Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Could This Be The Night?

Certainly, if we've learned one thing, it's to not trust the exit polls this year. Nevertheless, many giddy bloggers are reporting the early waves of exit polls as follows:

Ohio Obama 51 Clinton 49
Texas Obama 50 Clinton 49
Vermont Obama 67 Clinton 33
Rhode Is. Obama 49 Clinton 49

Except for Vermont, where Obama clearly will prevail, the others are all within the margin of error and therefore tossups.

As many have noted, if the two big states, Texas and Ohio, turn out to be close races, Obama will in fact be the winner, due to proportional delegation allocation. Given Clinton's large leads in both states right up until the past few days, if Obama makes them close, this race will be effectively over.

Why?

Because there is no plausible scenario for Clinton to catch Obama in delegate count -- unless she wins those two state big tonight.

I'm not about to make predictions based on exit polls. But, once real vote totals start rolling in, we should be able to analyze whether the final tallies are likely to be close or not. If they prove to be as close as the exit polls purport them to be, this will be a decisive night for Obama indeed, and probably the last night of Clinton's campaign.

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