When it comes to presidential politics, not all votes are created equal. Barack Obama’s win in North Carolina last night was impressive — but what does it really tells us about his prospects in the fall?

The Tar Heel state has not favored a Democratic for the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter in 1976 and it is not likely that it will back that party’s nominee this time around. Put another way, because of the winner-take-all format of our Electoral College, the votes of North Carolina Democrats have been irrelevant in presidential elections for 32 years.

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In recent elections, Democrats have won blocks of states in the Northeast, the upper Midwest and the along the West coast while Republicans have dominated everywhere else.

The candidate who can hold on to those Red or Blue state bastions while grabbing a state or two here or there, will probably be our next president.

I accept the conventional wisdom that Obama has all but locked up the Democratic nomination. Nevertheless, electoral math suggests one compelling yet largely ignored argument for why Hillary Rodham Clinton might make a stronger candidate.

The fact is, Obama has racked up his lead in Republican strongholds like North Carolina that he has little chance of carrying against John McCain. Clinton, by contrast, has done much better in the states Democrats must win in the fall.

In 2004, John Kerry wracked up 252 electoral votes. During this primary, Clinton has won 146 of those, compared with 82 for Obama — Oregon, with seven electoral votes, has not held is primary yet and Michigan’s 17 electoral votes are still being contested.

Of course, if he secures the nomination, Obama will almost certainly carry California, New York and many other Democratic strongholds that went for Clinton in their primaries.

The fact remains, though she is behind in the count, Clinton has done better where it counts.

Here’s a list of Kerry states and their electoral votes won by Clinton or Obama.

Clinton:
California – 55
Maine - 4
Massachusettes - 12
New Hampshire – 4
New Jersey – 15
New York - 31
Pennsylvania - 21
Rhode Island - 4
Total: 146

Obama:
Connecticut – 7
Delaware – 3
Hawaii - 4
Illinois – 21
Maryland - 10
Minnesota – 10
Vermont - 3
Washington State – 11
Washington DC - 3
Wisconisn - 10
Total: 82

Still at large
Michigan - 17
Oregon – 7

05/07/08 at 20:50
Your whole post is fundamentally flawed: primary results have nothing to do with general election results. Merely because certain states prefer Clinton over Obama says almost nothing about how the general will go.

Look at the general election head-to-head matchups: Obama does better against McCain in many states that he was beat by Clinton in (and vice versa in a couple).

In fact the latest head-to-head in NC that I saw had Obama down 4 to McCain; hardly time to throw in the towel on the state.

05/07/08 at 23:06
Interesting column as is the statewide map showing which counties were carried by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in North Carolina's presidential primary.

Despite having both major Democratic candidates for governor running as supporters of the Obama presidential effort, Sen. Clinton was still able to carry more than half of the state's 100 counties, doing particualrly well in the Western Piedmont and the mountains and making breakthroughs in the southeastern coastal plain and the northeastern Albemarle Sound region.

But Sen. Obama, as The N&O's excellent headline put it Wednesday, went "barreling" through the major counties of the Piedmont en route to an impressive victory statewide. INdeed, if you add up the vote margins of Obama's wins in the three Triangle counties (Wake, Durham and Orange), the two Triad counties (Guilford and Forsyth) and Charlotte's home county (Mecklenburg), the total comes to right about the 222,000-vote margin of victory for Sen. Obama statewide.

As for the other 94 counties across the state of North Carolina, it was virtually an even split in total votes for the senators from Illinois and New York.

There is one thing that the Obama campaign was able to achieve in Democratic "political geography" in the primary which might help the senator to carry the state in the fall if indeed he does go on to win the party's presidential nomination: he was able to link the northern coastal plain counties where state Sen. Dan Blue made an especially strong showing in his Democratic U.S. Senate campaign of 2002 with solid wins in all the state's major urban counties--including pivotal counties such as New Hanover, Cumberland, Pitt, Watauga and Buncombe outside the Piedmont--and therefore if the Clinton and Obama areas of strength can be brought together in the fall campaign, the Democrats will have an excellent chance to carry the Old North State for the first time since 1976 regardless of whether Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton is the presidential nominee.

Of course, if the Democrats win the national election contest, the new, refined 21st Century News & Observer will probably not be so bold as to publish the blazing red rooster that used to appear on the front page after presidential election victories, but there would surely be no dearth of hooping and hollering among the Capital City Democratic faithful if George W. Bush has to catch a limousine ride with a Democrat to the 2009 Inauguration.

But of course, all the voting trend analysis in the world ultimately gives way to the voters' political dispositions in the autumntime of general election politicking, so we won't see the last chapter of this epic competition until November.

05/08/08 at 09:57
The word Mr. Zane should have used is 'racked', not 'wracked'

A computer spell checker is not sufficient for actual editing.