Random Observations from Super Tuesday

I have a lot to say about Super Tuesday. But instead of recapping all the races and results, I’m just going to share a few observations I had.

1. Huckabee staying in the race after a poor showing in Florida (and everywhere else except Iowa) was the best thing that could have happened for McCain. Huckabee took very few votes from McCain, but split a lot of the conservative/religious vote with Romney, allowing McCain to grab states and delegates he would have lost had he been running against only Romney. This was especially important in conservative, winner-take-all states like Missouri.

2. Hillary Clinton won New York (as expected) and California, and Barack Obama won Illinois (as expected). But what about those all-important swing states? No matter who the Democratic candidate is, they’ll carry California, New York, and Illinois in November. Perhaps what we should be focusing on, however, is which candidate is taking states like Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, New Hampshire, and Ohio. And the picture is perfectly unclear, just like everything else so far on the Dems' side.

   There were 20 states that were considered swing states by various media outlets in the 2004 election (although it was a lot fewer than that that were truly up for grabs). So far, Clinton has won six of those states (Nevada, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, and New Hampshire, although Florida and Michigan don’t get any delegates at the DNC) and Obama has won five (Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Delaware). Maine, Washington, Oregon, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Louisiana are still to come, and the results for New Mexico haven’t yet been announced. Both Obama and Clinton performed well in Democratic base states, and each won swing states, deciding once and for all that nothing has been decided yet.
   

   Not so much for McCain, though. He won a lot of delegates in states that he has no chance of winning in November (namely, California, New York, and Illinois). In Republican base states, such as Alabama and Georgia, however, he lost to Huckabee. This is summed up really well in this New York Times blog, which also touches on turnout, so I’ll just let them do my work for me.

3. McCain has more or less sewn up the Republican nomination. Clinton and Obama, however, will be campaigning for weeks to come. This could give McCain a slight advantage since he'll have extra time to rest and fund-raise instead of constantly campaigning, and he'll be able to try to get his party's conservative base not to hate him before campaigning against the Democratic nominee. Or. It could kill his momentum, allowing Clinton or Obama to ride the wave after their nomination all the way to November.

   I can see it happening like the New York Giants postseason run. Instead of resting their starters after they locked up their playoff spot with two games to go in the regular season like a lot of teams do (I'm looking at you, Colts!), they played everyone against the Patriots in Week 17. They took the game down to the wire (foreshadowing! Yay!) and rode that momentum to the Super Bowl, taking down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round (after the Bucs sat most of their starters in the last two weeks of the regular season) and the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional round (after the Cowboys' starters barely played in Week 17). And after a fantastic NFC Championship game against the Packers in -195 degree weather, they got another shot at the Pats and, despite being statistically one of the worst teams ever to play in a Super Bowl, took home the Lombardi (big news, I know, but I had to take the analogy all the way to the end).

   So who will be who in this race? Will McCain be the Bucs, getting trounced by the Dems' candidate after taking a little post-victory vacation from campaigning? Will Obama or Clinton be the Giants and ride their momentum all the way to the White House? Will McCain be the G-Men? Will I ever stop asking questions that I can't answer?

Related
Two Parties, Two Distinct Paths to the Nomination
Support Divided, Democrats Trade Victories
McCain Surges; Huckabee Strong in the South
Burned by Bad Polls, Networks Try Restraint
Divided They Run