% to 38%.
• Yesterday's SUSA poll of South Dakota had McCain up Obama by 4% and up Clinton by 12% as well.

A very Republican state that Bush won by overwhelming margins, South Dakota is much closer than anyone would expect in both of these polls.While it is very unlikely that either Democrat will end up within single-digits in South Dakota (and if they have a chance of winning here it probably means that they are on their way to routing McCain). But it does coincidence with a lot of evidence that the Mountain states -- usually among the most reliable for Republicans -- are flirting with Democrats this time around. SUSA showed Obama with a narrow lead in North Dakota and taking some electoral votes in Nebraska.

Finally, we have a few polls from congressional races:

• Rasmussen accompanies its presidential poll with a Senate survey (it's actually the other way around), and it confirms that Democratic Senator Johnson has very little to fear next year. He crushes both his (declared and potential) Republican opponents by significant margins and gets 62% and 63%.


• Meanwhile, Michigan pollster EPIC releases a survey from MI-07, where Democrats are confident they can get freshman Rep. Walberg in trouble. The poll shows Walberg leading Democrat Schauer 51% to 40%, but after a biography of both candidates is read the Democratic candidate edges out Walberg 49% to 48%.

Polls with biographies are obviously very shady, since no candidate gets to define himself in a vacuum, and no House candidate can possibly introduce himself to 100% of voters (not even close). The poll does show a baseline vulnerability for Walberg, but he does get above 50% in the first match-up, and that should reassure him a bit. But given the financial advantage the DCCC has over its counterpart this cycle, they are sure to test incumbents like Walberg and unless the RNCC can step in to help he is likely to see his numbers drop in the coming months.