Legal Commentary

Mississippi Will Be A Pyrrhic Victory For Obama

By Big Tent Democrat

By Big Tent Democrat

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Barack Obama has a 14 point lead in Mississippi, 53-39. But because of the demographic disparity, Obama leads by enormous margins among African-Americans and trails by enormous margins among white voters, Obama is likely to suffer, at best, a repeat of what happened in Alabama, a virtual tie in the delegate count.

Because Alabama voted on Super Tuesday, the strange and troubling Alabama result flew under the radar. On Tuesday, Mississippi votes alone and its results will receive full coverage. A review of the Alabama result is instructive. Obama won the state by a very comfortable 56-42 margin in the popular vote. But he barely won the delegate count, 27-25, and in fact only tied Clinton in the congressional district delegate count.

How could that happen? Well, since, like Mississippi, Alabama has a majority-minority district, most of Obama's African American support was to be found in that congressional district. He also won the AL-3 district by a thin margin, because that district included two strong counties for Obama, Macon, heavily African-American and near Montgomery, and Lee, where Auburn University is located. Obama won the delegate count in CD-7 and CD-3, 5-2 and 3-2. But he lost most other congressional districts in Alabama and won no others. I expect he will lose all but Bennie Thompson's 7 delegate congressional district in Mississippi. And that is a bad result for Obama, because the other 3 Mississippi Congressional districts are 5 delegate districts, insuring AT LEAST a 3-2 split for Clinton.

More . . .

In addition to possibly losing the delegate count in Mississippi, you will also have a full night of discussing exit polls that will say this, as they did in Alabama:

Vote by Race

Clinton Obama

White (44%) 72% 25%

A-A (51%) 15% 84%

This is not the storyline Obama wants. And it will be discussed all night Tuesday and beyond, all the way to Pennsylvania. It will not be a good night for the Obama campaign in my opinion, despite notching another win.

By the way, this demographic breakdown was also present in South Carolina. What is the difference now? The difference is that John Edwards is not in the race and Clinton will at least tie in the delegate count and run much closer in the popular vote.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).