Why are Obama voters so much more likely to vote for Clinton in November than vice-versa?

The number that is making waves from the exit polls is that less than half of Clinton supporters in both Indiana and North Carolina say they would vote for Obama in the general election. In Indiana, 33 percent said they'd vote for McCain and 17 percent that they simply wouldn't show up. In North Carolina, the number saying they'd cross over and vote McCain rose to 38 percent while 12 percent said they'd stay away. By contrast, 59 percent and 70 percent of Obama supporters in Indiana and North Carolina say they would vote Clinton in November. 

The Clinton camp will certainly hope that these numbers give the super delegates pause. But these same exits suggest that she has missed the chance to pile the pressure on Obama, with him emerging with a strengthened position in delegates and the popular vote after tonight. 

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Your primary questions answered

The Washington Post and The New York Times have invaluable guides to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries in their respective editions today. If this race doesn’t end today, then it is going to go all the way through the remaining contests.  

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Arianna Huffington claims McCain told her that he didn't vote for Bush in 2000

This story is going to get obscured by today’s primaries and it has already been denied by the McCain campaign but Arianna Huffington’s claim that the McCains told her at a dinner party soon after the 2000 election that they didn’t vote for Bush is extraordinary. Personally, I’m sceptical as I don’t see why Huffington would sit on such a great scoop for more than seven years. But McCain is fortunate that this claim wasn’t made during the Republican primaries when it  might have gained traction.

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Late Night Bill

Bill Clinton’s final event of the day in Raleigh epitomised both his strengths and weaknesses in this campaign. Speaking on the back of a pick up, Bill was in his element. He did nothing to downplay expectations, beginning the event by asking ‘You going to go out and win this thing for Hillary?’ and ending with the line ‘you go out and win it for her North Carolina.’  He went on to stress how Hillary would be a president ‘for those who people who need a president.’ (The effect of this populist shtick...

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Why North Carolina is so important to Obama

North Carolina is not only Obama’s last best chance to rack up a huge popular victory it is also key to his argument about electability. The polls in the traditional big battleground states—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida—, for what they are worth, show Clinton outperforming Obama. But the Obama campaign has long argued that their candidate can expand the map in a way that Hillary cannot. Key to this argument is the upper south. Virginia and North Carolina are both states where the Obama folk think they can play in...

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The Clinton camp in North Carolina are keen to tell their story, the Obama camp not so much

Call this typical press arrogance, but in every race I’ve followed in this primary process, the campaign most open to the press has won. By this measure, we’re in for a shock tomorrow in North Carolina.

This evening I called in at both the Clinton and Obama offices in Raleigh. At the Clinton HQ, after some gentle ribbing about my failure to remove my credentials from the Obama event earlier, I was ushered in to talk to the field director who happily chatted away about their operation which sounds formidable. Significantly, the...

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Bill's shot at redemption

One of the great sub-plots of the North Carolina primary is that it is Bill Clinton’s chance to atone for his performance in South Carolina. His red-faced appearances and, to be charitable, clumsy comparison of Obama’s win to Jesse Jackson’s compounded the impact of Obama’s massive victory there and did much to push Teddy Kennedy towards endorsing Obama. After South Carolina, the conventional wisdom shifting to seeing Bill as not an asset but a liability for the campaign. Here, though, he is an undoubted asset. Reprising the role he played in Texas,...

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What will happen tomorrow night?

Raleigh, North Carolina

The Obama campaign has yet to declare where their candidate will spend tomorrow night. You can either interpret this as a sign of confidence—they think that they have a chance of winning Indiana and sealing the deal—or nerves—they worry that North Carolina is not the lock that it seems.

The Obama campaign’s own post  Super-Tuesday projection had Obama winning both states and Obama himself has called Indiana a “tie-breaker” but the conventional wisdom now expects Clinton to win Indiana handily and limit Obama’s margin in North...

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Obama's low-tempo finale in North Carolina

Raleigh, North Carolina
Barack Obama’s final event here in North Carolina was surprisingly low-key. The event was an invitation only town-hall meeting at CREE, a green energy firm in the Research Triangle. The audience was demographically suited to Obama—affluent, educated, relatively young and fairly mixed racially—and gave him a warm reception. But the event lacked the tempo you would have expected the day before the primary. Indeed, before the QandA Obama even invited the boss of CREE to give an infomercial for his products.

Obama opened by saying ‘I want...

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Pick your polling poison

The USA Today poll suggests that the Democratic race really might have turned. It finds that among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents Clinton now leads nationally by seven, compared to a ten point advantage for Obama just a fortnight ago. Clinton is also now seen as the stronger candidate against John McCain—a dramatic shift from the previous poll where by a 33 percent margin Obama was seen as the best candidate for the general election. The damage seems to have been done by the Rev Wright affair which eight out of ten voters...

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