Friday, February 08, 2008

Looking ahead to the next primaries

(Pictured: a typical caucus)
After the frenzy of Super Tuesday, it's important to remember that we have a number of Democratic primaries/caucuses coming up in rapid succession. As far as the Republicans go, they seem to have pretty much anointed John McCain as their nominee. But if anything develops, I'll address it here.

Saturday the 9th will see the following events:
Louisiana - Primary - 67 delegates
Nebraska - Caucus - 31 delegates
Washington - Caucus - 97 delegates
Virgin Islands - Other - 9 delegates

So even though it's NOT "Super Saturday", there's a total of 204 delegates at stake; with another 34 delegates decided from the Maine caucus on Sunday. There's not a lot of current polling data available for these states.

Both candidates have been campaigning in Washington. A SurveyUSA poll shows Obama leading 57-40% and I predict that Obama will prevail because he generally seems to do well in caucuses. He should win in Louisiana, too. And the USVI to boot.

Tomorrow both candidates will campaign in Maine. I think Clinton will take Maine and possibly Nebraska. But because the delegates are split based on percentages of districts won, I don't expect either candidate to garner more than 60% of the total delegates, or about 140 delegates.

Then coming on Tuesday are the D.C. area primaries:

District of Columbia - Primary - 37 delegates
Maryland - Primary - 99 delegates
Virginia - Primary - 101 delegates

I'll post about these primaries later as more current polling data becomes available. So, we'll see 475 delegates decided over the next five days. There could be some surprises, but most likely we'll continue to see a very close race.

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