There are still over 300 Super Delegates to be counted?

[kentuck]

And most of those are members of the DNC? If Hillary wins Ohio and/or Texas, we might expect some of them to come off the fence and support Hillary. The delegate count could get much closer. If Hillary were to win 3 of 4 states, she would once again be considered the favorite. It is not impossible. It is highly likely, in my opinion.

Because, Obama has been thru a lot of negative stories in the last week or so. Including the "Muslim" question last night on 60 Minutes. Before that, we had the turban photo and the new stories about Rezko connections. Also, he had to respond to the "red phone" ad. So he has been weakened somewhat by the attacks of the last week or so.

However, there may be a group of voters that are not being counted in the polls of TX or OH? John McCain is not inspiring unanimous support from his Party. Many younger and disenchanted Republicans may actually jump the ship and vote for Obama. If that happens, that coud turn a 5 or 6 point lead by Hillary into a near draw and a 5 or 6 point lead by Obama into a double-digit victory. There's a lot of stuff happening that the polls are not catching, in my opinion.

[skipos]

1. "If Hillary were to win 3 of 4 states, she would once again be considered the favorite."

No.
Even if she wins both (edited to add: TX and OH) states by 20%, she would still trail Obama in the pledged delegates and would be far from "the favorite." She needs to win all remaining states with @57% to be competitive (check the math if you don't believe me). She obviously won't do that, so she needs to win some states by even bigger margins.

The superdelegates are going to go with the person who has the most pledged delegates. Hillary needs massive, repetitive wins to take the lead. Otherwise, she is just doing what Huckabee is doing.

[kentuck]

4. But you have noticed...

that they have slipped the super delegates into the main delegate counts in most news stories? About 450 have already committted.

[skipos]

8. Of course they slip those in. And they rarely mention that those people can change their vote

at any point in time. The media would love this to go on until the convention, as it is good for ratings. I guarantee you that even if Hillary does little to close the delegate gap on Tuesday, the media will talk about how "close" it is, and start talking about Pennsylvania.

[kentuck]

10. Of course, every time we donate to Hillary or Obama...

that same media ends up with most of that donation. Sad, but true. They have a financial interest in keeping this horse race going for as long as possible.

[frogcycle]

2. how are your tea leaves any better than anyone else's?

your recitation of supposed "setbacks" for Obama includes the 60 minutes question, the turban photo, and the need to respond (which he did brilliantly) to the red phone ad


Rezko is an unknown - probably nothing that will hurt him, but only time will tell. The other stuff you recite is silly meaningless spin that did not change anything.

Upshot? Your opinion is pretty much just your wishful thinking.

[kentuck]

5. It is just my opinion...

you are correct. I did say, "in my opinion".

[frogcycle]

6. you did

and I didn't mean to be excessively snotty (just sorta snotty)

there is just an awful lot of tea leaf reading and trying to outshout each other that adds nothing to the discourse, and sometimes it is tempting to be like a heckler at a comedy club

because at the end of the day, that's what this place is. A comedy club on open mike night.

BTW, Tennessee beat them 'cats now, didn't they? My crystal ball has both Tn roundball teams in their respective final fours! Take THAT, Adolf Rupp, you old bigot! Spin in your grave a bit, why don'tcha!

[kentuck]

9. Yeah, a little bit of homecooking there, I would say...

But that's the way the old ball bounces. :-)

But the point I was trying to make is that there are still 300 plus super delegates left to cast a vote. Most of those are with the DNC. They may favor Hillary - since they are appointed by the Party establishment, more or less.

As for KY basketball, they had black players on their team before most of the other teams in the South. I think you must have taken "Glory Road" as gospel??

[frogcycle]

11. could be

I remember a quote from Rupp - he was still coaching when I was at UT - that they'd boycott the game before playing a team with black players. Maybe that is an urban myth, but I took it as fact back then.

UT had the first black football player, as I recall. Boy how times have changed.

My best friend is a died-in-the-wool UK fan, so the ribbing just comes naturally.


And yeah, the remaining sd's could favor Clinton, and frankly, the reason the concept was created was to provide some sort of party veto power over the wide-open primary system. Complaining about it just because it may finally be called upon to do what it was intended to do is bs. And I don't have a dog in this hunt. I don't favor either one, am just riding it out to see who i have to hold my nose and vote for.

[mohc]

3. Likely voter models

We are in somewhat uncharted territory in the Democratic nomination battle at this point. Turnout demographics from past elections can be difficult enough to turn into a LV model for the general election. But with primaries that have basically never been significant before, its next to impossible. Then you have to add into the mix the unprecedented turnout level, even in the early states. And finally, with McCain on the brink of crossing his delegates needed count and Huckabee well behind, there will be little reason for Republicans or independents to vote in the Republican primaries. None of the 4 contests this weekend are closed primaries, so we could see a lot of cross over voting. Some pollsters use fixed demographic weighting to produce their results, my guess would be their numbers will be the least reliable. Other pollsters just try to get a large enough random sample of phone numbers and use an aggressive screening technique to gauge the likeliness of a respondent voting, and that may yield better results. Regardless, we have seen a lot of error in previous polling in some states, so other that seeing the trends and ball-parking the final results, I do not know how much we are going to be able to read out of the current polling.

[meow mix]

7. this is true and why im not even looking at polls.

the turnout is amazing..