INTO THE STRETCH: LANDSCAPE BEFORE FEB. 5 - February 2, 2008
Voters in the United States are a few days away from an unprecedented political event – the Super Tuesday quasi-national primary on 5 February, in which about half the country will cast its votes for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees. The earlier primaries have been in effect trial heats, tests of voter sentiment with few delegates at stake. Nevertheless they had the power to make or break campaigns by conveying bragging rights and generating momentum – in US political argot usually called simply mo – for the winner, and the reverse for the loser.
So ruthlessly has the early winnowing process worked that the contests in both parties are effectively down now to two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and John McCain and Mitt Romney on the Republican side. Last Wednesday, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani – GOP frontrunner for much of the last year – dropped out of the race, endorsing McCain. Democrat John Edwards, who placed second in Iowa, a shade ahead of Hillary, but third in the succeeding contests, also dropped out, with no immediate endorsement.
Before examining the current shape of the race, a brief recap of the three and a half weeks since the New Hampshire primary is in order. In both parties the next significant contests were on 19 January – Nevada caucuses for both parties, and the Republican South Carolina primary. On the GOP side the day gave a split decision: McCain won a fierce contest in South Carolina, the state that sank his 2000 presidential bid, while Romney won Nevada easily, largely unopposed by his rivals there. McCain went on to win the Florida primary last Tuesday, firmly though not decisively establishing himself as the Republican frontrunner. Mike Huckabee, after winning the first GOP contest in Iowa, has been unable to expand his support beyond conservative evangelicals, and is effectively out of contention for the nomination.
On the Democratic side, Hillary won Nevada, but lost heavily in the Democratic primary in South Carolina on 26 January. The Democratic electorate was more than half composed of African Americans, who went very heavily toward Obama, while he placed third – but a respectable third – among whites in that Southern state. Edwards, a South Carolina native, won the white vote but got almost no African American votes. About one in six African Americans voted for Hillary, enough to give her an overall margin over Edwards, though leaving her far behind Obama. A few days later she handily won a Florida beauty contest primary, which however generated little media attention, since no delegates were awarded and the vote produced no surprises.
On the GOP side, the underlying question of the early primaries has been whether McCain is an acceptable nominee in the eyes of the Republican base. Although a reliable conservative Republican by most measures, McCain has strayed from orthodoxy often enough to win a reputation as a maverick – and arouse the suspicion of conservative activists. In New Hampshire and South Carolina, McCain won on the strength of independents who chose to vote in the GOP primaries, and were permitted to in these early contests.
Most later Republican primaries are closed ; only registered Republicans can vote in them, posing a tougher challenge for McCain. Florida was the first of these, making it a critical test of his appeal to the GOP base. Had Romney defeated McCain there, McCain's mo from previous wins might have evaporated, leaving him struggling on Super Tuesday and afterwards. Instead, the recent polling suggests a continued drift toward McCain, who now has a significant and growing lead heading into Super Tuesday. Though most observers rated Romney the winner of a contentious Republican debate this week, this does not appear (so far) to have checked the drift of GOP voters toward McCain.
On the Democratic side, the South Carolina contest ignited a media firestorm over the politics of race – and the role of former president Bill Clinton in his wife's campaign – that spread far beyond South Carolina itself. The controversy perhaps did more damage to Hillary than simply losing South Carolina did, and was possibly a factor in the decision of Senator Edward Ted Kennedy, an iconic figure for many Democrats, to endorse Obama.
Nevertheless, Hillary retains her lead in national polls and a majority of the Super Tuesday states, though her margin has substantially narrowed in the past week. A notably amicable debate in Hollywood on Thursday – its tone a striking contrast to the previous Democratic debate – was regarded by most commentators as a tie. This may slightly favor Hillary, by overwriting a media spin that for some days worked to Obama's advantage with a more neutral media environment.
If the early contests are all about mo , Super Tuesday is all about delegates to the nominating conventions. The two parties have quite different rules, so the consequences on Tuesday will also differ. GOP primaries are generally winner takes all – so even a narrow win delivers all of a state's delegates. Democratic primaries award delegates proportionally, a narrow win yielding only a small margin of delegates or even no margin.
On the Republican side, current polling suggests a McCain sweep – of the fourteen Super Tuesday states with recent polling, the median of the polls shows McCain leading in twelve. If the results are comparable, McCain will come close to the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination, effectively ending the GOP race. On the Democratic side, Hillary leads in eleven of fifteen states with recent polling, though in some her margins are narrow and uncertain. Even if the election matches the polling – and Democratic primaries have already caught pollsters by surprise more than once – she stands to gain only a modest majority of the delegates rewarded.
Thus, while Super Tuesday may all but end the GOP nomination race, it is very unlikely to do so for the Democratic nomination race. Nevertheless, unless the results are hairline close, the Democratic winner on Tuesday may well attain nearly unstoppable mo in the series of later primary contests that continues into early summer. Since most Democrats like both candidates, a clear Super Tuesday win may well encourage them to close ranks, the trailing candidate's supporters jumping ship in favor of a gaining rival whom they can also readily support.
On the morning of 6 February, we will probably know the Republican nominee, and have a very good idea of who the Democratic nominee will be.
Rick Robinson
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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.
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