There are two main lessons I take from the Arizona primary returns:
Democrats down-ticket in Arizona are in trouble in the general election
because of McCain’s effective capture of the nomination, and women have
flexed their political muscle – Hillary demonstrated that if you are
going to be a ‘minority’ candidate running for President you should be
the minority which is actually in the majority.
Because McCain will very likely win the nomination, Arizona becomes an
untouchable Presidential wasteland, and Democrats have a significantly
more work to do to overcome McCain’s coat tails in down-ticket races.
We can begin to see the wisdom in Gabby Giffords cryptic praise of
McCain when he won New Hampshire; she saw the writing on the wall.
In Arizona, and every other ‘Super’ primary state where she won, women
not only turned out in extraordinary numbers (often more than 20% more
than men) but broke heavily toward Hillary. Every single one of her
victories was the direct result of a strong preference by women voters.
Where the sexes broke more evenly between Hillary and Barack, Barack
won handily.
The fact that Barack won every party caucus is also instructive. Barack
may be the choice of the party activists, while Hillary may be the choice
of women, at least in the deepest blue states where Hillary tended to
win. The fact that Obama is winning the heartland while Hillary is dominating traditionally blue states might be a warning sign for the General election if Hillary is the nominee. Democrats need to expand our electoral map, not concentrate on states we always win.
Crossposted at KJZZ, please join me and comment during the show…
One conundrum that surfaces at the CD-level in Arizona’s primary is the imbalance in the Hillary/Obama ratios in CD 2 & 7. Of her roughly 43K vote lead in Arizona, Clinton drew a whopping ~11K, a quarter of her lead, from just CD 2. CD 2 is very conservative, but that doesn’t really explain Hillary garnering more than twice the average win ratio from just this one district. Going some way to explaining it is that Edwards picked up an unusually high percentage in CD 2, indicating, perhaps, a lot of early ballots cast. If anyone has an interesting possible explanation for CD 2, I’d love to hear it.
CD 7’s more-than-comfortable ~7K margin might be due merely to over-performance by Hillary among Hispanic voters. It would seem that Grijalva wasn’t able to deliver his own district in the primary for Obama. That has to sting. In fact, Obama’s major endorsements don’t seem to have helped him much anywhere. In Arizona, it isn’t clear whether Janet’s endorsement helped much. I haven’t seen any exit polls that include that question, only the Kennedy endorsement.
Interestingly, the only AZ CD that Obama won was CD 5, where he edged Hillary out by just shy of 1K votes. Perhaps this demonstration of progressivism in his district will encourage Mitchell to break towards endorsing Obama, or being less of a Blue Dog? Probably not.