PHILADELPHIA — For the first time in six weeks, the Democratic presidential nominating contest returned to the ballot box as voters across Pennsylvania turned out in record numbers on Tuesday to cast their judgment on Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
“Let’s just say it’s very busy,” said Joseph Passarella, the director of voter services for Montgomery County, sounding a little harried. “Our phones have been ringing since 6:15 this morning and have been ringing nonstop. We’ve never had a primary election this busy.”
Voting lines were long and voter-service phone lines were jammed across the state, from Philadelphia in the southeastern part of the state to Beaver County in the west. “We’re just overwhelmed,” said Geri Shuits, a polling clerk in Beaver County. “I’ve gotten so many phone calls, I just can’t keep up.”
Officials said the turnout was shaping up to at least double the 26 percent recorded in the 2004 primary, and perhaps approach that of a general election, even though there is no presidential contest on the Republican side. “It’s a crazy day,” said Stacy Sterner, chief clerk in Lehigh County, who noted that one polling place had 100 people waiting to vote when it opened at 7 a.m. Eastern time. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I would think it was November.”
The verdict that all those voters will render — on a multi-front battle for the popular vote, pledged delegates and expectations — will help determine how long the primary campaign continues after Pennsylvania.
Now I've been a little reluctant on talking about the Democratic polls for this race, simply because I don't trust the latest Pennsylvania polls for this race. My feeling here is that there is too big of an undecided vote with Pennsylvania voters, having to choose between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. These undecided Pennsylvania Democratic voters are going into the voting booths, and making their decisions at that moment of choice--regardless of who they will claim to choose during the entrance, or exit polls. I think that this choice is also being switched around with voters who have claimed to made up their minds during these polls, and are possibly switching their votes at the last minute. Either way, here is the latest polling data through Pollster.com:
Pennsylvania poll for top Democratic presidential contenders, 4/21/08. From Pollster.com.
What is important about this graph is that in 2007, Hillary Clinton had a 20-point lead over Obama which has evaporated as the Pennsylvania primary date drew closer. The difference now is that Hillary Clinton's lead has shrunk to between 5-10 points. Hillary Clinton needs a double-digit blowout win in Pennsylvania in order to keep her presidential campaign hopes alive, and hopefully even up the delegate count against Obama. According to MSNBC, Obama leads Clinton in the number of pledged delegates "1648.5-1509.5, out of 2,025 needed to win the nomination." If Clinton wins Pennsylvania by around five percentage points, we will still have a status quo going into the Democratic convention, with Clinton winning a big state, but Obama maintaining the delegate lead. An Obama win in Pennsylvania could spell the end of the Clinton campaign. There are 158 delegates at stake in Pennsylvania, making this a big race for both candidates.
Looking through the various liberal political blogs here, I've certainly noticed an interesting thread of blogs demanding that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the presidential race. Obama has the lead in pledged delegates and Clinton can't win the math game of overtaking Obama in the pledged delegate count. A continuation of this race is a big boom for the McCain campaign, allowing Senator John McCain to appear "presidential," and run a general election campaign against the presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama. A continuation of this fight could split the Democratic Party, and force the Democrats to lose this 2008 election to a third Bush term under McCain. These are some of the arguments I have seen within the liberal blogs, and they could possibly be true. But I'm not sure if Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race just yet. I do believe that an Obama win in Pennsylvania will spell the end to Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination. Obama will certainly increase his lead in the pledged delegate count. It would take either an act of God, or a complete self-destruction of the Obama campaign, to vault the Clinton campaign into the lead, and the Democratic nomination. But as long as the status quo is being maintained with the delegate count, and as long as the Democrats are splitting their vote between both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, then Hillary Clinton should continue to stay in the race as long as she can. When she goes into the Democratic National Convention, she can use her delegate count to solicit political favors from either the national Democratic Party, or even the Obama campaign--can you say Vice President Hillary Clinton, or Senate Majority Leader Hillary Clinton, or even Supreme Court Justice Hillary Clinton? She may not be able to get the big prize of the Oval Office, but she will still have a strong position within the party. And again, this race is going to come down to the point where the gray beards of the Democratic Party will order both Clinton and Obama to sit down, and hack out who will be the nominee for president, the nominee for vice president, and see that both candidates reconcile their differences and come up with a winning ticket that will unify both sides for the next big race against the GOP and McCain. Because Barack Obama does not have this Democratic nomination sewed up in the bag, anymore than Hillary Clinton has lost this nomination. What I see here are Democratic voters equally supporting both candidates--they like both Hillary Clinton's message of experience, and Barack Obama's message of change. It now becomes a question of how do you reconcile both of these messages into a winning theme against John McCain in November.
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