Pennsylvania Democratic primary live

This post will be progressively updated to follow the count in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, starting from when I get out of bed (by which time it might well be all over). Real Clear Politics’ poll average shows a slight narrowing in Hillary Clinton’s lead since last week, from 47.4-40.4 to 49.5-43.4.

11.30am AEST. CNN reports Clinton leads 53-47 with 20 per cent of precincts counted. Their exit poll, if I’m reading it correctly, points to a result of about 52-48. They called it a “win” for Clinton about half an hour ago, for what that’s worth.

12.30pm. Clinton has just given a speech to claim victory of one kind or another: she now leads 54-46 with 75 per cent of precincts reporting.

12.50pm. As Obama gives his speech, the CNN’s count clicks over to 55-45 with 78 per cent of precincts reporting. They are giving Clinton 52 delegates to Obama’s 36 on television, but their web page is holding back on 37-31.

2.20pm. With 98 per cent of precincts reporting, Clinton’s has a lead of 54.8-45.2, which is at the higher end of market expectations.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,387 comments on “Pennsylvania Democratic primary live”

Comments Page 27 of 28
1 … 26 27 28

  2. YHH – 1300 – Yes that was a Billism during an unguarded rant. The pressure is telling.
    You’ve also missed a huge lurch to the right among the Hillarians this weekend. It has been fantastical to see. Since she threatened to nuke the people of Iran, it is now accepted wisdom among her supporters here that our children will be safer with pre-emptive military strikes by the US against whoever. Anyone who thinks otherwise is being painted as a lily-livered milksop.

  3. JV

    Um really? Pre-emptive strikes…and we have to go over this again?

    And Bill…poor bill… he just wants to be loved.

  4. jv, it seems the Hillarians are willing to sell their souls for undying loyalty to Hillary Clinton, and yet, for months they were saying that Obama supporters were the unthinking followers! The hypocrisy is breathtaking, not to mention the fact that some Hillarians are now supporting war on Iran, because Hillary says so, and yet were seething to the brim over Howard and his support of war on Iraq in the lead up to last year’s election.

    What does this say? It says that there are no principles or morals that can’t be traded for either loyalty or face-saving.

  8. An article on why we may be seeing Obama on Fox and kamikaze Clinton here worth a look: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/04/road-veers-right.html

    “The remaining primary calendar veers decidedly right of center…With the exception of Oregon, which is more conservative than is generally acknowledged, the other six states all fall within a relatively narrow band toward the right-center of the political spectrum.”

  9. Pancho, is there a place on the planet that ISN’T right of the political spectrum? Apart from my place of course.

  13. I don’t think anyone has said otherwise GG. The SD’s can jump any which way they choose. There are no rules as to what they should do so it’s possible that 75% of them could jump on Hillary’s train (which is what she will need to clinch the nomination).

    The debate has been around what they ‘should’ do (and there have been various opinions on this) and what would be the consequences of their various possible decisions.

    The reality is that the SD’s will not vote en block but will choose one or the other for a variety of different reasons. Obama is likely to win – but nothing is certain in politics. Handing the nomination to the one who is behind in pledged delegates, however, has great potential to tear the Party apart.

  14. Obama’s pacifists, Obama another Vietnam victim

    Some bloggers love books , I love helicopters. A Vietnam patrol moves in silence with mates by your side in the jungles full of jungle disguised Vietcong.
    Until all of a sudden there is no silence , a bomb has gone off. A mate a second ago alive is now dead. Another a second ago with 2 legs but now one. Another Vietcong ambush of bullets puts more diggers at risk. A call for air backup is made , then the sound of Helicopters coming and the Vietcong go away for fear of those helicopters. Diggers are saved. The Helicoptors have a US emblem on them.

