Momentum gathers for Obama as voters turn out in strength

Obama has won by huge margins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia leaving Hillary to pin all her hopes on Texas. The worry for Hillary surely isn't simply that he's winning so many states, but that he's beginning to eat into demographic areas that she had previously regarded as her domain.

Obama registered his strongest performance so far among white voters - without giving up his dominance among African-American voters. He also for the first time began to make huge inroads into the constituencies Clinton could normally take for granted: white women and working-class households at the bottom of the economic ladder.

And, close on the back of her eighth defeat in a week, Hillary suffered yet another resignation amongst her staff:

In an email message Tuesday to staffers obtained by The Associated Press, Mike Henry said he was stepping down to allow campaign manager Maggie Williams to build her own staff. Williams replaced Patti Solis Doyle during the weekend. Solis Doyle had recruited Henry to join the campaign last year.

What's astonishing to witness in the Democratic nomination is the fact that the public are turning out in record numbers:

The turnout across the region was impressive in the Democratic primary with voters lining up for hours in sub-zero temperatures. The excitement generated by the contest between the first black candidates and the first woman with a chance of winning the presidency is such that America's once well-deserved reputation as the "United States of Apathy" is becoming rapidly outmoded.

The US traditionally has some of the lowest election turnouts of any democracy, but the turnout of voters in yesterday's "Potomac Primary" as well as earlier contests has broken records.

This surely doesn't bode well for the Republicans come November. The Democratic base seems genuinely excited by the choices on offer, whereas the Republicans appear stuck with McCain, with people like Limbaugh threatening to raise money for Hillary and Coulter stating that she'd rather vote for Hillary than for McCain.

Newshoggers have an interesting analysis of what's taking place:

Clinton's generic winning formula so far has to been to win the white vote by fifteen to twenty points against Obama, avoid being blown out like a Republican within the African American vote, and win the non-white, non-black groups by twenty to twenty five points. That is her generic success story.

The Virginia exit polls are showing that Obama has basically tied her in the white vote, and is treating Clinton as if she was a Republican in the African American vote, winning this group by a 90:10 margin. They are splitting the small Latino vote about even.

Furthermore, there are very few splits in the exit polls where Obama does significantly worse than his aggregate totals, so it seems that the Democratic Party in Virginia at the very least acted in an information cascading fashion and have begun to coalesce around him.

IF THESE RESULTS ARE GENERALIZABLE, Clinton is in serious trouble before she gets to Pennsylvania as her basic formula is under serious threat.

It's never wise to write off the Clintons, but it's becoming undeniable that she now looks like she is in serious trouble.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Virginia, Maryland, Columbia, democratic nomination, US election 2008