Across the pond

The analysis of last night’s results took much less time than I anticipated. Despite Hillary Clinton’s resounding victory in Ohio by 55 per cent to 45 per cent, the figures are not too much different than they were before yesterday’s vote took place. Her lead in the other big state, Texas was much narrower and the final results there depend on a dozen caucases which have not yet been added up. So what the facts show is that Barack Obama still has a comfortable lead from the pledged delegates, but the balance is held by the super delegates, who at the start of the campaign were strongly pro-Clinton, but who are now changing their mind as to which way they will vote if the decision goes to the party convention in the autumn.

It is extremely unlikely that the situation will be any different when the votes are in from the few remaining primaries. Pennsylvania, the biggest state yet to declare with 158 delegates, votes on Tuesday, 22 April. Clinton is not the mood to withdraw before then, even though she would have to secure a far higher percentage of the vote there than she has achieved anywhere in order to overtake Obama’s lead in pledged delegates. Although this morning’s Daily Telegraph thinks she was giving a hint in her latest speech that if she does lose she is prepared to be Obama’s Vice President.

So the facts are clear but, as so often in journalism, it is the interpretation of the facts that is crucial. The super delegates will not want to frustrate the popular will, given the goldfish bowl nature of the Presidential election in 2008. The world is watching how America comes to its final decision. But it is now virtually certain that the final tally of the 4,050 voting delegates will show a difference between the two candidates of only a few dozen votes.

So the reality now, and on 22 April, is that American Democratic voters are split in two equal halves. And since the super delegates are all senators, congressmen and former Presidents who have spent their lifetimes as elected representatives, who know all about the dangers of getting out of touch with the electorate, I think their priorities will not be waiting for the remaining votes, calculators at the ready, it will be how to unite the party behind one of these two leaders.

It is worth stressing, once again, that the policy differences between Obama and Clinton are very small. The latest spat they had about the North Atlantic Free Trade Area is a case in point. Both of them are for it in principle but are wary in practice at the risk to American jobs. So the argument between them was to do with who was being most honest with the electorate about their intentions.

The Ohio vote demonstrates yet again that campaigns are attracting different constituencies. In Ohio Clinton had overwhelming support from the white working class and the Latinos, the most vulnerable groups in America. In the language of my earlier blog today, she is supported by that part of the population which is too poor to allow itself the luxury of dreaming. Whereas Obama, like Jack Kennedy before him, has huge support amongst the mostly rich and comfortable intellectuals.

On the Republican side yesterday, John McCain passed the magic number of 1,191 Republican delegates he needed to win their nomination for President. So he will have a month’s start for his campaign on the Democratic candidate. Which will help to concentrate the minds of the super delegates on how to beat the Republicans. And that, now, even more than yesterday, means getting the Clinton machine and their hundreds of loyal supporters, working together with the enthusiastic but equally loyal group of people, many young, around Obama.