Just FYI, Obama is leading Clinton by a lot more than 3 delegates. Don't go by the myDD counter.

I don't think momentum has existed in this race. People are voting for the candidate they want as President most of all, since both have had an equal chance of winning.

Now if Obama wins Wisconsin and one of the two big states coming up, I think we'll see momentum, but more likely Hillary dropping out of the race before that happens.

Of course Obama has momentum.  With eight straight victories, it's silly to say that he doesn't.

The question is what happens after March 4.  Latest Rasmussen polls show Hillary leading by about 15 points in both Ohio and Texas.  If those margins hold, who will have momentum then?

Every time someone thinks they have momentum it seems that they don't. The primary has been momentumless imo.

I agree that momentum does not matter if there are 1% margins -- in that case it's just a media narrative. On the other hand, Obama's recent wins have been by big margins, like 2 to 1. Those indicate that the later races might break more in Obama's favor than current polling would suggest.

Of course it's not over until one candidate has a convincing delegate lead.

momentum does exist but it goes back and forth and also can diminish.

Off topic...

Could I get some support for a Hillary Clinton diary at Dkos?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/16/ 164511/925/467/458194

According to the Gallup tracking poll, Obama is pulling ahead in national numbers, now outside the margin of error http://www.gallup.com/poll/104383/Gallup -Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx

Senator Clinton is leaving Wisconsin a day early, on Monday morning, thereby implying that she doesn't believe she can win the state.  http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&a mp;date=2/16/2008&id=35716

It seems to me that there's no some real momentum, which will hurt Clinton's ability to win enough delegates in OH and TX to make any real difference.
This is particularly true as Clinton loses superdelegates and Obama gains them -- Obama is +18 on superdelegates this week.

First of all, your point about slim margins is simply untrue. Since Super Tuesday, Obama hasn't won by less than 19 points. It's Hillary who squeaked out a fraction of a point win in New Mexico, and it's Obama who managed to keep some of her Feb. 5 states close enough that he still came out with a decent number of delegates.

Second, momentum does matter. Obama clearly had it going into New Hampshire, but was stopped. He got another good head of steam after South Carolina that enabled him to withstand Super Tuesday. We'll see if his current momentum is enough to put him over the top in Wisconsin and Hawaii.

That said, I do think this race is more about a state by state, district by district race for delegates than many past races. Demographics seem to play such a significant role that it kind of blunts the impact of momentum. She has her base of supporters, he has his, and the outcome seems to depend more than anything else on the characteristics of the electorate in each state. But Maryland and Virginia represented the first break from that basic pattern, so we'll see if continues...

Considering that just weeks before Super Tuesday, Obama was double digits behind Hillary and managed to not only pull even with her by Super Tuesday, but win more delegates, then continued winning by bigger and bigger margins and now leads in national polling by about 7 points, I'd say Obama started nearly 20 points behind and has steadily and continually rose to the lead. I'm willing to bet that if Super Tuesday were held today, Obama would perform even better than he did on 2/5, because he has had steadily rising support, and that is, by definition - momentum.

No momentum? Look at how quickly Obama closed the gap from 10 to 20 point deficits ACROSS THE COUNTRY to come out ahead on Super Tuesday.

A week before Super Tuesday, a lot of people including front-page bloggers on this site were saying they couldn't see him winning any more than IL and GA. And a week later, he walked away with more states and more delegates.

If that's not momentum, I don't know what is.

Fascinating question, and a very relevant one.  As I like to point out: Politics is marketing, marketing is perception, and perception is reality.

I think this momentum issue is analogous to asking what paper money is worth.  It's intrinsically almost valueless, but you can use it to obtain other things, but only at a rate determined by what other people think it's worth.

Obama has inarguably won a series of primaries.  Is this fact significant?  That's just as clearly a personal decision.  Some of our orange friends would say it's a Sure Sign of Impending Victory, while some of us would say the race is a virtual dead heat, Big Mo or not.

The question then becomes: How are voters who have yet to pull a lever or mark a box or whatever swayed by this would be momentum?  With a fair number of states yet to vote, I suspect it will have some effect as people climb aboard the Obama bus, and Clinton supporters refuse to concede.

The other big question is how much super delegates will be swayed.  I think it's clear that with Al Gore and other "party elders" pushing the SD's to remain quiet and let the people vote, that the possibility of a stampede toward Obama (by the SD's) fueled by the perception of momentum and genuine emotion has been largely eliminated.  Sure, some will still want to jump on the Obama bus, but many more, I hope, will vote with the voters.  Whether that means the national vote totals or state level (paging Ted Kennedy) is a whole other can of worms.

