Edwards was in the race in SC and that made a difference, no?

Eh, they'll probably split IN and NC in the single digits.  Obama will net more delegates because NC's a larger state.  The stalemate continues, but Clinton has a yet steeper mountain to climb because there are fewer delegates at play after Tuesday.

"Overperforming" or "underperforming" expectations at this point is fairly meaningless, imo.

All true Todd. And I don't think it can be underestimated how big it would be if he does go ahead and outperform polls ala those other states. a 15% win at this juncture would add substantially to the hill she has to climb. I have my fingers and toes crossed that he blows these polls out of the water again.

Honestly at this point I really don't care who wins as long as a Democrat wins in Nov.

I read earlier today an anecdotal report of a large turnout in early voting of Hillary's demographics.  Also, Bill has been crisscrossing the state nonstop, really nonstop, and being very well received, so it is possible it will be much closer than anticipated.

Forget about the polls.  For Obama to really "win" he has to score a 20+ margin.

Hillary needs like 70% of the remaining delegates to take a lead in the pledged delegate count.  Anything less than a 70-30 showing in favor of Hillary is just another huge nail in the coffin.

... when they finally lose and then maybe we can look at the fact that Obama made solid gains in 80% of all of his demographics in the last election.

I mean, seriously. Its getting dull talking about African americans.

Then again, I'm a colleged educated type. Oh. Here's one stat that he forgot to mention.

OBAMA IS FAR AND AWAY THE NUMBER ONE CHOICE OF IT PROFESSIONALS IN THE US.

(source: network world magazine, +12% more likely to vote for Obama than clinton)

At this point an Obama victory of any kind in NC is another step toward the endgame.  

And I know that Todd has not posted on this, but there seems to be something illogical about the many demands on mydd that Obama 'edit' his predicted outcome of certain states where he has fallen short (e.g. PA), while ignoring those states where he has vastly outperformed predictions (e.g. Virginia and Maryland), and now saying he needs a blow-out to truly 'win' in NC.  

It seemed to me that Clinton didn't go all out in some of the neighboring, choosing to instead conserve her resources for other more favorable contests.  In this case, though, it seems that Clinton has gone all out.  Hopefully that will help keep Obama's margin down.

wow, I think Todd is trying to inflate expectations for Obama..

WHY DON'T OBAMA'S SUPPORTERS CARE ABOUT OBAMA'S SLUMS?

Obama talks about being "a community organizer in Chicago"

Here's what happened after he got elected State Senator.

Please Watch this report on Obama, Obama's slums, Rezko, and $100M of wasted taxpayer money, from Channel 5, NBC news, Chicago's most respected TV news program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHsHM0la T8&feature=related

How do you explain away the fact that Barry Obama never followed up on the 11 slums that his friend Rezko was supposed to repair in Obama's district in Chicago, and continued to do nothing about the 40 slums that Rezko was supposed to repair or replace in Chicago, even after Obama joined the US Senate?

From the Chicago Sun Times:

For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.

It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.

Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.

But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building....

The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

"Their buildings were falling apart,'' said a former city official. "They just didn't pay attention to the condition of these buildings.''

Eleven of Rezko's buildings were in Obama's state Senate district....

Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience when they created Rezmar in 1989 to rehabilitate apartments for the poor under the Daley administration. Between 1989 and 1998, Rezmar made deals to rehab 30 buildings, a total of 1,025 apartments. The last 15 buildings involved Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland during Obama's time with the firm.

Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble:

* Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure.

* Six buildings are currently boarded up.

* Hundreds of the apartments are vacant, in need of major repairs.

* Taxpayers have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans.

Because NC's AA population (22%) is considerably smaller than SC or GA (30%), I think it's reasonable to expect a closer margin than what we saw in those states. Also, Edwards was in the race during SC, so that made a difference. Moreover, NC is essentially appalachia in the western part of the state, which has tended to support Hillary heavily (also having lived in western NC for a few years, I can say that race-relations leave a lot to be desired in many of the areas outside Asheville). Virginia would seem to be more similar demographically, but the DC burbs really distinguish Virginia from other southern states. So, even Virginia would seem to be a flawed model for comparative purposes.

In short, comparing NC to other nearby states has its limitations. I expect Obama to win by about 12% in NC. I think the lower margin is attributable to demographics to some extent, but the series of tough news cycles for Obama hasn't helped either. Moreover, the Clintons have campaigned a lot more in NC than any of the other states being compared. So, some credit should go to Clinton's campaign, but I don't think it was ever reasonable to expect a victory of more than 20 points.

If expectations still matter, than I'd say double-digits (9.2% by Clinton Rules) counts as an Obama win.

But really...  At some point we have to realize that everyone has voted, and stop caring about expectations.

I agree.  Hillary must keep North Carolina to single digits to maintain the illusion that the momentum has shifted her way.  If Obama wins by double-digits and outperforms the final RCP average, it'll be a clear signal that Hillary has no momentum.  Should that happen, I'm sure more and more SDs will come out for Obama and get this thing wrapped up so that the Democrats can get healed and start concentrating on McCain.  

