Pennsylvania

This morning we get to pontificate about the importance of Senator Clinton reducing her pledged delegate deficit down to 154 and her known deficit (in other words adding declared super-delegates) down to 130.  The Clinton campaign is vigorously spinning this as momentum.  With a decisive win coming for Obama in North Carolina this is closer to a grand slam in the 8th inning of a game she was trailing 15-2.

Exit polling doesn’t show many surprises.  “Operation Chaos” continues to be the somewhat entertaining sideshow.  While 8 million listeners is certainly an accomplishment, it pales in comparison to the over 100 million who vote in national elections.  For the effort to have pushed the total 1%, Mr. Limbaugh would have needed 20,000 participants.  Assuming his Pennsylvania listenership roughly parallels the percentage of Pennsylvanians in the union, he has 320,000 listeners in the Keystone State.  20,000 participants would be a 6% participation rate.  I would think this would be in the plausible area with 15% pushing it.  As we look to the exit polling data, we see conservatives (10% of electorate) supported Obama 52:48.  This compares to Missouri where Conservatives (9% of the electorate) supported Obama 58:38.  In Wisconsin, conservatives (14% of the electorate) supported Obama 59:40.  What Limbaugh’s endorsement appears to have done is help make the Democratic primary more closed by eliminating Obama’s advantage among Republicans.  Of course, Obama’s mistakes over the past month could have something to with it as well.  Despite writing a paragraph on it here, I want to make clear that I don’t believe this to have seriously affected anything.  I just find it entertaining.

Moving along, soi dissant Catholic voter experts are discussing Senator Clinton’s 70:30 support among Catholics.  At this point it is a cart and horse arguments.  We know in Pennsylvania, Catholics tend to be older, white, and high school educated.  (Since the accusation of snobbery gets raised here a lot, I would be in the some college camp, so let’s not go there.)  These have been termed working class voters despite a good third of them being retired.  Overall the Democratic electorate was heavily female.  Personally I don’t have difficulty seeing a 60-year-old white weekly mass attending woman voting for Senator Clinton.  It is the same woman I have pictured who claims that all the problems in the Church are because it is an old boys club.  I can see that one.  I can that to such a degree that it would skew an entire demographic.  Otherwise, I just can’t fathom what would skew the Catholic vote that wouldn’t skew the white protestant vote.  If someone can give a compelling argument, I am ears.  I’m not going to pretend however that Catholics are normally distributed across the electorate, so I can claim significance of outcome.