Breaking: Ohio Race Tightening

The problem with firewalls is that you can’t keeping moving them all the time. New Ohio poll just out, and the Obama train rolls on.

Don’t Forget Wisconsin (with UPDATE)

A few days ago the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinto was headed for Texas and Ohio, planning to make her last stand in those two states–hoping to win pledged delegates, but most importantly to build a strong case to undecided superdelegates that only SHE can win the BIG states. I think it’s a flawed strategy, but what do I know?

The strategy seems to have shifted over the past 48 hours, and now she is fighting hard for Wisconsin–apparently hoping to slow Obama’s “big mo” going into March 4, and hoping as well perhaps to blunt the economic populist message that he is now deploying.

The polls show a close race.

UPDATE: Forget Wisconsin.

Polls fail to predict 30 point margin of victory in Virginia

With 77% of Virginia precincts reporting, the numbers look like another overwhelming win for Senator Obama (Obama 63%, Clinton 35%).

 

So, why have the polls been consistently unable to predict a blowout, in fact, several punditistas were saying that Virginia would be the closest competition between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama for what punditos cleverly dubbed the Potomac Primaries. Isn’t there supposedly a media bias IN FAVOR of Senator Obama? What explains such huge wins?

 

Feb 10: Mason-Dixon (Obama 53, Clinton 37) Obama +16

Feb 9: Rasmussen (Obama 55, Clinton 37) Obama +18

Feb 8: SurveyUSA (Obama 59, Clinton 39) Obama +20

Oct 4: Washinton Post (Obama 25, Clinton 49) Clinton +24

 

Exit polls show that Senator Obama attracted two-thirds of the male vote and close to 60% of women.

To put a finer point on it, exit polls suggest that Senator Obama will edge out Senator Clinton in votes from white males, which demonstrates that his appeal is growing not just in sheer numbers, but also across demographics that had previously been split between the candidates. Senator Clinton was able to maintain her hold on white females, however.

 

I think the results from today will prove devastating in the weeks to come. Senator Clinton’s strategy to explain away the results from the post Super Tuesday races (that is eight straight loses averaging over 25 points in favor of Senator Obama) will have to be more convincing than explanation for her “I trusted George Bush on the Iraq war vote,” otherwise she’ll be watching her 17 point lead in Ohio slip away. I think her only path to the nomination is an Obama type blowout in both those states.