It appears as if many of the constituencies that Hillary claims (via her surrogates) Obama cannot win without her on the ticket are moving to Obama with or without her. Here are the numbers:
According to CNN's 2004 exit poll, John Kerry won among women 51% to 48%. In the latest Survey USA poll, Obama wins among women 51% to 40% with 9% undecided (so Obama will out perform Kerry if only 1/10 of the undecideds break for him - it will probably be better than half for him). Interestingly, Obama's advantage among women dissapears if he nominates Kathleen Sebelius or Clinton booster Ed Rendell as his running mate but actually grows if he nominates Edwards. Figuring that one out will take some thought.
John Kerry won among Hispanics/Latinos 53% to 44%. Survey USA has Obama winning among that group 64% to 32% with 4% undecided.
John Kerry won among Independents 49% to 48% (basically a tie). Survey USA has Obama winning among Independents 45% to 41% with 14% undecided (again, Obama outperforms Kerry even if undecided Independents break overwhelmingly for McCain).
So among those three groups, Obama is already outperforming Kerry who came very close to beating Bush.
Here is Obama's secret weapon: Kerry got only 6% of Republicans to vote for him. Obama currently polls at 17% among Republicans. Bush got about 11% of Democrats to vote for him and right now, McCain is polling about 10% among Democrats. So McCain has no more appeal among Democrats than Bush did and Obama has about triple the appeal among Republicans that Kerry did. What's more according to the CNN exit poll for 2004, 37% of the voters were Democrats and 37% were Republicans. But according to Survey USA, Democrats now outnumber Republicans among respondents (registered voters) 41% to 33%. So, McCain is having trouble maintaining party loyalty at the same time as his party is demobilizing.
What does this mean? Two things. Most importantly it means that Obama is looking like he is in great shape to beat McCain in November. Second, it means that Hillary would be well advised to get on the Obama train before it leaves the station. Her constituents are already starting to move on without her. The longer she prevaricates about throwing her full support behind Obama (witness the last several days of alternating announcements of concession and vows to keep going), the less influence she will have. The longer she waits the weaker and less decisive she looks and the less credible are her claims to leadership among critical constituencies. Indeed, she may already have missed her chance to really use the leverage she gained in the close primary contest.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Democratic Unification
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 6:06 AM
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5 comments:
You have probably heard already, but in case you have not: Hillary will give the concession/endorsement speech at the farewell event this weekend. Her campaign has also stated explicitly that the VP decision is Obama's and Obama's alone.
There...was that so hard?
It's a shame she had to be so publicly scolded by her supporters in the Congressional delegation to get there.
This is all a lot of inside baseball, you know. There's still lots of folks who support Clinton and think she won the "silver" in this race - therefore expecting her to get the consolation prize. That will take some time to fix, even though the truth is that awarding her that prize would make him look weak and hurt him in November.
You know we forget that every time there is an obvious second place finisher in a primary race, the press go gaga over the idea of putting #2 on the ticket. But in the end, it rarely happens.
As I recall there was a lot of talk about GHW Bush picking Dole or Kemp or Robertson but he went with Dan "The speak Latin in Latin America" Quayle.
The noise is louder this time because the race was that much closer.
2004 - Kerry picked Edwards (sort of a #2)
2000 - Bush did NOT pick McCain. Gore did NOT pick Bradley.
1996 - Dole did NOT pick Buchanan
1992 - Clinton did NOT pick Tsongas
1988 - Dukakis did NOT pick Jesse Jackson; Bush did NOT pick Robertson, Dole, or Kemp (as RBR mentioned).
1984 - Mondale did NOT pick Hart
1980 - Reagan picked Bush, the #2.
1976 - Carter did NOT pick any of his rivals (there were several, but no #2 emerged); Ford did NOT pick Reagan.
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