North Carolina-Indiana Primaries’ Near-Dead Thread
12:30 a.m. — Oops. Took a longer nap than anticipated.
Looks like the spin will probably be the “big” win in NC for Obama and the narrow escape for Hillary in IN (with Obama still having an outside shot of winning in a photo-finish).
Fair enough on IN. But the real question in North Carolina should be, “How did Obama get only 35% of the non-African-American vote?” I’m not kidding:
Take the items in yellow as “givens,” and the item in orange is the forced result.
Obama won every demographic group except white females in South Carolina.
If it turns out that African-Americans cast half of the votes, Obama’s percentage of the vote from all other groups drops to 24.1%.
They’ll spin at will, but the reality is that NC represents quite a deterioration in Obama’s support from 3-1/2 months ago.
10:05 p.m. — Going to get away from watching paint dry. Will be back at about 11:30 p.m.
9:50 p.m. — Obama’s lead at ABC’s link is 14% in NC with 56% counted, while Hillary’s is down to 4% in Indiana. I don’t think either candidate can claim an impressive win tonight. Obama needed to win by 20% to get back to a semblance of where he was in demographically similar South Carolina, which he won by 28%. If I’m right that the rural and small-town white-dominated vote comes in later, then Obama hasn’t done that. Hillary, though, should have done better in Indiana, though there may have been a previously undetected next-door neighbor effect that broke for Obama.
9:35 p.m. — The drama remains in the margins, as Obama wins NC and Clinton wins IN (there seems to be a sliver of doubt about IN). It looks like the 90% or so African-American vote for Obama held in NC. Obama is up 20% in NC, Clinton up 4% - 6% in IN.
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All right, the two “biggies” are tonight.
As with Pennsylvania, it’s a near-dead thread because the results are provisional at best, irrelevant at worst. That’s because even pledged delegates are NOT bound to vote as they have pledged when the Democratic convention is held in late August.
In NC — The point I speculated about this morning stands. The North Carolina Dem electorate today will be 40%-plus African-American. That’s not far from their proportion in the South Carolina primary, which the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi†Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) won by a whopping 28% in January.
Surely, if he wins by less than 20% tonight in NC, Old Media will say that Obama underperformed. Wright Right? Unfortunately, no.
I think the thing to watch for in the Tar Heel state is whether there is a signficant erosion in African-American support below the 90% we saw in almost every state until Super Tuesday for sure, and probably in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania after that. Any erosion that goes in the direction of the candidate I irreverently refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) — or even a lower-than-expected African-American turnout — should definitely get the attention of the Dem superdelegates, even more than the blue-collar white vote swinging, as many expect they will, to Hillary.
Indiana is supposedly a Hillary lock. If that indeed occurs, and especially if the margin approaches double-digits, someone should ask why Obama’s popularity in Illinois doesn’t cross state lines. Probably no one will.
Because of other commitments, I won’t be checking in until about 9:30, and will then, unless one of the two contests is dramtically cose, only comment briefly.
