Get out out the broom...

...Obama swept the Potomac! While the polls somewhat predicted this going in, the margin of victory was larger than what the pollsters saw coming. According to CNN, in yesterday’s so-called Chesapeake, Potomac or Beltway primary (depending on which station you were watching or paper you were reading) Obama won with 60% of the vote or greater in each location and picked up 70 delegates to Clinton’s 33, an amount which puts him further ahead in the popular vote and officially gives him an edge in the delegate count. (!!!!)

Even with this marginal lead and huge momentum of consecutive victories the nomination is not in the bag. There are conflicting messages coming out of the media and both camps, neither of which tell the whole story.

One is that Obama is now the inevitable candidate, a message once tossed around by Clinton. The other is that Clinton still has time in the upcoming primaries in states that aren’t as predisposed to Obama as D.C., Maryland and Virginia were. As Politico.com reported, “Clinton will be forced to answer with not just victories, but landslides of her own, in the big states on which she is staking her hopes – Ohio and Texas, which vote March 4.”

When it comes down to it, as a report this morning illustrated even if Obama continues to wage an incredible fight or if Clinton really does win in both Texas and Ohio neither will be able to attain the magical number of delegates needed to clutch the nomination without the Super Delegates or without Florida and Michigan (both options being controversies in and of themselves).

The only alternative would be if Obama won both Texas and Ohio by very large margins and in all the big delegate districts, something that would, just days ago have seemed impossible. The difference now lies in another interesting detail that emerged from yesterday’s primary. That detail is exit poll data.

Obama put a wedge into the voting blocs that have been, in this campaign season, historically Clinton faithful: older women and Hispanics. Another huge victory for him was the portion of white men who cast their ballot in his favor, all facts noted in a story from ABC’s “Polling Unit.”
Hispanics, though not overwhelmingly, sided with Obama amid suggestions in the media that Latinos would not vote for a black man and were predisposed to vote for Clinton, despite the fact that it is Obama that supports driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and not Clinton.

The Polling Unit reports, “Obama's overall vote margins in the two states were his widest, outside his home state of Illinois, in any primary where fewer than four in 10 voters were African-Americans. He won women in both states, something he's done outside states with larger black turnout only in Delaware, Iowa and his home state of Illinois. Indeed, in Virginia, Clinton won white women by a scant 6-point margin; he won them by 18 points in Maryland.”

All in all, despite a rocky road that remains ahead, Obama’s victory in the D.C. metro area was noteworthy not just for the hard results that came in but also for the demographics he won. Both of which are facts that should make Hillary Clinton afraid, very afraid.