    Thousands of miles away in Sydney the anti War pacifists march in Sydney with not a seconds thought for their diggers in the Jungles. Why can not you support the digger but oppose the Politican who made the War. In an elitist ivory tower war is a nasty word. In reality its horror is beyond words. What we know is innocent diggers , solders and civilians die in the millions or are forever maimed

    Obama wears no US symbol Pin. I could not care less. there were over 500,000 US troops fighting in Vietnam mostly at the one time. Millions of US troops fought there and their millions familys and children and friends vote and they see Obama with no Pin. Perhaps the rednecks of Ohio and across the American West & South may deliver in Obama another casualty of Vietnam.

    If so , the Obama elitists will simply move onto to another Hemingway to read,
    whilst I think of helicopters with no politicans aboard , with thanks. Oh , and I love the US military deterrent and so do the majority, but it is in the minority here so oblivious that the threat of its use actually can prevent wars (despite a dumb Bush tainting this reality)

  15. Ron, your reasoning is characteristically all over the place, but let’s just take two points:

    The anti-war arguments on here have invariably been directed at the “politicians who made the war”. It is the warmongering of Bush, McCain and Clinton that draws the ire around here. The military personel who find themselves entangled in a war zone due to the political stupidity of politicians have our total support.

    Secondly, what is ‘elitist’ about Obama supporters? I’m not sure what you mean by the term, though it obviously gives you some personal comfort to use it.

  17. Ron,

    Hillary Clinton said “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” she also said the US would “obliterate” Iran, made allusions to nuclear attacks and pre-emptive strikes.

    This is not deterence, nor is it strategic realism. It fails to grasp what her own intellectual strand of neo-liberal thought has argued for a decade – that the threat to the U.S. and its interests does not come from conventional sources or even states, but individuals and rogue elements. The same thought posits that proliferation and the fact that weapons are not controlled will lead to this situation.
    How does uncontextualised sabre rattling, used to score political points in a domestic contest, really aid any of this?

    I completely fail to see the relevance of your post @1314 on the politics of the situation. It is personal and seeks to tar anyone who doesn’t agree with you – I hadn’t heard of the helicopters and Hemmingway divide before, but it is novel, I grant you that. But really what that post seems to say to me is: ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’.

  18. True, Yo Ho Ho. I don’t wear an Australian flag pin either (though I do have a set of Scottish cufflinks). I have a deep suspicion of those who wrap themselves in flags and use the term ‘patriot’ a lot. LIke religion, so much damage has been done in the name of patriotism. Though a proud Aussie, I’m a global citizen first. Elitist? I don’t know what that means.

  21. #1313 – FG – [Handing the nomination to the one who is behind in pledged delegates, however, has great potential to tear the Party apart] – so is “Handing the nomination to the one who appears to be McGovern Mark2, has great potential to tear the chances of the Party getting back to the Whitehouse apart.

    Note what Howard Dean just said: “I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else”. Electability, electabilty, electability will decide in the end. If Obama can demonstrate he is more electable in November than Hillary, then he should be the nominee. So far, he has not and not looking likely.

    From #1310 GG’s link: [The Democrats’ national chairman, Howard Dean, told The Financial Times in an article on Friday: “I think the race is going to come down to the perception in the last six or eight races of who the best opponent for McCain will be. I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else.”]

    [but nothing is certain in politics] – best thing you said for ages. So all these analysis of polls, PLs, popular votes are a waste of time. just wait to see how the remaining primaries turnout and are there anymore “gates”, from both sides.

  22. Finns: Any comparison with McGovern is just a red herring. Hillary is running second to Obama, which must say something, even to you, about her electability. My point is that, for the SD’s to virtually ignore the outcome of the Party nomination process is a very dangerous road to take. They may yet choose to do so, but the consequences, I suspect, would not help their nominee’s campaign.

  24. Finns, it seems that Mccain’s and Clinton’s foreign policies are converging as the campaign wears on. What differences can you see between them that would make an Australian want her to win over mcCain?

  26. Finns, I’m bemused by the references to McGovern. What are you trying to say: that McCain is Nixon? Or that Clinton is Nixon? If so, what is your point? That those who opposed the the Viet Nam war were wrong? or right? or what? This labelling from the past is irrelevant.

