A Poll That Explains the Facts In Texas

Okay, there are polls of all Texas voters, polls of this, polls of that. Here is a poll done by Texans, for Texans, that picks apart demographic trends and preferences and then goes one important step further. They pick apart the data by region, then they list the delegate count for each region. Others have warned that the Texas system is likely to favor Obama, but this is the first poll to seek to quantify the effect.

Guess what? They show Obama leading in the Districts which have 88 delegates at stake, while Clinton leads in Districts where 39 delegates are in play. If this were a Republican primary with winner-take-all assignments of delegates this would be a landslide in terms of delegate "get" for Obama. In the Democratic primary what one can say is that it looks like a proportional win for Obama, which since Clinton needed to win delegates by something like a 65% - 35% margin, means the primary season would appear to end here. Even more so, as national polls come out citing Obama as ahead on national polling, or in head to head matchups with McCain. That electability factor (not polled for in this poll) may sway undecideds to vote for Obama. Public discussion abut how well Obama's fundraising is going and questions as to whether Clinton should step aside can't help either, for those paying close enough attention to hear about it.

If this poll is accurate, or even close to accurate, there is no statistical chance for Clinton to get a high enough delegate count in Texas to keep alive her hopes of winning the nomination. That being the case, it would appear to be time for Democrats to wake up to the fact that they have a new nominee, for better or worse. No candidate is free of flaws and negatives. Obama has fewer negatives than Clinton, fewer than the Republican Party, but now the slime machine is going to start up. Given the unpopularity of President Bush that may only serve to further damage the GOP, in a similar pattern of self-inflicted wounds that we saw when Clinton turned into an attack machine. When Obama turns negative he seems able to do it in a softer manner. The result has more impact, while generating less anger.

Arthur