News from the VotemasterHillary's back from the dead. She won Ohio handily and appears to be headed to a razor-thin victory in the Texas primary based on the preliminary results. In the Texas caucus, with 36% of the precincts reporting, Obama is leading 52% to 48% so it is hard to determine what the final delegate count will be. Obama won Vermont and Clinton won Rhode Island as expected. Here are the NY Times vote totals as of 10 a.m. EST, but these may change later in the day.
Now let us look at Texas and Ohio a bit more closely. Here is a map (from the NY Times) of who carried which county. It is quite surprising. Basically Clinton won all the rural counties and Obama won the cities. If this were the general election it is precisely what we would expect. One candidate (the Republican) wins all the rural areas and another candidate (the Democrat) wins all the cities. In this case Clinton is the Republican and Obama is the Democrat. Now let us look at the exit polls. First Texas. White men split evenly, with Clinton getting 50% and Obama getting 49%. In previous states Obama did much better among white men than Clinton. It is likely that her attack ad (the 3 a.m. phone ad) worked. Forecast: attack ads will subside this week, then pick up strength in April and continue until reaching gale force in November. Among women, Clinton won a huge victory, 59% to 40%. Black men and women went overwhelmingly for Obama by over 70% with no difference by gender. Income didn't seem to matter. Clinton won by 2% among the downscale crowd and Obama won by 4% among the upscale crowd. In previous states Obama had huge margins among voters making over $50,000. Not this time. The breakdown by educational level conformed to past states with Clinton winning high school dropouts by 44% and losing college graduates 57% to 41%. Liberals and conservatives voted the same way. Noteworthy is that Protestants went for Obama by 7% but Catholics went for Clinton by 27%. It could be because in Texas many Catholics are Latinos. In Ohio, which has been hard hit by the economy, Clinton won solid victories among white men (11%) and white womenen (32%). She also won heavily among voters over 65 (67% to 31%) but lost among younger voters (67% to 32%), precisely what we have seen before. She won a small victory among voters under $100,000 (51% to 48%) and lost narrowly among richer voters (54% to 46%). Education gave the usual picture, with HS graduates heavily tilting to Clinton (by 27%) and poeple with college and postgraduate degrees going for Obama strongly. The two candidates split the Protestant vote evenly but Clinton won by 19% among Catholic voters. Ohio does not have many Latinos, so something else is going on here. Interestingly enough, union membership didn't make much difference. On the Republican side, John McCain clinched the nomination and Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race. Here are some preliminary delegate totals. These will change as the day goes on. In particular, the Texas caucus results are not known yet. Delegates
Needed to win: Democrats 2025, Republicans 1191. Here is another source for delegate totals. -- The Votemaster |