Daily Archive

Within the past few days, a few polls have been released for Pennsylvania, and things look promising for Barack Obama. The week prior, the polls had Hillary Clinton at a 15% lead, and bigger depending on the poll you were readings, and all things looked like it would stay there. That was the really bad week for press for Obama, with the Reverend Wright incident and a few more niggling news cycles that did him no good. However, once he made the now famous ‘More Perfect Union’ speech, and then it was exposed that Clinton has been lying about her trip to Bosnia (she has been claiming that her foreign policy credentials are better than Obama’s, and one example was when she landed among a hail of sniper fire, and they ran with their heads down to safety. This was a lie - there was a reception for her and she met a kid and heard her read a poem. There is video and photos of this encounter), Obama managed to pick up in the polls.

The latest figures show that none of the bad press for Obama over the Wright incident stuck - that his own speech and Clinton’s lies have managed to boost him up in the most recent polls. The latest Rasmussen poll had Clinton up, but not by her required margin. 49% to 39% - Obama only trailing by 10% with a 12% undecided. During the previous week, Clinton led in a 51% to 38% poll, and the week before 52% to 37%.

That change, in Rasmussen’s polling, comes off the back off purely the race speech of Obama’s and Clinton’s Bosnian bungle. Also something to note: Clinton has been campaigning hard in Pennsylvania, Obama has hardly stepped foot in the state. He’s been on holidays in the Virgin Islands for the past few days, and his bus tour, his first campaigning since, begins on Friday.

The changes are important for a second reason. The campaign narrative floated by the Obama campaign, that Clinton needs to win Pennsylvania by 15-20% at least, has been taken up by the media. The news outlets are saying the same things. Obama’s campaign has repeatedly said that if Obama loses by a single-digit number, even 9%, then he sees that as a victory. The media has begun to say the same thing - that Clinton needs a massive win to stay in the race.

The second part of the narrative, that Obama will win North Carolina, has also been taken up. The latest polls there indicate a big Obama win - bigger than Clinton’s in Pennsylvania. PPP has a 55% to 34% leaning to Obama - a huge 21% lead. The data for this was gathered around the time of the race speech, so while some might say it’s inflate because of that, I’d say that the speech didn’t have time to ’settle in’ among the voters. If Obama wins North Carolina by this much, and manages to get a single-figure loss in Pennsylvania, then the media will turn on Clinton in a heartbeat. If she can’t stay competitive in North Carolina, where she has to, and can’t push Obama out of a state that she should be winning big in, then she’s going to be called into question.

Now that the basic narrative has been taken up by the media, watch for them to start talking about margins of victory. Like I have been here, I expect that news people to start saying: “If Clinton loses Pennsylvania by anything less than X, and Obama wins North Carolina by Y, Clinton has lost the two states, and Obama has made more gains on the pledged delegate count.” That will then turn into questioning whether one should get the nomination based on pledged delegates, and if that is the topic of the news, Obama has the much better footing.

Similarly, the old question of building momentum going into the final races will come up. A single-digit loss for Obama will create more momentum for him than it will for Clinton. And then going into North Carolina, and getting a 20% win this late in the race, and only a week after his ‘loss’ in Pennsylvania, it will give him a big push in the eyes of the media, and this will translate into momentum among the voters. If Obama could get out a win in Indiana as well (which has no polling, and is the enigma of the last races), combined with the win in North Carolina and the ‘win’ in Pennsylvania, then I believe it will put the final nail in the coffin for the media. The rest of the states have already been decided, except Indiana. Some outlets are saying that Clinton needs to win Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina to be a viable candidate. Without North Carolina, she still needs Indiana. Because we know she won’t win North Carolina.

Thomas.