On the whole, I think that right now there is a slight, net momentum effect for Obama, which could grow considerably or be wiped out depending on events in the coming days.  I sincerely hope that the exit polling in upcoming primaries includes questions about not just when people made up their minds but what influenced them.

We'll be reading books about the 2008 cycle for decades, one way or the other.

Hmm... if Hillary wins Wisconsin and then goes on to do better than recent polls in Ohio and Texas? Where to attribute it to....? Barack could win wisconsin and then that may not move ohio or texas too much.  I think momentum can be important but it's really overemphasized sometimes.  

This blog should be renamed MyHL standing for MY HILLARY LOVE.  Seriously, something like 80% of the posts here are nothing more than convoluted attempts to make it look like Hillary is leading or really close in this race.  Here are a few facts:

1.)  Obama leads by a much larger margin than 3 delegates if you count only what can be counted right now.  As we've already seen, Superdelegates can and do change sides.  So, in the pledge delegates, which are highly likely to vote as pledged, Obama is well ahead.

2.)  Florida and Michigan DON'T COUNT.  Period.  If they are to count, they'll count based on a legal vote in which both candidates actually campaign in the states.

3.)  Obama hasn't even started to campaign very hard in Texas or Ohio and one poll already has him leading in Texas.  Not that polls really mean anything but the trend has been that Obama enters a state race, within a few days the tide turns and then he buries Hillary.  I don't think we'll see him destroy her in Texas but a very close race there will all but guarantee she won't be able to catch him in the delegate race.

4.)  Hillary isn't doing well in the head to head polls against McCain.  Do you want another 4 years of Shrub Lite running the country?  Independents HATE Hillary.  I happen to like her but think Obama is better.  Giving up the middle of this election, independents, will be impossible to overcome.

All the best to the regulars here.  I've read this site on and off for years and have always enjoyed it and found it enlightening.  Hillary hacks are about the only people who could feel that way now.  

Momentum matters. At the start of 2008 Clinton had a national lead of approximately 15 percent. Now, a month and a half later, Obama has a national lead of approximately 5 percent. I wish the Obama campaign could say that they gained 20 points in 45 days or so due to ads and groundwork, but I don't think that is all of it.

Momentum is a surge in support due to positive media coverage generated by wins. Momentum is not stringing together wins leading to becoming the nominee. That is such a stringent definition of momentum that it would be difficult to ever meet it.

I would argue that having donations to your campaign triple nearly overnight shows momentum. I would argue that doubling your poll numbers in 2 months shows momentum. I would argue that winning 22 states shows momentum when you were only up in the polls in 2 prior to the primaries starting.

however you want, then you can prove anything you want about momentum.  You just defined momentum as 'winning the nomination' and no, no one has yet won the nomination.

Unfortunately, that is not even close to the meaning of the word, even in the metaphorical world of an election.  One could argue, but I think the going understanding by anyone who talks about politics on an ongoing basis would be that there is momentum if early victories make later victories more likely.  I think we can say with some assurance that if Obama had not won South Carolina, he would not have nearly the day he had on Super Tuesday.  He had momentum going into Super Tuesday (the poll trends make that pretty clear). That's one example.

Your real question is does he have momentum now?  That is, does his present string of victories make later victories more likely.  It's debatable but as far as I can tell you give no evidence one way or the other, other than to assert that no on is winning by very much,  Uh... so?  He could be behind by 500 delegates and still have the momentum and vice versa.

To illustrate the general directions in the race, I plotted the daily numbers of Rasmussen and Gallup on the same graph, and tried to approximate a trendline. An obvious trend was present (Here's a link to the graph: Blue is Obama, red is Clinton (randomly picked.))

looks pretty narrow to me- but as you define it, of course no one has momentum, since you have to win the nomination, either by delegates or by elimination, in order to count as having momentum.

But on a more reasonable definition of momentum: something like - 'gaining more support on the basis of the perception of a gain in support' - it looks to me like Obama's been pushed along by momentum since SC, if not earlier.  

That said, momentum definitely hasn't been a factor in this primary in the same way that it was in 2004, when Kerry's early wins led to a perception that he was the guy we needed to rally around to beat Bush. I take it the difference this year lies partly in a reduced sense of urgency as to getting a nominee out there, and partly in (despite what you'd think from reading dKos and MyDD) the much stronger field we've had this year: no need to decide, quickly, who's the best of a mediocre bunch.

I wonder if he's making adjustments to the superdelegate counts.

