In Pennsylvania, What Constitutes a Win?

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: April 22, 2008
In Pennsylvania, What Constitutes a Win?
By Adam Nagourney

The Democratic presidential contest between Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama in Pennsylvania today will offer a new test of what exactly “a win” is. There are many potential different outcomes, and you can be sure the campaigns will be pointing to all kinds of things in trying to claim victory in this first contest in six weeks.

Some outcomes will defy the spin of even the best campaign. If Mrs. Clinton loses tonight, her candidacy is almost certainly finished. She may say she is going on when she takes the stage in Philadelphia after the polls close, but the reality is she is effectively out of money and a loss would not exactly send her already shaken donors heading for their checkbooks. What is more, Pennsylvania is a state where Mrs. Clinton had expected a big win, given early polls and the fact that the state seemed so demographically attuned to her appeal. A loss would remove any constraints uncommitted superdelegates — elected Democrats and party leaders — might have felt about standing back to let the primaries run their course.

Conversely, if Mrs. Clinton defeats Mr. Obama by a significant margin – think over 10 percentage points – it would give her the rationale to go on. Depending on what exit polls reveal about the nature of Mr. Obama’s loss – in particular, is he continuing to struggle among white blue-collar voters? — it would reinforce questions Mrs. Clinton’s aides have been pressing about Mr. Obama’s general election appeal, giving her one more argument to use with superdelegates. Even Mrs. Clinton’s supporters acknowledge that it would require some enormous shift in the dynamics of the campaign for Mrs. Clinton to ultimately win the nomination; but this at least would give her a few more weeks for lightning to strike.

Where things get murky is if Mrs. Clinton wins by fewer than 10 percentage points. Mrs. Clinton would almost certain try to claim victory with that kind of outcome, and explain the showing by pointing to the fact that Mr. Obama outspent her dramatically in the state, and campaigned aggressively in the final days there. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, while confident of winning, were already moving this morning to blunt the attempts by Mr. Obama to discount any win that isn’t less than big. “A win is a win is a win,” said Phil Singer, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman.

That is an argument that is easier to sustain if her victory margin is, say, 8 percentage points, than if it drops below 5 percentage points, where the Clinton campaign may find fewer people are listening....

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/in-pennsylvania-what-constitutes-a-win/index.html?hp

[rocktivity]

1. Hillary's "magic number" is 65; Obama's is 45

that's the percentage of the vote each will have to win in order to claim a genuine victory.

With 65% of the vote in PA, Hillary takes her first step towards getting close enough to Obama to be able to throw herself on the mercy of the superdelegates effectively. But it would be only the first of ten steps--she'll have to pull off the same feat in ALL the remaining contests. She needs a minimum 25-point margin of victory: Anything less--and any interpetation of it as anything more--is wheel-spinning spearheaded by a national media in whose interest it is to keep the story going.

Obama, on the other hand, needs around 45 per cent of the vote because 1) it would PREVENT Hillary from getting more than 60 per cent, and 2) after being written off as being twenty points down, ending up ten points down doesn't suck at all. Again, the media will blow the margin out of porportion, calling it either a "major" loss with far-reaching implications or by insising that he had always been the frontunner. But Obama has been keeping his eyes on the real prize--a delegate lead too insurmountable to allow Hillary to make a credible appeal to the superdelegates. He's not the one who has to prove that he knows how close he can fly to the sun.

:headbang:
rocknation

[Sinistrous]

2. 95 delegates.