SUPER TUESDAY TRUTH - February 8, 2008
Voters in half the United States turned out on Tuesday for the quasi-national Super Tuesday primaries, spread across 22 states. An election once expected to be crucial in settling both major party nomination races played that role only for Republicans, for whom a series of often closely contested votes nevertheless delivered a decisive win for John McCain. On the Democratic side the results were almost perfectly inconclusive, leaving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama nearly equally poised in their contest.
On the Republican side, McCain was fortunate in his enemies – or at least in having two of them, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. After Florida a week ago, Huckabee was regarded as a marginalized candidate, appealing only to evangelicals. These, however, are a sizeable portion of the Republican base, especially in the South, and he ended up winning five states on Tuesday. More important he divided the more conservative Republican vote, which would otherwise have gone largely to Mitt Romney. Thus what might have been a rather disappointing evening for McCain was nevertheless decisive.
On top of a divided opposition, McCain benefitted enormously from the Republican primary rules, which award most states on a winner-take all basis, in contrast to the Democrats' proportional rules. Thus for example while both McCain and Obama narrowly won in Missouri, McCain got all of its Republican delegates, while Obama and Hillary will divide the Democratic delegates more or less evenly. Altogether McCain won 568 delegates Tuesday, to 176 for Romney and 147 for Huckabee, out of 1191 needed for the Republican nomination. McCain has not yet secured the nomination, but an upheaval in the race would be needed to keep him from getting it.
McCain faces subtler difficulties now than winning the nomination. His big successes on Tuesday came largely in large, urban "blue" states, such as New York and California – states that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are nearly certain to win in the fall. He fared less well in the "red" states that Republicans rely on in general elections. Prominent conservative voices in the GOP remain uncomfortable or downright hostile toward him. A few, such as commentator Ann Coulter, have threatened to support Hillary Clinton against him – the equivalent, in Republican circles, of a zealous monarchist endorsing Robespierre. This is doubtless mere posturing, but it points to the difficulty McCain will have in unifying the GOP base in the fall.
For Democrats the good news is that their voters are already united and enthusiastic – large majorities of each candidate's supporters like the other one as well, yet some 11 million Democrats turned out to vote, compared to about seven million Republicans. The bad news is that they are no closer to having a nominee than they were on Monday. Super Tuesday, instead of deciding the race as once expected, delivered a split verdict and a near perfect tie. Obama won most of the individual states being contested, eight out of 14, but Hillary won the largest prizes and a razor thin majority of the total popular vote.
The measure that actually matters – delegates to the nominating convention – is not yet settled, due to complex rules that apportion delegates proportionally by congressional district. The number of delegates won on Tuesday is not likely to differ by more than a handful, out of nearly 1700 at stake. Hillary will be left leading overall by rather less than 100 delegates, out of 2025 needed for the nomination, but even this edge lies largely in so-called superdelegates. These are elected Democrats, automatically seated as delegates, whose pledges of loyalty to Hillary are like all campaign promises: provisional.
Who wins a tie? Each campaign has a narrative. If you compare the results on 5 February with polling in mid-January, Obama scored spectacular gains, coming from far behind to score a photo finish. Yet in spite of his enormous "mo," and an extravaganza of favorable media coverage – any candidate's dream finish – he came up no better than even. At liberal blogs (where Obama supporters predominate), the reaction as the returns came in was mild deflation for Obama supporters, who had hoped he would blast past Hillary, and enormous relief among Hillary supporters, who had feared precisely that.
I am no impartial observer, having cast my vote yesterday for Hillary. Having said that, an honest assessment may be that for Democrats it is the fall of 1914: No swift victory is at hand, and both sides are digging into the trenches. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have each assembled support coalitions that embrace about half of the Democratic Party. For Obama it is higher income and college educated Democrats and Democratic-voting independents; young voters; and African Americans. For Hillary it is working class voters other than African Americans – including large majorities of Latinos – plus older Democrats; and among all these groups especially women.
Unlike the ideologically charged Republican race, the lines of division in the Democratic race have very little to do with distinctions of right or left (save to a limited degree on Iraq). Rather it is broadly a contest between Democrats who are worried for the country, but less immediately for themselves or their families, and Democrats who are worried for both. The former gravitate toward Obama – whose slogan is The Audacity of Hope – while the latter tend toward Hillary, who offers herself as an effective problem solver.
Both candidates seem to have consolidated their coalitions. Obama won the African American vote overwhelmingly, as he did in South Carolina. As in South Carolina he lagged among Southern white Democrats, but only slightly – doing at least as well, perhaps, as a white candidate with a similar campaign message would have done. He continued to draw an enormous youth vote, even in a semi-national election in which he could reach few of them through direct public events as he did in the small early states.
On the other hand, for Obama the audacity of the Ted Kennedy endorsement fell short. Kennedy is hugely popular with older base Democrats, including Latinos, as well as being a living link to the Democrats' myth of Camelot. His endorsement was surely intended as an entrée for Obama into Hillary's base, but failed to sway voters, particularly in California, where Hillary won handily in the face of late polls suggesting that Obama might be closing the gap.
The remaining half of the country will vote in a series of primaries extending into early June. On the Republican side, John McCain is already campaigning to consolidate the party rather than tactically to win the nomination. On the Democratic side the contest from here is likely to be largely tactical, a delegate-by-delegate struggle for advantage, combined with efforts by both candidates to broaden their message just enough to bring over a few voters from the other camp.
For American political junkies, especially Democrats, it is a good time to grab a hot dog, because the show is only beginning.
Rick Robinson
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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.
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