There was a lot of talk this week about how West Virginia "wouldn't matter" and I even heard some predictions that she might only net a "few thousand" votes from West Virginia.
Surprise surprise, SUSA was right. And with the huge turnout, Hillary is on track to earn approximately 120,000 votes from West Virginia. With all 50 states counted, by the end of the night she will have received more votes in her name than any other candidate in the contest, and significantly, more votes than any single nominee in the history of the Democratic Party.
To compare, Hillary's landslide victory in West Virginia is netting her more popular votes than her equally high profile lead in TEXAS.
More bad news for Obama:
I encourage everyone to check out the County by County map of West Virginia. Obama is doing a little bit better in the northeast counties that border Pennsylvania. But he's losing by as much as 75% (85 to 10!!!) in counties bordering Kentucky.
West Virginia has a little over 600,000 registered Democrats. Kentucky has 1.6 million. The huge spread we've seen in West Virginia coupled with that type of turnout realistically predicts a huge popular vote boost for Clinton, offset by whatever narrow loss she experiences in Oregon, a smaller state with far fewer registered Dems.
Obama lost every county in the state of West Virginia. To date, that has not happened in any primary contest held thus far. He is likely to lose every single county in Kentucky as well, although the counties containing Louisville and Lexington may be close or marginally competitive.
It is likely at this rate that by next week, Obama will be losing the popular vote, even if one were to use their imagination give him all of the "Uncommitted" votes in Michigan, a state where he received zero votes by choice.
Last week things felt awful as a Hillary supporter. But with the poaching of pledged delegates now starting in Maryland, that metric means even less and less. Once again the tide may be turning. The media which made it seem so miserable for Hillary (after she closed a huge gap in NC and won the "tiebreaker" Indiana) is now saying she made strong arguments, gave a great speech, and are talking about Michigan/Florida all of the time. The only one I see who can't be objective is Obama shill Donna Brazile. I wish CNN would label her as such because she's decidedly partisan.
Update [2008-5-14 0:39:2 by BPK80]: The earlier optimistic prediction of 120,000 votes has been exceeded. She's winning by 137,000 with 7% of the vote left to report. I don't think anyone expected the popular vote victory would be this enormous, a product of both precipitous large margins and very high turnout. Given that Kentucky has almost three times as many registered Democrats and another landslide victory (probably more like 30% than the 41% in WV) is on its way, Hillary will further cement her growing popular vote lead. Also, Nebraska held a "beauty contest" primary today. With 80% of the vote in, Obama and Clinton have swapped the lead numerous times tonight, with Obama now ahead by 4%. To compare, Obama beat Clinton by 35% in the February Nebraska caucus: *Nebraska* 02/09 BHO 26,126 HRC 12,445 Obama +13,681 +35.4% *Nebraska* 05/13 BHO 45,106 HRC 42,282 Obama +4% The primary is not official, but more people voted in the primary. Again, we see the combination of factors at play here, giving rise to many questions. If caucuses are true indicators of Democratic will, why would Obama have fallen into disfavor by 31% since February? Or, if they're not true indicators of people's will, why do we give them any credit in the first place? Nebraska now joins Texas and Washington as states that have held both primaries and caucuses, each one showing a perverse skew in favor of Obama in the caucus. The skew is so pronounced that it ipso facto should give rise to a very strong suspicions. With the commencement of poaching pledged delegates in Maryland, Hillary has a strong argument that pledged delegates in caucus states should align themselves more congruently with the state's will. Update [2008-5-14 2:5:56 by BPK80]: Obama won the Nebraska primary by 2%. That's a whopping *33.5* decline from his February numbers in the Nebraska caucus. For those who think the primary had reduced turnout, it had more than twice as many voters as the caucus because it was scheduled along with a Senate race. Nebraska's caucus was attended by 40,000 people. Nebraska's primary was attended by 95,000. Update [2008-5-14 2:5:56 by BPK80]: Hillary has a 144,500 lead in West Virginia with 98% reporting. Based on a cursory analysis of which counties have left to report, it looks like she will pick up another 1,500 votes for a 146,000 vote lead. This shocks me because I expected her big prizes to be only Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Both are significantly more populated. West Virginia becomes Hillary's 8th biggest PV state, passing even the huge margins she put up in Arkansas and New Jersey. In order, they are: California, Michigan, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, *WEST VIRGINIA* This was totally unexpected by me. I knew she would win and fairly big but didn't expect turnout this big nor did I predict this 41% spread which is an embarrassment to Barack Obama. It's an outright rejection of Obama and an outright rejection of the media's attempt to push this radical candidate down our throats.|
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