In the last week or so, Clinton has lost 3 superdelegates and Obama has gaine 15, giving him a net of +18.

From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&a mp;date=2/16/2008&id=35716

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has scaled back her Wisconsin campaign schedule by a full day, and is now planning to leave the state after Monday morning instead of Tuesday morning.

The move suggests the campaign does not think it can overtake rival Barack Obama here. Obama has already campaigned in the state Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday, and today. He also has single events planned for Sunday (Kaukauna) and Monday (Beloit).

While the two have exchanged hard-hitting TV ads here, Obama began airing ads a week earlier and has spent much more on TV.

Today is Clinton's first day of campaigning in the state, with an event in Kenosha and a state party dinner in Milwaukee, where Obama also will appear. Clinton will campaign Sunday in De Pere, Wausau and Madison, and is expected to do one event in the state Monday morning before leaving.

While recent public polls suggested Obama began the run-up to the Feb. 19 primary here with only a small lead, the Clinton campaign has wrestled with the tradeoffs of spending time and money here versus the Ohio and Texas primaries March 4, which Clinton cannot afford to lose.

Again, there's an issue of definition. In my view, to say something 'matters' is to say that it affects the outcome, though not necessarily decisively.

There is a real ambiguity here, though: you might say, for instance, that the touchdown the Pats scored in the Super Bowl didn't matter, because they weren't enough, in the end. But they did matter in the sense that they could have been enough, had things been just a little bit different: they mattered, but they just didn't matter enough.  Similarly, if Hillary loses, then her victory in New Hampshire will have mattered- it just won't have mattered enough. I'm inclined to say the same thing about Obama's momentum.

So I think the right thing to say here is that there's a sense of 'matter' in which Obama's momentum definitely matters, and a sense in which we'll have to wait and see whether or not it does. Whatever you call it, though, it does seem clear that a perception that he's winning has been helping Obama to win in the past couple of weeks.

After June 3, when all the nominating contests are over, how many pledge delegates count as a win for securing the nomination as far as you Obama supporters are concerned?

Two delegates? One?

I'm very interested in your answers....

If we are being honest, I would guess that our answers would mirror each other's exactly.

The paradox of this diary is as follows: Why does the author, a Clinton supporter, want to deny the existence of momentum, especially after his candidate has lost eight contests in a row by double digit margins? Why not concede that Obama has momentum, which Clinton is trying to overcome? Especially as the other logical explanation for these blowouts is that voters just don't like Hillary Clinton.

The answer is clear. If you admit Obama has momentum, it strengthens his status as front-runner and makes a Clinton victory seem less likely. This in turn hurts her chances.

If there were no momentum, it wouldn't matter if Hillary Clinton was seen as falling victim to it. In other words, the only reason to write a diary denying the existence of momentum is . . . to try and blunt Obama's momentum.

My prediction: John Edwards will endorse Hillary which will help significantly in Ohio and PA. Bill Richardson will endorse Hillary which will help significantly in Texas. My guess and as good as any other these days.  

It's hard to believe the momentum theory, when very little time has really passed by.  I mean, we are talking only a few weeks since this thing began.  How can one dismiss so many votes that Hillary received, just because one state got together one week before the other?  And all the demographic talk can be misleading - maybe the people in a certain demographic in one state feel differently than those in another, for entirely separate reasons polls don't measure.

Also the momentum theory doesn't take into account the caucus victories and the disadvantage to elderly people, people who work, people with families, people who don't feel like getting yelled at for 3 hours, etc.

We've got a sample of apples and oranges, and apples and oranges grown in different climates (different varieties).  

Then on top of something already not consistent, we are trying to analyze patterns so we can predict an outcome.  

And why?  The only reasons could be that one is not patient enough to wait a couple more weeks to let everyone have their say (or as much of a say as they can with the caucus system) OR to influence the upcoming elections.

The real question: does Joementum exist, and, if so, how do we contain it?

"Clinton would have to be a fool of a politician to drop out when she still had half of of Democrats lined up behind her"

Actually Clinton has a significant lead among Democrats, far more than half.  

Coupled with her resounding victories in closed primary states is her wider victory margins in those open primary states she's won when only Democratic voters are considered.

For example, her 3 point win in New Hampshire becomes a 12 point win among Democrats only.

I strongly believe that only Democrats should be allowed to pick Democratic Party candidates.

On two occasions in the past, my state's Democratic primary has been gamed by independents and Republican crossovers.

Our primary system is in serious need of reform and among those reforms should be closing every primary.