Tomorrow, February 2nd, The Seer of Seers, the Prognosticator of Prognosticators, Punxsutawney Phil*, will emerge from his stately stump atop Gobbler's Knob outside of Punxsutawney, Pa. and will decide the fate of the winter for the nation based on his shadow. Three days later, on February 5, voters in 24 states might decide the fate of the presidential nominees. As groundhog lore goes, if the groundhog comes out of his hole on February 2nd and sees his shadow, he returns to his underground cavern to await six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't see his shadow, spring will arrive early. In the case of Super Tuesday, if a candidate can cast a shadow over his or her opponents it may mean their nomination is just around the corner.
Or does it?
52% of delegates to the national convention will be awarded Tuesday on the Democratic side, a percentage which won’t necessarily translate into a nominee being selected. That is because the Democrats employ a proportional delegate selection plan based on the percentage of votes each candidate receives in a given primary or caucus. For example, with 1,681 Delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday, Senator Clinton could receive 924 delegates to Senator Obama’s 756 delegates.
The Republican system is a little less complicated. 30% of Delegates to the GOP Convention will be awarded in winner-take-all primaries in states such as California, New York, Massachusetts, Arizona and Illinois. This means that the candidate who receives the highest percentage of the vote garners all of the state’s or congressional districts’ delegates. If any candidate is able to garner a significant amount of the states on Tuesday the path to the nomination will be much clearer.
With this virtually being a national election, campaigns will have to explore unprecedented voter outreach campaigns so that they can stretch ad dollars further to win as many votes as possible to get a leg up. