Experts Say Obama's Lead in State Wins Could Move Super Delegates His Way

WASHINGTON — Winning a presidential nomination is still all about winning delegates, but in a race where neither candidate is likely win enough in the primaries and caucuses to claim outright victory, other factors could come into play.

In the Democratic contest between Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, with neither candidate breaking away in the elected delegate count, much is being made of the party's 796 super delegates, the leaders and activists who automatically get a vote at the nominating convention in August. Both candidates are actively pursuing them, even as they prepare for key primaries.

But analysts say another potent force may also be at work: 21-10, the number of state contests the two have won so far, with Obama far ahead of Clinton. If this trend continues, analysts say, it could translate into momentum that could sway the super delegates and determine the outcome of the contest, even if neither Democrat can gather 2,025 delegates - the number needed to win the nomination - before the nominating convention convenes in Denver in August.

"Keeping score is complicated because 'winning' can be measured through delegates, votes, or states won," said Darrell West, a Brown University political scientist who developed the Web site InsidePolitics.org. "And since the Electoral College is based on states, Obama can claim that his two-to-one lead is relevant. Politics is a matter of perception so his argument could be persuasive with many people," he added.

Consequently, Clinton, who has now dropped eight straight contests to Obama, with the possibility of three more losses in balloting in Wisconsin and Hawaii and the beauty contest in Washington state next week, has got to start winning, experts say.

"Right now, the multiple losses have branded Senator Clinton with the scarlet letter: L for loser," said John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California.

In a conference call with reporters the day after Clinton's losses to Obama in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, Clinton strategist Mark Penn disputed such suggestions. "Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification for who can win the general election," Penn insisted. Jimmy Carter, he noted, lost 22 states before winning Ohio and California to wrap up the Democratic nomination in 1976.

But "to win, you've got to win," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. And "super delegates, being politicians, basically, want a winner, and so far, with 21 wins, Obama seems to have the advantage," he added.

However, because they are politicians, "they also know the importance of the larger states in the general election, and there, Clinton seems to have the advantage," Guillory continued. Among those states, she has won California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, which together represent more than a third of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Even so, "Senator Clinton needs to stop the bleeding," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "She needs to find a way to stop super delegates from seeing Senator Obama as the inevitable nominee and climbing on his bandwagon."

Her best shots for doing that are the primaries in Ohio and Texas, on March 4, and in Pennsylvania, which votes April 22. All three states have significant numbers of blue collar voters or Latinos, both of which have been important parts of Clinton's coalition in earlier contests.

In their own conference call with reporters, Obama advisers argued that Clinton cannot catch the Illinois senator, even with victories in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. "We couldn't be in a stronger position," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. "The math is the math." And as for the super delegates, he added, "We believe the pledged delegate leader (those chosen) in the primaries will be the nominee."

In his lopsided victories Tuesday, Obama took the lead in pledged delegates for the first time since the Iowa caucus, which kicked off the nominating process on Jan. 3. And in those victories, Obama cut deeply into Clinton's base of support to win nearly every demographic group - another fact that super delegates are likely to consider in trying to determine which candidate is likely to lead the party to victory in November against the Republican Party and its likely nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Moreover, besides keeping count of the states won and lost by Obama and Clinton, the super delegates are also likely to consider the polls measuring the performance of both against McCain, said Pitney. "They want to make major gains in Congress (in the fall election), and a McCain victory would make it harder to achieve that goal in 2008," Pitney said. "If they think Obama would be clearly the stronger candidate against McCain, they will ditch Clinton."

In nine polls in the past two months that are posted by RealClearPolitics.com, Obama edges McCain in eight of them. Clinton, on the other hand, loses seven of the nine head-to-head contests, but only slightly.

There also is the matter of personal loyalty among super delegates, especially with Clinton and the long associations she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have had within the party for nearly two decades. But the announcement Wednesday that David Wilhelm, Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign manager, will vote as an Ohio super delegate for Obama indicates past associations go only so far.

"If super delegates overrule the choice of Democratic primary voters, that would be a very difficult and divisive scenario for the party," Wilhelm said in a conference call with reporters. "I think it's an unlikely scenario at the end of the day. I think it's one we should work hard to avoid."