Obama Crushes Clinton in Potomac Primaries

He beat her by an average of thirty four percent. I figured that given the racial mixes involved in the races in question that he'd take MD and D.C. but that he'd eke out a tiny victory in VA or lose by five percent or less. Mainly I based that on the fact that he's done better in states that have caucuses, have a high percentage of Blacks, or a very low percentage of blacks. Simply put he does well in areas where racial tension is low or winners are more or less decided by debate. (Not my theory but I can't remember who to credit for that bit of pattern recognition.) In my experience (I'm from VA.) Virginia has just enough racial tension to have made it a hard state for me to predict. But what I had forgotten is my theory that the more Obama wins the more he will continue to win.

I theorized that if Obama won an early primary and SC he'd prove that he was electable. Once that happened voters that were backing Clinton because she was the presumptive front runner would start siding with Obama. Once that happened the more he won the more states he would win. Apparently my theory has reached a sort of critical mass. In tonight's primaries he actually pulled in more Women voters than Clinton according to early exit polls...

In the Democratic primaries in both states, Barack Obama won both men and women. In Virginia, he got 68 percent of men and 60 percent of women, while in Maryland he got 62 percent of men and 55 percent of women. In Virginia, Obama even won among white men, getting 58 percent of their votes while Hillary Rodham Clinton took her base, white women, by an unusually small margin. In Virginia she got 53 percent to Obama's 47 percent among white women. But in Maryland, Clinton won overall among whites, winning by a wide margin among white women but only tying Obama among white men.

Obama's narrow win among whites in Virginia marked one of his best showings yet among white voters and was the first time he has beat Clinton among whites in a Southern state. Obama won the votes of 90 percent of blacks in Virginia and 84 percent in Maryland.

Obama is now officially the front runner having a higher number of delegates and pledged super delegates in his corner. But Clinton has a major shot at playing catch up. She has to win Texas in order to regain momentum. Current polls have her ahead of Obama by ten percent. But I'm sticking to my theory and guessing that she'll be down to a five percent lead by the time the Texas primary rolls around. If she doesn't manage to do that she only has two options to stay in the race; reseat the FL and MI delegates and strong arm and/or sweet talk enough super delegates to come up even. And if she goes that route to get the nomination she'll poison the hearts of enough voters to ensure a McCain victory. So keep your eye on Texas because if I'm right it will make or break Clinton's campaign.