Eye on the Pennsylvania Primaries

April 18, 2008

“This race will effectively end if Senator Clinton fails to win in Pennsylvania,” says Kareem Crayton of the USC Gould School. “But most expectations are that Senator Clinton will win this primary, partly due to the strong institutional support she has enjoyed from Governor Edward Rendell and a variety of significant political figures in each region of the state.

“The unknown question is how solid the victory will be. To the extent that Senator Obama can keep the race close (a Clinton win by a five-point margin or less would be ideal for him), he will try to frame the result as expected and therefore not a game-changer. Still, his recent statements regarding the ideology of working-class voters might prove more damaging for the remaining states that will soon follow,” Crayton says. “This, coupled with the huge financial advantage he has leveraged in Pennsylvania, is sure to raise more doubts about his viability as the party’s nominee if Clinton wins by a large margin.”

“The final decision is Clinton’s, but I think it will be difficult for her to make an argument for continuing if she is perceived to have lost the primary — and that means winning it, but winning it by less than 5 percent,” says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development. Conventional wisdom suggests that Clinton needs to win by at least 10 points, and recent polls indicate that her once double-digit lead is down to about five points, Jeffe notes.

Obama’s controversial comments about bitter voters don’t seem to have hurt him much or helped Clinton much, Jeffe adds. “There appears to be very little damage,” she says. The incident was “more media-driven and opponent-driven than public opinion–driven,” she concludes.

Still, Jeffe cautions: “This has been the most volatile election season I’ve seen in a long time, and I’m not about to predict anything.”

Harry Pachon, president of USC’s Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, adds that if the Pennsylvania primary race is very close, the Latino vote might be influential.

“There are hidden pockets of Hispanic voters nationwide, and Pennsylvania is a perfect example,” he explains. “We estimate that roughly 60,000 Hispanic voters will vote in this primary, and if it’s a very close election, like it’s been in some of the states, this could be one of the significant segments.”