LCG Election Monitor Blog

While we recognize that it is conceivable that Hillary Clinton may pull out a win on March 4th, it is now increasingly likely that she will lose Texas and possibly Ohio as well.  Even though Obama will be well short of the 2025 delegates needed to secure the nomination, this will effectively give him the Democratic presidential nomination. 

Our analysis of the latest public tracking polls in both states shows a dead heat in Texas and a slight lead for Clinton in Ohio.  But the trend lines are awfully problematic for Hillary.  In Texas, Obama has come from 10 points behind two weeks ago to a virtual tie. 

And in Ohio, Obama has nearly erased a 20 point deficit.  Winning eleven straight contests has given Obama political momentum.  That means that undecided voters and “soft” Clinton supporters are switching to Obama.  Nothing has changed the course of this narrative over the last 30 days.

More importantly, when we run a regression based on the last 15 polls in each state, our projection, as of today, is for Obama to win Texas by 5 points and Clinton to win Ohio by a precariously slim margin of 2 points.    We will update this on Monday but the implication is clear.  Unless there is some dramatic turn of events in the next 5 days, Obama will win at least one of the two big states on March 4^th, effectively ending Clinton’s run for the presidency.  So this begs the question: how did Clinton lose?

Why Clinton Lost

1. She never created a candidate difference. Clinton’s inability to substantively differentiate herself from Obama was devastating for her campaign, especially so over the last 30 days. This is branding 101: find a way to tell consumers/voters why your product/you are superior. As soon as this became a personality contest she was toast.
2. She never gave voters a reason to vote for her. The Clinton team failed to give voters a rationale for her candidacy. As we have learned time and time again, people need to know why they should vote for a candidate. We never got a sense of Clinton’s vision for the future. I still to this day have no idea of where she wants to take this country. She started out as the anti-Bush and assumed that would be enough. It wasn’t.
3. She never defined herself. This one I blame almost entirely on the Clinton strategists. They assumed everyone already knew Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, many of those already-held associations were negative. Instead of “re-introducing” her to the country and defining her in a positive, future-oriented way, they assumed that just being “Hillary” was enough. It wasn’t.
4. She ran an incumbent campaign. This is part and parcel with #3. In a “change” election, team Clinton chose to roll her out as the incumbent. Every signal they sent was that she was the presumptive nominee and this primary was simply the last rung in the ladder to the presidency.
5. It’s the candidate, stupid. Simply said, Hillary was not a good presidential candidate. I want to emphasize something-it is not that voters couldn’t vote for a woman, it is that they couldn’t vote for this woman. She is not very good in debates or on the stump. She almost never tells engaging stories and when she shouts it sounds shrill. As we said in a recent post, elections are almost never about issues (the Civil War and Watergate being two notable exceptions); they are, instead,about personalities. Obama isthe more compelling personality. He’s connected with voters, and he’s likable. We always knew Clinton had a likeability problem but her strategists assumed that she would dominate the early caucuses and primaries, thereby establishing an insurmountable lead and propelling her to victory. But that balloon popped when she lost Iowa…and so did her campaign.
6. Obama forged a winning coalition early on. Yes, today Obama is drawing from a wide swath of Democratic and Independent sub-groups. At the start, however, it was his ability to forge a minimum winning coalition of blacks, young voters, men, independents and upper-income voters that gave Obama his early victories.
7. Obama derailed the Clinton campaign in Iowa and they never recovered. Clinton has been playing defense for three months, and if you are not playing offense you are losing. While the media has paid a lot of attention to Obama’s reaching outside his coalition to win a greater share of whites-and especially white females-since the Potomac Primary, Obama actually bested Clinton among white voters in Iowa, 33% - 27%. With whites representing 93% of the Democratic Caucus in Iowa, winning the white vote was essential to his victory. Here are several factors that together seemed to drive this outcome:
   1. It’s a caucus state. Obama has swept all the caucuses save Nevada because of a far superior stump speech and an overwhelming edge in support among precinct-level party leadership, which historically has been critical in the caucus format. Hillary has also argued-not that it’s any help-that the caucus system makes it difficult for the blue-collar workers who are the backbone of her coalition to participate.
   2. Fifty-seven percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers were participating in a Presidential caucus for the first time. Seventeen percent were 17 - 24 years old. Obama was able to energize a young, newly-political segment of voters with his message of transcending traditional politics.
   3. At the time of the Iowa caucus, the Iraq War was still a front-of-mind issue for many voters. Exit polls show 35% of Democrats cited it as the most important issue, tied for first with the economy, and Iowa Democrats are famous peaceniks. Hillary’s vote to authorize the resolution for military intervention in Iraq was a dominant part of the conversation at the time.
   4. Hillary’s greatest strengths are her campaign organization and the Clinton name recognition. But Iowa was the one early state where these factors were least influential. Bill chose not to campaign in Iowa in ‘92 and Iowa was the early state where the Clinton machine was most thin on the ground. Older Iowans have long memories and their lesser familiarity-and perhaps slight feelings of being snubbed-with the Clintons may have hurt her.
8. Once it became a two-way race it was essentially over. The disappearance of John Edwards helped solidify Obama’s position. Edwards could have been the Democratic Mike Huckabee by splitting Obama’s core constituencies (blacks and young people). As the boost in Obama’s support after he quit the race proves, Edwards was closer to Obama than he was to Clinton. Even if he didn’t win Iowa as Huckabee did, a stronger showing would have taken votes directly from Obama and possibly allowed a Clinton victory.
9. South Carolina is the new New Hampshire. SC sealed the deal. The reason Obama won South Carolina is quite simple: black voters turned out in droves to support him. Fifty-five percent of Democratic primary voters were black, an unprecedented 12 point spread over whites. He won 78% of the black vote to Clinton’s 19%; again, an unprecedented margin of victory. In a state long-maligned for questionable identity politics in campaigning, it seems that for the first time the candidate associated with the racial minority was the beneficiary. Edwards’s participation helped Obama. Edwards was able to win the white vote 40% - 36% over Clinton in his home state’s backyard, and he blocked any chance of her making up the difference among white voters.
10. Super Tuesday was Hillary’s final shot. Once Hillary failed to land a knockout blow on Super Tuesday her prospects were bleak. The subsequent caucuses/primaries were tailor-made for Obama from a demographic/attitudinal perspective, and she lacked the resources and organization to change the game.

Tags: Barack Obama, Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton //