The Wall Street Journal
Obama Gains, But Still Lags In Big States
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER and AMY CHOZICK
January 28, 2008
Barack Obama's overwhelming weekend victory in South Carolina's Democratic primary gives him new momentum in the run-up to the near-national nominating contest a week from tomorrow, known as Super Tuesday. But Mr. Obama heads into the 22-state showdown as the underdog. The Illinois senator trails Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by large margins in polls in most of the big states voting Feb. 5. And he lacks the time or resources to campaign intensively in many of those far-flung races to close the gaps.
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Today, Mr. Obama is likely to get a fresh boost. One of the Democratic Party's icons, senior Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, is expected to offer his endorsement, joining his niece -- Caroline Kennedy, daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy -- and adding to the JFK aura that has lifted Mr. Obama's presidential bid. But for all of the attention Mr. Obama has garnered since his Iowa caucus victory at the beginning of the month, Mrs. Clinton has maintained her big lead in national polls -- and in polls in the big states with delegate prizes far greater than any state that has voted so far. Among the major Super Tuesday contests, Mrs. Clinton has wide -- in some cases double-digit -- polling leads in California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona, Missouri and Alabama. Mr. Obama leads in his home state of Illinois and in Georgia. The demographics in many of those states also seem to play more to Mrs. Clinton's strengths, with big populations of Latinos and white women, groups that helped carry her to victory over Mr. Obama in New Hampshire and Nevada.
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The sheer diversity of the states in play -- racially, regionally, geographically -- means that no candidate will have the cash or the leisure to engage in anything approaching the old-fashioned whistle-stop campaigning that has defined the races in most states so far. Mr. Obama had more than three weeks to build on his Iowa victory to chip away at Mrs. Clinton's lead in South Carolina and ultimately to overwhelm her. That will be much harder over the coming week... Looking for some fresh momentum of her own, Mrs. Clinton has started calling attention to the largely ignored Democratic vote tomorrow in Florida, a state where a recent poll gave her a 48% to 28% edge. All the Democratic candidates have pledged not to campaign in Florida, which was stripped of all its delegates by the Democratic National Committee as punishment for moving its primary into January. Though the party forbade candidates from staging rallies there, it is allowing fund-raising visits; Mrs. Clinton has three scheduled today, in Sarasota and Miami. And she now plans to visit Florida after the polls close tomorrow night to "thank her supporters."
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But the Democrats are already fully focused on Feb. 5 -- and neither of the two leaders is giving up any demographic. Yesterday, Mr. Obama said he would travel to one Super Tuesday state, Kansas, which has a relatively small African-American population, to campaign in his white grandfather's hometown. Mrs. Clinton left South Carolina moments after the polls closed, spending yesterday in Tennessee, where a week-old poll gives her a 14-point lead. One stop: Memphis, where much of the state's black population is centered. About 16% of the state's citizens are black.
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Statewide polls are often unreliable. And because it's expensive to poll, they often fail to come out frequently enough to reflect changing voter sentiment on the ground. A poll in Massachusetts conducted Wednesday gave Mrs. Clinton 59% of the vote -- a nearly 3-to-1 edge over Mr. Obama. But the Kennedy endorsement could carry substantial clout with Massachusetts voters. And Mr. Obama has the backing of the state's other senator, John Kerry, as well as Gov. Deval Patrick.
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