    The US has bungled things badly: the Iraq war is militarily costly, unpopular and harmful to the US economy. Even the pro-war factions agree the war is damaging. The question is who is more likely to extricate the US and repair its relations with other states. Muttering about a figure from the 1970’s is just nonsensical.

  27. Not since Isaac Newton sought to decode the Ancient Testament or since Ronald Reagan redefined the properties of a meal fit for children to eat, has anyone defied science as absurdly as Mrs Clinton in her efforts to how that if you count things her way she’s in the lead. She is in the direct lineage of Joseph Stalin who said it’s not a matter of who does the voting, but who does the counting. How the Georgian dictator would have wagged his pipe in approval of Mrs Clinton’s claim that a disqualified election in which only her supporters voted somehow constitutes a legitimate expression of the popular Democratic will in Michigan!

    Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race
    http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04262008.html

  28. 1323 Finns:
    The trouble with that view is that on all the available figures, Obama is more electable than Hillary – or she wouldn’t be in this mess! To somehow argue that Hillary has a better chance of beating McCain when she is unable to beat Obama is going to take one helluva sales job.

  30. 1325
    The Finnigans

    I read the entire transcript.

    It takes longer than 15 seconds and has a lifetime’s worth of observations and dedication to both his country and his race.

    But I guess you were going to say that, eh?

  31. NEWSFLASH!

    Liberal Senator does not realise that Australia’s Head of State is the Queen!

    “Thank you for your email regarding the republic debate on 20 April.
    In response to your question, the Australian head of State has been recognised by successive governments as the Governor-General, an Australian appointed by the government of the day.
    Once again, thank you for your correspondence.
    Yours sincerely
    Cory
    CORY BERNARDI
    Liberal Senator for South Australia
    Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services”

    Here I was thinking that section 2 of the constitution stated:
    “A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen’s pleasure.”

    But no, apparently governments appoint the Governor-General directly, and the Queen has absolutely no role in our constitution whatsoever, even though she is mentioned about 39 times.

    But I consider this form of argument a foot bullet on the Monarchist’s part. If the Queen isn’t Australia’s Head of State, then it shouldn’t matter if we excise every reference to her from the constitution. Either the Queen’s role is important, and should be retained, or it is completely unimportant and can be done away with without any problems.

  32. 1331
    ShowsOn

    That’s right up there with “Clinton is winning”!

    You’ve come to the right place Showy!

  33. He’s bored!

    They say he’s bored!

    What about us! We are so freakin’ over the thing it makes me whince to even think of reading one more post about the Travelling HillBillies!

    They say he’s bored:

    In interviews with several associates and aides, Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28obama.html?hp

    …I wonder why! LOL

  37. 1335
    Greensborough Growler

    That’s it?

    He quotes one line from an entire interview and concludes that Wright demolishes Obama’s integrity?

    “He (Obama) is a politician. I’m a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician.”

    …once again, scrapping the bottom of the sludge for a soundbite to turn into an IED, aren’t we?

    And once again, Growler, you take your opinions half-baked from a jock from the OZ?

    What’s up Growler, too hard to read through it and actually THINK about it?

    Seems you like fast food McIdeas from the righwing MSM.

    You’d make a good Republican Growler!

  38. Hillary did NOT make a pre-emptive nuke threat against Iran
    Hillary did NOT say Iran had nukes now.
    Hillary did not even bring up Iran having nukes.

    Hillary was asked IF Iran launched nukes , what would she as POTUS do.

    The Obamabots here show such venom for Hillary they will distort anything.

    ABC TV News’ Chris Cuomo on 22/4/08 “Good Morning America” asked Clinton about a previous week’s “massive retaliation” phrase – which he described as “scary words” – and asked “Does massive retaliation mean you’d go into Iran, you would bomb Iran? Is that what that’s supposed to suggest? “what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons ? ie the TV interviewer ” asked Hillary 3 questions concurrently in one

    and her reply was
    “The question I (Hillary) was asked) was, ‘If Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be?’ My (Hillary) response was “And I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran” to retaliate against an Iranian nuclear hit on Israel.”

