In less than 18 hours the polls open in North Carolina and Indiana.
The pundits are saying Obama must win both in order to close the door on the Clinton Campaign and that Clinton must win one in order to carry on with her campaign. A sweep by either candidate will dramatically alter the complexion of this campaign, but a sweep seems unlikely.
It does not look like a Clinton win in North Carolina is possible. Most polls at this point are showing Obama with an eight to ten point lead over Sen. Clinton in the Tar Heel State.
In the Hoosier State Clinton has the advantage. While an upset for Obama in Indiana is not out of the question, in recent days the polls have shown Clinton's lead solidifying somewhere in the three to six percent range.
If there are no surprises Tuesday night nothing will change and we'll just keep rolling into West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon.
The key word above is surprise. Conventional wisdom tells us that a sweep would be a surprise but a split would be expected and therefore not a "game changer."
Obama, however, may have a surprise up his sleeve in North Carolina. As mentioned above, Sen. Obama is expected to win there by eight to ten percent. A 15% or possibly even 20% victory there would qualify as a big surprise, and if Obama were able to keep it close in Indiana, say within a point or two, tomorrow could end up being the game changer after all.
15 - 20% may seem like an extraordinarily large number, but in the four states bordering North Carolina; Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia, Obama won by an average of roughly 20%. Tennessee was the only one of the four that went for Clinton, plus two other primaries in the neighborhood, D.C. and Maryland went for Obama by 50 points and 24 points respectively bringing the average victory for Barack in the area to over 25%.
North Carolina's demographics are similar to that of its neighbors and even though a landslide for either candidate seems unlikely, Obama is the one of the two with the chance to make it happen, at least in the Tar Heel State.
No matter what happens tomorrow though, the pledged delegate count will not change very much. The only difference will be that Clinton will have 188 fewer delegates to fight for. Although the media will continue spinning any type of split as Barack Obama's inability to "close the deal" and yet another justification to keep this race going until the convention, the superdelegates will not see it that way.
Howard Dean and the rest of The Party's leaders are getting more and more nervous as the days go by. They want a candidate and they want it now. Time, energy and most importantly money needs to be spent fighting the war against McCain rather than on the futile battle Clinton is still fighting within The Party.
When the superdelegates see Barack Obama coming out of the May 6th primaries maintaining a 150 pledged delegate lead with less than 200 pledged delegates still up for grabs, unlike the media, they will understand this race is over and they will be looking for an excuse to end it.
So don't let the pundits convince you that Indiana is a must win for Obama.
A close call in Indiana plus a landslide victory for Obama in North Carolina will give the superdelegates that excuse they need. Many of the uncommitted superdelegates Obama are rumored to have lined up will come out of the woodwork and finally declare their support for the Senator from Illinois. The flood of superdelegates for Obama will effectively end this race.
Programming Note: Check out the Eyes on Obama forum tonight at 6PM Eastern. We will be discussing tomorrow's primaries and many other Obama related issues. It will be an excellent opportunity to interact with other Obama supporters and even some of the Eyes on Obama bloggers like myself. You can check out the forum here:
http://www.eyesonobama.com/forum/board/id_7
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