February 12, 2008
An Inauguration Event
Panel explores Super Tuesday results
From left: Glen Bolger, James Thurber, Candice Nelson, and Dotty Lynch (Photo by Jeff Watts)
A day after Super Tuesday did little to clarify the delightfully competitive presidential race, a panel of bleary-eyed AU faculty and alums gathered to dissect the results and cast an eye toward the future of the unprecedented campaign for the White House.
“It’s amazing how three months ago we all knew how Super Tuesday would define the candidates,” moderator James Thurber said, tongue firmly in cheek. Thurber, director of SPA’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, led the discussion, which was part of inauguration week events. “This thing will go until Apr. 22 in Pennsylvania, I believe, because more money is being spent on this campaign than any in history.”
Following an evening that saw no fewer than five candidates win contests, pollster Glen Bolger, SPA professor Candice Nelson, and SOC executive in residence Dotty Lynch, a political consultant for CBS News, broke down several aspects of the election.
Bolger is cofounder of Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican polling firm that counts 20 U.S. senators, eight governors, and more than 50 members of Congress among its clients. He points to Senator John McCain as the frontrunner, but believes the Arizonan is anything but a shoo-in for the presidency.
“McCain is the clear leader, but [former Arkansas governor Mike] Huckabee got a bunch of southern states,” Bolger said. “That points out a problem with conservatives—they don’t like McCain. If you look at Mitt Romney objectively, he has done very well in caucus states and in states that he’s lived in. Once you have this kind of lead, it’s hard to catch up with so many winner-take-all [delegates] states. It’s very difficult to envision a catch-up strategy by Romney or Huckabee.”
Romney definitely won’t close the gap. He dropped out of the race on Thursday.
More intrigue surrounds the Democratic side, where New York senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois senator Barack Obama are in a virtual dead heat. Nelson, academic director of SPA’s Campaign Management Institute, believes Obama has the upper hand heading into the Feb. 12 Chesapeake contests in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
“For a candidate that has a lot of money, which Obama does, it suddenly is a very efficient media market,” she said. “Plus, the African American population [is high] in these three states.”
The Clinton campaign secretly may agree with that assessment, as evidenced by Lynch’s
comments.
“From the media’s perspective, if yesterday was Super Tuesday for the voters, today is Super Wednesday for the media and the campaigns,” she said. “The campaigns are spinning us like crazy. The Clinton people, for example, never mentioned the word Maryland. They talked a lot about Texas, which isn’t until March 4.”
Being political junkies, the panelists took a peek ahead to possible scenarios for the general election. Bolger cited polling data that show McCain leading Clinton by four points but Obama by just one. McCain leads Clinton 58-32 among independents, while that group is evenly split in a McCain-Obama matchup.
“I think it’s harder for her to win than it is for Obama to win,” Bolger said. “I think it’s a lot easier [for McCain] to keep the base together and win independents against Senator Clinton than Senator Obama. But it’s going to be a down-to-the-wire election even if she is the nominee.”
Needless to say, much can—and will—happen between now and when the general election race heats up after Labor Day. Until then, as Wednesday’s event showed, there’s plenty of fun to be had.
