It’s A Good Thing Arkansas Doesn’t Matter, Either
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Daniel Larison
It’s not really surprising, but Clinton leads McCain in Arkansas 53-39, while McCain leads Obama 57-33. She gets 84% of Democrats, he gets 50%, and his unfavs are 61%, but who cares? It’s just another one of those irrelevant states that she could win and he’s going to lose. After all, we know that she drives away independents (she wins them 43-41) and he attracts them like moths to a flame (they go for McCain 56-32).
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7 Responses to “It’s A Good Thing Arkansas Doesn’t Matter, Either”
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Obama will see your WV, KY, AR, and raise you one CO or VA.
Now if OH and or PA acts in November like they did recently, say hello to President McCain
Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. If I were an Obamaite, I wouldn’t want to have to bank on Obama flipping two states that haven’t voted for a Democrat for President since well before I was born. No doubt both CO and VA have been trending Democratic in recent years, but then so have Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, and that isn’t necessarily putting them away for him. I believe the last Democrat Colorado backed for President was LBJ, and I think the same goes for Virginia.
While I’m on this topic, I would also note that even Adlai Stevenson carried West Virginia and Kentucky the first time around, and this patten has held up through Clinton’s ‘92 run. This was a common occurrence until very recently.
Also, if he loses WV, KY and AR, and wins only one of those two, he comes out behind in the electoral voting. Those three account for 19 votes. Only with Colorado and Virginia together does he come away with a net gain, and I doubt very much that he is going to win states with large military presences such as Colorado and Virginia against McCain.
This argument is getting old. Yes, there’s some states Clinton is able to flip, there’s some Obama is able to flip. If your point is that Arkansas makes Clinton a better overall candidate than Obama, your analytic abilities are failing you. All the states matter. Your argument rests on the notion that some small states matter more than others. Not a very good approach. Obama has a 50 state strategy, not a 51-49 strategy, which is the best that Clinton can hope for. Recent polls show Obama leading McCain by 4-7 points, bouncing back from his lows.
Also, are you sure Clinton can beat McCain in WV in the general? She won’t be running against a liberal eltisti black man with a crazy pastor. She’s be running against a Scotts-Irish war hero with vastly more experience than she has. And republicans get to vote too. Might not be so pretty.
Thing is, I would rather have McCain than Hillary, so I not sure why this is supposed to make an Obama supporter change his mind?
I will take McCain mildly more immigration control stance over Hillary’s pro-war, pro-immigration stance.
Virginia was won by Carter in 1976.
On second thought, that was West Virginia. Oops.
Yes, it was WV. I double-checked, because it sounded wrong when I first wrote it, but Virginia went against Carter both times. I was wrong about Colorado. They voted for Clinton in ‘92.