Legal Commentary

Tsunami Tuesday: Where Things Stand

By Jeralyn

The Wall St. Journal has an extensive article on where the candidates now stand in the states voting Feb. 5.

Shorter version: Despite Barack Obama's South Carolina win, Hillary is still significantly ahead in the major states.

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.....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.

More...

Obama had an edge in South Carolina he is unlikely to have on Feb. 5.

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.

The bottom line, as of now:

Mrs. Clinton appears to have the edge going into the coming week. Polling conducted since the middle of January -- after her thin-but-surprising victory in the New Hampshire primary -- shows that she holds a decisive and often double-digit edge over Mr. Obama in eight of the 10 most important Super Tuesday states. These states collectively will deliver more than 1,500 delegates; 2,025 are needed to lock up a nomination.

Here's the chart from the WSJ article:

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).