The polls in West Virginia have just closed and NBC quickly projected that Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton will win today’s West Virginia Democratic primary by a big margin.
On MSNBC, Tim Russert said Clinton will win the state by a two-to-one margin and hope that her big victory there will give wavering pledged delegates and superdelegates pause so that she can compete in the remaining five primaries.
NBC’s just-up news story says:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was projected to win the West Virginia primary Tuesday, NBC News said, beating Sen. Barack Obama by a wide margin even as her rival edged closer to the Democratic presidential nomination by picking up more superdelegates.
The loss did not threaten Obama’s lead in the race for the nomination. He conceded defeat in advance in the state, looking ahead to the Oregon primary later in the month and the campaign against John McCain.
“This is our chance to build a new majority of Democrats and independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won’t do,” he said at a campaign appearance in Missouri, which looms as a battleground state in the fall.
Clinton is expected to give her victory speech — look for a particularly good one given the size of her victory and because her campaign knows they will have substantial live air time — within the hour.
And the impact?
The key tonight is whether the media covers the win as a big one or a pro forma one where she was expected to win anyway due to the state’s more than 90 percent white population. Some Clinton supporters already see signs that that the media will downplay the victory. Writes Jeralyn from the pro-Clinton blog Talk Left:
The media is focused on Barack Obama. Even his flag pin is more important than the West Virginia primary. MSNBC is running Obama’s delegate numbers at the bottom of the screen. Fox News is reporting on various state elections. My local news is talking about Roy Romer’s endorsement of Obama today.
Matthews even says Obama’s speech tonight was bad. Olbermann mocks McCauliffe’s characterization of her speech. [More…]
CNN analysts discuss Obama’s speech. MSNBC is discussing McCain and Obama. Olbermann says to the Governor of West Virginia, “lets look past W. Va.” The Governor, who is an uncommitted superdelegate, wants to talk about how high the voter turnout is. Olbermann responds by asking what West Virginia has to change to be able to have a November win for Obama.
The media is diminishing West Virginia reporting mostly how white, rural, poor and uneducated the voters are.
Polls close in 45 minutes. I wonder if they will even report the results as they come in like they’ve done with every other primary. I suspect they’ll call the race for Hillary at 6:31 pm and then go back to discussing Obama.
Clinton’s speech will be carried live, YouTubed and run in snippets on cable. But much will depend on the size of her victory (it didn’t help when a supporter earlier said Clinton really needed a 80 percent win to send a message to the Democratic party’s powers that be) and the demographics. But many analysts feel in terms of the numbers, the race for the Democratic nomination is already effectively over.
UPDATE I:
ABC News looks at exit polls and the race factor — and noted a whopping number of Clinton supporters who say they’ll vote for McCain or sit the race out if Clinton doesn’t head the Dem ticket:
A confluence of groups inclined toward Hillary Clinton gave her an easy victory in the West Virginia primary, with less-educated, lower-income whites predominating in this Southern state.
In a trouble sign for delegate-leader Barack Obama, barely half said they’d vote for him in November if he’s the party’s nominee.
Racially motivated voting ran somewhat higher than elsewhere: In preliminary exit poll results two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. Only a third of those voters said they’d support Obama against John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where the question’s been asked.
Indeed, as noted, among all West Virginia primary voters, only about half said they’d support Obama vs. McCain, far fewer than elsewhere and one of many signs of antipathy toward Obama in the state.
Among Clinton’s supporters, just 36 percent said they’d vote for him against McCain; about as many said they’d back McCain, the rest, sit it out.
The Associated Press is now calling her victory “largely symbolic”:
Hillary Rodham Clinton reached out for a largely symbolic victory in the West Virginia primary Tuesday over Barack Obama, front-runner in a historic Democratic presidential race nearing an end. Obama conceded defeat in advance in the state, looking ahead to the Oregon primary later in the month and the campaign against John McCain.
“This is our chance to build a new majority of Democrats and independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won’t do,” he said in remarks prepared for an evening appearance in Missouri, which looms as a battleground state in the fall.
“This is our moment to turn the page on the divisions and distractions that pass for politics in Washington,” added the man seeking to become the fist black presidential nominee of a major party.
Interviews with West Virginia voters leaving their polling places showed an electorate that was overwhelmingly white.
Nearly one in four of all ballots were cast by voters 60 and older, and a similar number by West Virginians with no education beyond high school. More than half the voters were in families with incomes of $50,000 or less. Clinton has done particularly well in primaries to date among older, less well-educated and lower-income families.
West Virginia had 28 delegates at stake, to be awarded proportionally according to the popular vote.
CBS’s report noted Clinton’s big thing-to-do-tomorrow: to find some big bucks — and a big win in West Virginia, the Clinton camp believes, could be a good arguing point:
In the days since, close to 30 superdelegates have swung behind Obama, evidence that party officials were beginning to coalesce around the first-term Illinois senator who is seeking to become the first black to win a major party presidential nomination. Three of his new supporters formerly backed Clinton, who surrendered her lead in superdelegates late last week for the first time since the campaign began.
With her campaign more than $20 million in debt, Clinton desperately needs to raise money following her West Virginia win, reports CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod. On Wednesday, she’s calling her top fundraisers to her Washington home to see if there is a way out of her campaign’s dire financial shape.
The former first lady spent parts of several days campaigning in West Virginia in search of victory.
She refrained from criticizing Obama directly, but had a cautionary word nonetheless for party leaders who seemed eager to pivot to the fall campaign. “I keep telling people, no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia,” she said at Tudor’s Biscuit World in the state’s capital city.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.