North Carolina blowout may signal end is near
By Tom Baxter
Southern Political Report
May 6, 2008 — They say it isn’t over until the fat lady sings, and in the case of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, it may well be that she’ll be singing the National Anthem at the opening of the Democratic National Convention. This race could go on that long, and Hillary Clinton seemed to be giving every indication before the polls closed in North Carolina and Indiana Tuesday that it will. But a measurable amount of air came out of the tires of the Clinton campaign Tuesday. Back before the April 15 Pennsylvania primary, we made the case that if Clinton was ever going to exceed expectations and beat Barack Obama somewhere she wasn’t supposed to, North Carolina was her best chance. Instead, Obama won the Tar Heel State much more decisively than our poll and most seasoned observers on the ground thought she would. The sense before Tuesday was that Clinton’s lead was narrowing in Indiana while Obama’s lead was narrowing in North Carolina; only half that formulation turned out to be true. There was a lot of bad news for Clinton in the North Carolina exit polling. More Democratic primary voters thought Obama was ready to be commander in chief (49%) than Clinton (44%). Obama got only 36 percent of the white vote, and yet according to the exit surveys he won in all income group, suggesting that upper-income whites voted heavily for Obama. Perhaps worst of all for Clinton, the dynamic that set the early course for this race hasn’t changed: 50 percent of the North Carolina Democratic primary voters said change was important to them, while 22 percent valued experience. For that still to be the case after the scary ride the economy has given over the past six months bodes well for Obama and poorly for Clinton. North Carolina came down very much the way the earlier Deep South primaries did, with solid white majorities for Clinton and much heavier African-American majorities for Obama. But Obama’s double-digit victory in North Carolina came at a time when Clinton has been at the peak of her game on the campaign trail, while he has struggled daily to shake off the Jeremiah Wright story. If the tide was going to turn in this race, the stage was set for it to happen on Tuesday. It didn’t. North Carolina may be the closest thing to a clincher we’ll see this year. |
