Spinning Super Tuesday's Results

What a confusing picture! Obama won more states than I expected, 13 or 14 out of 22, most of them by huge margins (20%+, with some as much as 60%), but Clinton won most of the big states by solid margins (10-20%). The squeakers were CT and MO, both of which went to Obama, and NM, which is still too close to call. You can count on both sides claiming overall victory.

If we were playing by Republican winner-take-all rules, the results would be a huge success for Clinton. As things stand, it's unclear how the delegate numbers will play out. If we had proportional representation by state, then Obama would come out ahead by about 40 delegates, but we don't. It's more complicated, and I don't understand what happened at the congressional district level. So far, NPR has allotted about 2/3 of the delegates, almost evenly split between Obama and Clinton. (Clinton went into Super Tuesday with about a 70 delegate lead, so she's still up by 70)

The media seems to be treating it as a good night for Clinton, for whatever that's worth. She'll get plenty of bragging rights from California.

My own view is that a tie is very good news for Obama. Super Tuesday was never friendly turf for him. I expect him to do much better for the rest of February, taking a small delegate lead and substantial momentum into the most important primary of all... TEXAS!

2 weeks ago I thought that Clinton had the nomination almost won, with leads in yesterday's states that couldn't be overcome. 2 days ago I thought that the nomination was a tossup. Now I'm laying 3-2 odds favoring Obama. Next week... who knows?

On the Republican side, McCain is sitting pretty with a big delegate lead and a split opposition, now that Huckabee is back from the dead. But McCain should be worried that he pulled it off with a minority of GOP voters, leaving a lot of resentful voters that will be hard to mobilize in the fall. Good news for us!