Clinton Takes Pennsylvania

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won a big victory in the Pennsylvania primary that was eerily similar to her victory in Ohio about six weeks earlier. Her final margin of victory was about 9.2% over Barack Obama.

Obama won in the area around Philadelphia and in Centre County, the home of Penn State University. But she beat him up pretty bad everywhere else, including in Pittsburgh, where Obama had hoped to do well.

She received about 200,000 votes more than him, closing the gap in the national popular vote. But after millions of dollars spent, thousands of nasty ads aired, and dozens of scandals and gaffes, Clinton only won a net gain of 11 delegates. 11 delegates. That's it.

But this victory has helped her with fundraising, as she has raised more than she has raised in any single 3-day period. And she's taking advantage of all of the media attention, and is now saying that she is winning in the national popular vote, because she is including the votes from Michigan and Florida.

Okay, I understand if she counts Florida. They were both on the ballot and it seemed to be pretty even turf because they both didn't campaign there. But Michigan? Really Hillary? He wasn't even on the ballot. That's just not fair.

Anyway, she still wants to work out a deal with Florida and Michigan to either use the existing votes or have a re-vote there, but neither seems likely at this point.

But I can understand why she's pushing for this so hard. She behind by about 156 pledged delegates, that will not likely diminish much before voting ends on June 3rd. She needs all of the pledged delegates that she can muster to make her case to the superdelegates.

But now, everyone is looking ahead to the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6th.

Obama is expected to very well in North Carolina because traditionally about a third of Democratic voters in that state are African Americans--a group he does quite well with.

Right now he is ahead by about 15 points in the polls. Clinton has significantly lowered expectations there, but is going to make a great effort to do well in the state, as reflected by her new choices of staff in the state.

Indiana should be more of a battleground because the west side of the state is basically suburbs of Chicago (they get Chicago radio and TV stations), which is Obama's home turf. But the middle and east side of the state is more like Ohio and Pennsylvania, with a rural rust belt tint to it, which will favor Clinton. Right now the polls are about even.

Clinton needs to at least keep Obama's margin of victory in North Carolina to single digits and needs a strong victory in Indiana to at least come out of that day with the same deficit of pledged delegates that she came in with.

More on these races to come over the next ten days.