Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Annoying 2008 Election Update: The W's

With a primary in Wisconsin and a caucus in Hawaii yesterday, Washington couldn't miss out on such a W heavy day and had a primary to complement their caucus (which was like a week ago), but Wyoming and West Virginia ain't got time for this nonsense. The results were as expected: Obama and McCain won everything handily.

Obama won the Hawaii caucus with 76% of the vote which is hardly surprising given his advantage with caucus voters and history with Hawaii (like Mitt Romney, part of Barack Obama's appeal is he's from everywhere), but that's still a hefty margin of victory, albeit in a small state. He also won the meaningless Washington primary by a slim margin (all Democratic party delegates were assigned at the caucus) which is still significant because it robs the Clinton campaign of a big PR victory if Obama supporters on caucus night all stayed home for the primary figuring there was nothing at stake and they'd already voted once.

The big prize is Wisconsin, which along with Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas was supposed to form the Clinton firewall: the states where more conservative, practical voters with economic issues on their minds would turn out for Hillary Clinton and arrest the momentum of the Obama campaign. Instead Obama came away with a big win with a couple of weeks to crow about it before the next round of primaries. Practically it's not that meaningful, since Obama only picked up 19 more delegates than Clinton yesterday, and Ohio and Texas are the real must-win states for her campaign (and I may be mistaken lumping Wisconsin in with Ohio and Texas as a firewall state).

On the Republican side, McCain won in Washington where half the state's delegates were up for grabs (the other half were assigned at the caucus, or would be if they'd ever finish counting the ballots) and also won in Wisconsin. He is still a significant ways away from securing the nomination, but he is inching closer to the point where Huckabee could release his delegates to McCain and give him the nomination. I have no earthly idea why Mitt Romney is hanging onto his delegates, because he has 286 and McCain only needs 270, and Romney made big speech about how if we don't all support the Republican frontrunner the terrorists win. Huckabee is at least angling for a job in the McCain administration (like vice president). Nothing much will change in the next couple weeks for the Republicans as they have a series of island primaries in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and several other unforgettable islands I couldn't point out on a map (and I still have no idea who won in Guam).

Delegates State Super Total
Obama 1184 162.5* 1346.5
Clinton 1023 240 1263

(*-I have no idea why he has half a superdelegate either)

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