Guest post by Scan
I get the feeling that the media and some Democratic elites were anxiously waiting for a disappointing night for Clinton to declare the race over. We should expect nothing less, considering all that we have seen. But even before Hillary won the Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, a lot of us saw a challenging day to overcome shortly thereafter. We saw that come to pass two days ago. However, it’s not too hard to see that the post-May 6th contests may well change the equation.
Yesterday on NPR’s On Point, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell laid it out:
I think we should let every state vote. I think Senator Clinton is going to win crushing victories in West Virginia and Kentucky and Puerto Rico and hold her own in the other states…People should take advantage of the polls and figure out the electoral math…It’s going to be an interesting three or four weeks. Let the people vote, and I would suggest that if there is any way to let Michigan and Florida vote, I would love to have seen it. We tried to work to get Michigan to approve a new primary, the DNC was for it, but unfortunately the Obama folks killed it in the Michigan legislature…
“Crushing” may well be no exaggeration. According to Rasmussen, Clinton holds a 29 point lead over Obama, and Susan at No Quarter has up a brand new poll that has Clinton up 40 points (63% to 23%) in West Virginia, which also happens to be a key swing state needed in November.
In Kentucky, Clinton leads by 34 according to SurveyUSA and by 25 according to Rasmussen.
How big would it be if Clinton’s victories in West Virginia and Kentucky are by these margins? We can guess. Adding together the populations of these two states, we get a number that approaches the population of Virginia. Obama won Virginia by 29%…about 275,000 votes. If Clinton adds something close to this many votes to her total, she catapults herself back into the popular vote lead with all contests counted and estimates from four caucus states.
From there, it would just be a matter of keeping things close in Oregon, South Dakota and Montana, and winning Puerto Rico. There is less polling information available to get a good estimate for Puerto Rico, but there’s a single poll at Pollster.com that has Clinton leading by 13 points. She’s got a lot going for her there and is definitely favored.
The fact is… if these numbers hold up (no wishful thinking involved), Hillary Clinton will emerge as the popular vote winner at the end of her contest with Barack Obama. She will also have won the key Democratic states required for victory against John McCain. For these two reasons and more, it is a completely rational scenario that Hillary Clinton can end up with this nomination. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because they know full well what’s in store for Obama in the remaining contests.
But it all starts with West Virginia next week. Are you in?
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