Super Tuesday in Electoral College Perspective
02/06/2008
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Longtime reader Ben Franklin (since 1706) comments:

 

On Super Tuesday, McCain won almost exclusively in states that Republicans have almost no chance of winning in November. The only clear exceptions to that are Oklahoma and Missouri, the later where McCain has won with just 33 percent of the vote and with 3 or 4 percent separating McCain, Huckabee and Romney. In Oklahoma, McCain won in a state that has as its law one of the most stringent anti-illegal immigrant laws in the country. So, both of those wins are incongruous.

In the rest of the states McCain won, there is pretty much Zero chance for the Republican nominee to win in the general election in the fall.

As for Huckabee, he won in Southern states that just about ANY Republican candidate will win come November.

So however you look at the results, they mean less then they appear to mean. This also applies to Obama, who won in many states that the Democrat nominee has next to no chance to win, except for Illinois, which is in the bag for the Democrats (and is Obama's "home state"). So, Obama’s big delegate count on Super Tuesday is vastly overstated, what with his winning North Dakota, Utah, Idaho, etc.

I’d say that Hillary comes out of Super Tuesday looking like by far the strongest candidate in the field of either party.

The electoral college means that purple states are what matters: the Great Lakes Blue Collar States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the Clean Green States of Oregon, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and New Mexico (okay, NM isn't green and it isn't clean in its politics, but I had to put it somewhere), and then there's Florida, which wasn't that close in 2004 but we all remember 2000.

Surprisingly few purple states participated in Super Tuesday. In Minnesota, Obama won big with 67% of the caucuses, while Romney beat McCain and Huckabee 42-22-20. Hillary won New Mexico 51-42, while the Republicans in that state didn't hold an election. (Getting off the topic here, don't you find it annoying when the parties in a state hold their primaries on different days?)<

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