Kyle Bell

The results were not clear the night of Super Tuesday as to what it all meant. Now that nearly all of the votes have been counted, the delegates have been allocated and the dust has settled, there is no doubt that Barack Obama had a big night last night. He won the most states, he won the most delegates and he has the most money. With California, New York, Arkansas and most of New England now behind us and Obama still ahead, the calendar now shifts to states that are favorable to him.

Let’s start with the big news of the day: the money crunch at Hillary Headquarters. Hillary confirmed today that she “loaned” her campaign $5 million dollars in January. So when we heard that Obama raised $32 million in January alone, versus $12 million for Hillary, almost half of that amount was her own money. Now we get word that Howard Wolfson and other campaign staff are going to go without pay. Sound familiar? The same thing happened to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign before it bombed a few weeks ago.

Now let’s turn to the Obama campaign. In the past 24 hours since Super Tuesday, Obama has raised more than $4 million online according to MSNBC. That’s $4,000,000 in one day. Momentum, anyone? Looks like Hillary’s going to have to write another check if she wants to keep pace. Oh wait, she wasn’t keeping pace in the first place!

Next up, the delegate count. Despite winning New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California, Hillary did not win the most delegates last night. In fact, if you combine the number of delegates won out of Illinois and New York, the home states of the two candidates, Obama came out with more delegates than Hillary. The other 12 states that Obama won were more than enough to exceed the 7 other states that Hillary won.

Question: What state did Obama perform 7^th best in?

You probably would think Connecticut or Delaware, right? Wrong. Illinois. This just goes to show how strong support Obama has across the country when his home state is his 7^th strongest.

Idaho 17% 80%

Kansas 26% 74%

Alaska 25% 74%

Colorado 32% 67%

Minnesota 32% 67%

Georgia 31% 66%

Illinois 33% 64%

On the opposite side of things, Hillary’s top state was Arkansas (her other “home state”) and her 2^nd strongest is… New York. Not exactly a stellar national showing, eh? Compare that to Obama, who beat Hillary with 60% of the vote or more in 8 states (as many states as Hillary won outright), with Hillary only managing to beat Obama by that in 1 state. One. Even in New York she was held to under 60%. Hillary LOST, folks. She lost BIG.

Last thing I want to talk about is the contests coming up. Between now and March 4 there are 9 contests. He has an advantage in every one of these, and I’ll go state by state as to why:

In the next week alone there are 7 states (including D.C.) accounting for 465 delegates. These are:

Washington: Obama leads Hillary in the polls 53% to 40%

Louisiana: Large numbers of black voters. The “Deep South” states have all gone to Obama.

Nebraska: A caucus state, Obama has won every one of them, except for Nevada. He has won every Great Plains state so far as well.

Maine: Another caucus state. Momentum being on his side, this should be his, but could go either way.

Virginia: Obama has the support of the popular governor and the demographics seem to favor him (well educated whites and black voters).

Maryland: Another state with a large number of black voters (Baltimore).

Washington D.C.: Do I even need to point out why he’ll win here?

The majority of these will go to Obama. In fact, he should win five of the seven without a problem. Virginia and Maine I’m slightly less confident with. At worst, of the 465 delegates up for grabs between these states, Obama should get 250 of these. Remember, Democrats distribute delegates by the proportion of the vote. If you factor in Wisconsin and Hawaii on February 19, there will be 586 delegates for Obama to win in the month of February after Super Tuesday.

Obama lived in Hawaii and Wisconsin borders Illinois. Wisconsin also has large numbers of blacks in Milwaukee and college students in Madison. He should win them both. If he could manage to win 60% of these delegates, he would have 352 more delegates before “mini-Super Tuesday” on March 4. Doing that would put him within roughly 700-800 delegates of the nomination (and over a hundred delegates ahead of Hillary), without even including Super Delegates, before March 4.

If the Clintons cede every state between now and March 4, they cannot win. 28 states have already voted. There are 22 states left. For them to not compete in 9 of those states voting in the next month would be to concede nearly half of the states left to vote. True, Ohio and Texas are massive states, but just as her Super Tuesday strategy failed to deliver her the most delegates with the likes of New York, California and New Jersey, smaller states like Ohio and Texas will not be able to do the job, either.

That said, looking beyond “mini-Super Tuesday” on March 4, the biggest single day for delegates will be May 6 with Indiana and North Carolina. Looking at the returns from Illinois and South Carolina, both states should be big wins for Obama. Obama didn’t only do well in Chicago, where he had nearly 70% support in Cook County (America’s second biggest county), he also beat Hillary in the rural regions of the state along the Indiana border. This should bode well for him on May 6.

I don’t know much about North Carolina, but polls already had him up in that state before Super Tuesday. He should win it. Being from Indiana, I can say that the large black populations in South Bend, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Northwest Indiana (Hammond, Gary, East Chicago, Michigan City) will all give him a huge surplus of votes. Add to that the cities with high concentrations of college students: Bloomington (IU), Muncie (Ball State), South Bend (Notre Dame/St. Mary’s), Lafayette (Purdue) and Indianapolis (IUPUI, Butler). And of course being a border state to Illinois, Indiana should go Obama’s way. With it (and North Carolina), Obama will win a majority of the 218 delegates.