The latest numbers from Indiana were just released by SurveyUSA. McCain now has a solid 6 point lead (a 7 point change over a 60 day period).

McCain is now projected by RCP to win the electoral college by 10.

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In new Pew national poll Obama increases his lead from 3% to 8%. RCP which is basically a right wing site editorially calls this a "slight" increase!

Here's link

 http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics /2008/07/pew_obama_8.html

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There is a simple explanation for Obama's victory last night. He won African American voters. They constituted 53% of voters and 80% went for him.

This is the pattern we've seen in every race so far where there was a significant Black voter component. There's nothing at all wrong with this and I'd say it was entirely expected although you could argue the intensity has increased somewhat because of the overheated campaign rhetoric. There is a very good diary up by Gladiatorstall analysing the vote fundamentals last night but it essentially reinforces the simple truth of my opening comment.

So what does it all mean going forward. Obviously Obama is going to pull +/- 80% of AA vote in FL and in every primary thereafter. How important that will be is well illustrated by a chart they have up in a piece by Jay Cost at RCP. I haven't been able to copy it but it breaks down the white, AA and hispanic populations in all the super Tuesday states. In only five of them is the AA component above 15% and in most it's in single figures. For info these are five:

GA 28.5%  AL 25.9%  DE 18.9%  TN 16.3%  AK 15.6%

The fact that in the face of this SC Tsunami Clinton was able to hold onto about 19% of the black vote which is what happened elsewhere suggests that she'll manage the same in the other primaries. And of course in a lot of these Super Tuesday states hispanics are a huge voting bloc where her support advantage is the mirror image of Obama's in the black community. This is not going to change significantly indeed there's a case to be made it could harden for her and in any case the FL result is going to blunt any groundswell that Obama's campaign may try to create (btw as of Friday 350,000 absentee ballots had been cast in this dem primary and they expect it to be over 400,000 by Tuesday which is 80% of the SC turnout).

Looking at these numbers again and the latest polls from super Tuesday states where available it really doesn't seem to change the elecoral arithmetic that much. Only GA and AL seem to have the chance of being affected by Obama's AA voter advantage. As against that the visibility of last nights race could have galvanized a lot of trad white and hispanic voters to have their say.

Therefore when you strip away all the euphoria, hyperbole and media spin nothing much seems to have changed. If it has changed we are going to see evidence of it on Tuesday in FL.                            

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There's a surprisingly sensible and balanced appraisal of why Clinton won in this mornings WSJ penned by, of all people, Karl Rove. Unfortunately it's behind a firewall but one can always spend a dollar fifty on the newspaper whose reporting is the best in America. Of course you have to put up with the ed page. Basically his premise is that she relied on the traditional Democratic coalition to give her victory. He put it rather well by saying he got the kids and the white wine drinkers and she got the moms and the beer drinkers while pointing out that there are rather more of the latter than the former. There was also a very good analysis in RCP by one Jay Cost of where her strengths lie and the implications for the remainder of the primaries. Essentially his premise is that she has assembled the classic FDR coalition. Here's the link.
 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horsera ceblog/2008/01/how_clinton_won.html

Basically I think Cost who generally leans right and is writing on an overtly right wing site, although a fantastic resource, has basically nailed it. If his arguments hold water it's hard to see how she doesn't win big over the next few weeks. The little upset in IA which I suspect they always anticipated but not maybe the negative intensity of press comment which was seriously damaging her, served as a very useful wake up call. You have to remember these are people who have been through election campaigns for thirty years. They've had their ups and downs and they know how to regroup and recalibrate. That's what experience does for you. It's hard to believe there isn't some disquiet in the Obama camp at present which is the only explanation for the dangerous flirting with the race card, better known as the Bradley effect, that is being played with at present. Last night JJ Jr and some other black guy were all over the cable shows giving a full court press on this issue and I can't imagine anything more calculated to turn off white and Hispanic voters. It's also a two edged sword of course. If it has any substance, which I don't think it does in the context of NH, then it's says Obama's an electoral liability because of it.

Finally a word about the failing of Edwards. There seems to be widespread belief that if he fades all his support transfers to Obama as the anti Clinton. I just don't buy this. It's been a sine qua non of the Edwards campaign that he's fighting for the unions and the little guys. The beer drinkers in other words. And these as Rove and Cost point out are the very people who carried Clinton to victory. Edwards says he's sticking around until Feb 5 but it's hard not to see his support eroding badly as this has turned into a two person race so if Rove is right Clinton should see some movement in her direction. Richardson's departure is also probably going to see a net gain for her although this might be marginally impacted if he endorsed Obama although that's not likely. He doesn't need to. He can just sit quiet and make his move post Feb 5.

So read what Rove and Cost have to say. It's quite honestly much more sensible than most of the analysis by so called journalists who seem to have morphed into partisans.                

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FreeRepublic.com is the conservative movement's nexus on the net since the mid-90's, but you'd never know that from the national coverage of the Republicans on the internet by traditonal media. So what passes on Freeperland about Michael J. Fox after his airing an ad in Missouri?

Fox could care less about anybody else in his desparate effor to save his own bacon. If anybody has seen the South Park episode about Christoper Reeves eating fetuses to regain his ability to walk, that pretty much sums it up.
Would it be in poor form if I wished him to choke on his drool?
Republicans are widely spreading the prospect from Drudge and Barron's that:Our analysis -- based on a race-by-race examination of campaign-finance data -- suggests that the GOP will hang on to both chambers, at least nominally. We expect the Republican majority in the House to fall by eight seats, to 224 of the chamber's 435. At the very worst, our analysis suggests, the party's loss could be as large as 14 seats, leaving a one-seat majority. But that is still a far cry from the 20-seat loss some are predicting. In the Senate, with 100 seats, we see the GOP winding up with 52, down three. 8 in the House and 3 in the Senate for Dems, hmm... Mark Kennedy in MN and Conrad Burns in MT will win? Is this a joke?

Apparently not. RealClearPolitics, Time Magazine's idea of an political election coverage, has had a hard time spreading good Republican winning vibes in the last two weeks, but they try. First they note how the poll showing incumbent Republican Simmons in CT leading by a 46-44 margin makes him "drop on our list of competitive house seats" and ask, "Will Any Dem Seats Fall in the House?" before concluding that, "there is a basket of five seats Republicans are looking at for possible pickups (IL-8, GA-8, GA-12, VT-AL, and IA-3)", only to then have to report on the "bad news" that the Chicago Tribune's poll shows that in the IL-8th, that Democrat Bean is leading McSweeney by 19 point... Time/RCP concludes that "RNC polling in this race shows McSweeney only down two, but today you would have to give the edge to the incumbent Bean." But rest assurred, Time/RCP tells us, four, three, two weeks and two days is a long time.

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