    She then added: “And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

    Hillary told the truth. Yes you petals the nukes would fly in that circumstance and so they should because Iran’s next nuke salvo might be onto Sydney (even though they’d miss your ivory tower……but only for a nuke mini second

  39. 1334
    Ferny Grover

    I don’t think he intends to drop the ball Ferny:

    For the last year, advisers had been reluctant to highlight him playing basketball, thinking it could raise racial stereotypes or make him look less serious. But in Indiana, where basketball is sacrosanct, Mr. Obama scored four baskets and his team won the 20-minute game, a far better showing than his much-derided bowling outing in Pennsylvania.

    (NYT)

  41. Do you think, Ron, we could ask Iran to aim a little to the left with their non existent nukes and hit Canberra instead?

  42. Ron, I saw your leading line, and that’s enough for me:

    Pre-emption is when you start shooting your mouth off about destroying a country that not only DOES NOT have a nuke to attack Israel with, but has consistently maintained it does not intend to even make one, let alone use it on a country so close that they’d probably get enough radioactive fallout to deter them from such an insane attack! LOL

    (try reading the Shiite edicts on mass murder put out Iranian clerics. They actually have a moral problem with it. Unlike Hillary, who can just decide to kill every man woman and child as her perogative?)

    Pre-emption is when you lob ‘annihilate’ a country into the middle of an election campaign, as the most cynical bit of political posturing.

    Pre-emption is what the Democrat voters have done to Hillary Clinton’s notion that she’s more entitled to be the nominee.

    This has been the most appalling thing she’s said, in my opinion, and she deserves to pilloried over it.

  43. KR,

    Who said it was my opinion. Just another view point on the subject at hand.

    At least he is not talking through his pocket. Your dead certainty looking a little wobbly?

  44. It’s there in black and white Ron. You are defending madness in a weird attempt to spin for Hillary, with some weird parable about how the elites don’t support the troops? Not the issue – never was. Some of the opinion below might interest you. I’m not getting on a merry-go-round about this one though.

    “It wasn’t “tough love” — more like Strangelove. The Boston Globe, using unusually strong terms, blasted Hillary Clinton for promising to “obliterate” Iran if it ever attacked Israel.

    The editorial concluded: “A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran – and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran – should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.”
    http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003795050

    “Ever since Hillary Clinton channelled her inner Doctor Strangelove on ABC-TV, vowing to “totally obliterate” Iran for some imagined attack on Israel in the future, that word’s hung in the air like a tiny mushroom cloud. Of course, to the corporate media, a casual threat to incinerate millions of innocent people doesn’t have nearly the importance of a lapel-pin–but to anyone who believes the Schoolmarm-from-New-York’s own dictum that “words matter,” the choice of that particular verb is tremendously revealing.”
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-eskow/the-obliterator-hillary-c_b_98772.html

    “Jaded American insiders shrugged off the remark as typical campaign season bluster, filed away with myriad other exaggerations and gaffes.

    But it prompted shock overseas as well as headlines from Bulgaria to New Zealand.

    The statement triggered alarm bells in the Persian Gulf, which would likely suffer the consequences of any war between Iran and the U.S. In a harshly worded editorial, the Saudi-based daily Arab News trashed Clinton’s comment today as insane:

    This is the foreign politics of the madhouse. It demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations. It offers only violence where there should be negotiations and war where there could be peace. At a stroke, Clinton demonstrated to everyone in this region that if she were the next occupant of the White House, Iraq-like death and destruction would be the order of the day.”
    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/04/iran-hillarys-t.html

  47. 1335

    keep quoting those neocons GG.

    David Nason….i thought the Oz flicked him after his verbal diahorhea article about what a fantastic guy Scooter Libby was, and how he should be exonerated of al charges whether he was guilty or not.

    All these lovely neocons pummelling Obama and rooting for Hillary….it’s enough to make ya proud.

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 27 of 28
1 … 26 27 28