Here's some more Obama porn for the faithful: a series of charts that reflect the Democratic contest in terms of the popular vote, the pledged delegate vote, donations under $200, the state-by-state total, and the "margin of victory against John McCain" rolling average in pie and graph forms. However, Clinton continues to hold onto her strong lead in key fantasyland scenarios like "if the Michigan and Florida delegates actually counted," "if superdelegates were pledged delegates," and, perhaps most crucially, "if the Democratic primary were actually winner-take-all."
The demographics of Maine favor Clinton, but it's a caucus, so I think Obama most likely wins it fairly easily. If so, that leaves the scorecard 5-0 since Super Tuesday going into the Chesapeake Regional, where Obama is again heavily favored with twenty-point leads just like the ones he scored yesterday.
After that comes Hawaii, both a caucus and the state in which he grew up, and then Wisconsin, Hillary's second-best chance (after Maine) for any victory this month at all. The most recent Wisconsin poll I've seen (from ARG, the most anti-Obama poll around) I saw favored her slightly, but other factors make me think he'll win there as well.
So the Clinton campaign's strategy is more or less Giuliani meltdown mode, hoping to hold onto current leads in the big states on March 4 (OH and TX) despite a month of losses and a two-week gap in which Obama can politick like he politicks best, door-to-door retail style. And if she does hold on, there's an almost two-month gap for him to do the same thing in Pennsylvania, where she makes her last stand. The expectations-setting projections spreadsheet "accidentally leaked" by the Obama camp is looking more and more like a worst-case scenario, and it's still got him by 67 when the last caucus caucuses, which already may be she-can't-even-steal-it with-superdelegates territory.
The best analysis of the race I've seen lately is this one from a Matt Yglesias commenter, which also makes the obvious Rudy Giuliani comparison:
When you consider the substantial margins by which he's crushed her in caucuses, and it should be clear that he's won more votes, more states, and more delegates. He's won in every region. He's won closed primaries, open primaries, caucuses, all-white states and mixed-ethnic states.So what I'm saying is, I think I may have been right.
The suggestion that his campaign has been failing in some regard is frankly ludicrous. Starting from a huge name-ID and institutional disadvantage he's actually out-campaigned the Clintons by any and every conceivable metric. He's bested them in primaries, he's killed them in caucuses, total votes and pledged delegate. The only things keeping their campaign alive right now are the remnants of that institutional support (super delegates) and her name ID.
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