“It’s too debonaire; it’s too Fred Astaire; it’s too Kumbaya.” Talking about Barack Obama, Chris Matthews’ quote of the evening.
So far.
The word going into tonight was that it would be Clinton’s counties coming in late. But Chuck Todd just did a presentation on MSNBC which suggested that the remaining precincts may lean slightly in Obama’s direction. Apparently there’s a lot of suburban Philly still left to report.
Another story coming out of tonight is that Obama’s margin in the City of Philadelphia does not appear to have been as big as many people expected. (I’m sure there will be speculation about whether Obama’s refusal to pay “street money” was a factor. But remember, Hillary did have Mayor Nutter plus Gov. Rendell, who’s a former Mayor of Philadelphia, on her side. I suspect that was at least as big a factor.)
Late Update: Another great Matthews’ line for the evening, discussing the great cleavage in society — “African Americans” and “white liberals” vs. “regular people”.
As we noted in the last update, the remaining precincts are mainly in the Philly suburbs where Obama has done well tonight. And that suggests that the margin could tighten a little bit in Obama’s direction. But that was the case an hour ago. And Hillary’s margin has actually slightly crept up since then — from around 8% to 10%.
Lots of spin coming from both campaigns tonight. I’d say the real story is that this leaves us basically where we were. It was a decisive win for Hillary but that was the expectation. Going into tonight I think the dividing line was about 8 points. Closer than that and the story would have been that Obama didn’t win but closed the margin (which is how it looked early in the evening). A bigger margin than that and the story would be that Hillary got her big victory. So the 10 point spread is close to the dividing line but on Hillary’s side of it. There’s a lot of crowing from Hillary’s campaign tonight about a shift in momentum and doubts about Obama. Tomorrow there will be a lot of chatter from Obama’s campaign that none of that really matters because of the reality of the delegate numbers which won’t change much.
Like I said, I think that means we’re basically right where we were.
On our election scoreboard to the right we’re showing a 10 point margin for Sen. Clinton. But we’re hearing from a lot of Obama supporters saying that isn’t right. Many of them are pointing to the official Pennsylvania Secretary of State website which has …
Clinton 1,237,696 54.26%
Obama 1,043,174 45.74%
Only one problem. Those numbers are out of date. Sorry to disappoint. But they’re out of date. It may sound weird that the media sites have more up to date numbers than the state itself which is holding the election. But that’s completely normal.
AP’s current numbers, which most media sites (including TPM) are showing is …
Clinton 1,258,245 54.69%
Obama 1,042,297 45.31%
So according to TPM numbers wizard Eric Kleefeld, that’s actually a 9.39 point spread, not 10. I trust this has acquitted us of our mathematical responsibilities for the day.
Late Update: Above I said that the state numbers were out of date and that AP (the second set of numbers) are more current. However, a number of you have noted that Obama has about a thousand more votes in the state numbers than the more current AP numbers. So that doesn’t compute. The explanation is this. In pretty much every election the state itself and the AP are getting numbers at slightly different rates. Not just that one is faster but they’re receiving them differently. So for instance, the state could have one precinct in that AP doesn’t and vice versa. How can that be? Basically the AP has people contacting the precincts directly and the state is waiting for the counts to be reported directly to the state official charged with running the elections. Basically it should all sort out over the course of the day. But with that caveat the AP number has a higher percentage of the vote tabulated and should, at least for now, be viewed as the more accurate number.
GOP Senate candidate Bob Schaffer of Colorado: human rights investigator and parasailer.