I doubt that Obama wins by 20-25 points. One of the reasons for his blowout in SC was because of all the hoopla and black vote was 55%

in Virginia, it was 30% and he got the white vote, 52-48

Those trends aren't going to stay the same in NC.

The black vote may be around 35%, he will get 87-90%, but he will not get anywhere near 52% of the white vote.

Should we use region or date as the more important parameter?

Because if you use date, then Obama has done WORSE than the averages in the most recent primaries.  I, for one, am not willing to look to South Carolina - even to Virginia, which in political terms was eons ago.  The most recent Souther states were Texas and Mississippi.  The RCP average underestimated Clinton's win in Texas.  It really underestimated Obama's margin in Mississippi - but there were few polls for MS.

My guess is that the polls are about right in NC.

I am predicting a 12-20% margin.  I think anything in between would be normal.  Anything under 10% or over 22% would be considered a surprise.

NC has more white working class Democrats than VA or SC. NC still has lots of textile and furniture towns in the Piedmont and Western NC.

But those towns are changing too. I drove through Morganton, Lenoir and Wilkesboro last week and noticed that it is entirely Republican now. But I also noticed that the economy has gotten much more white collar - and this is in the western part of the state almost to Boone.

The world that John Edwards grew up in just doesn't exist anymore in NC. But there are more places like that in NC than in highly white collar VA and more heavily black SC.

So, NC has a little stronger demographic for Hillary than VA or SC. But it's still a strong demographic state for Obama.

NC is a partially open primary, but Republicans cannot vote in it. White Democrats are primarily in the Raliegh-Durham-Greensboro-Winston-Salem corridor and in Charlotte. If 40% of the electorate is black, and Obama gets 40% of the white electorate (and 90% of the black vote). That would give Obama a 20 point win in NC. If Obama only gets 30% of the white vote, Obama wins by 8 with this margin of black voters.

Was that in those polls a substantial portion of the ``AA'' population was undecided. Used to be around 20 %. In the current polls that tends to be around 2-3 %. Actually that was the problem with Insider Advantage Poll that put Clinton ahead a week back.

Now, though Sen Obama could clearly outperform the polls, but my guess is that will be basically because they get the demographics of voters wrong.  

Plug in your assumptions on black/white vote choice and turnout in this spreadsheet and get a prediction for NC: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/m ake-your-own-north-carolina-prediction.h tml

I think Obama wins NC by 6-8 and Hillary wins IN by something substantial (like 3-5).  Does that change anything for Obama supporters?  Hillary supporters?

To me, it cuts against Obama but not enough for me to question the legitimacy of Obama's campaign.  I don't care about any metrics, I want the pledged+supers to decide this thing so really I just want them to come out en masse after and I feel like they'll probably just split, which will give Obama the nomination.

If that is the case, will anybody be mad?

Obama's only 133 delegates away from having a majority of pledged delegates now.  Whatever happens on Tuesday, he'll win a fair amount of delegates and will get closer and closer to that majority.

I'm also wondering if the upcoming end of the college semester in many colleges will have an impact.  College students have gone more for Obama, and with finals and final projects coming due (I'm working on one right now...ugh), it may matter.  I don't expect that any students will not vote because of it, but they may not have as much time for canvassing, GOTV, etc.  I guess we'll find out soon.

I'm thinking NC is maybe a cross between SC / Georgia which voted heavily for Obama and Tennessee which also has a large AA population but voted for Clinton thanks to something like a 70-30 white vote in her favor.

Actually, roughly 400,000 voted the Dem ballot early.  The 40% number is correct (seen as high as 40.6% reported).

I suppose it would be silly to think maybe the pollsters had adjusted their methods and tabulations in light of being so absurdly incorrect the first go through? Sheesh. This from the same folks who lauded the, "a win is a win," Hillary mantra just two weeks back. Nice try at raising expectations though.

First, those polls were then and the game keeps changing.
So Todd, if he doesn't win by the unexpected by most 20% margin it just shows how much his campaign is collapsing, right?

He will win by about 9%. It will be painted by some, you included, as a victory for her...single digits...BTW, that's what she won by in Pennsylvania :-)

She'll win Indiana by 5-6%. He'll come out of the two contests with 5-6 more delegates than she gets.

It will go on.

And the only way she'll win it all will be by getting the credentials committee to seat Michigan and Florida. They'll do that only if the party really has a kamikaze streak. It would truly split the party for November

So it goes...

Keep spinning.

Mark

Former Dem Gov. Hunt was on TV tonight. He is neutral in this race.

He said that he was:

" Very surprised to see heavy turnour among Lower Income Whites who normally don't vote. He said Clinton is definitely motivating many lower income whites to come out & vote. Even voters who don't normally vote".

NC will be closer than what most people expect it to be.

Based upon the early voting of 40% African-American, Obama should do just fine in North Carolina.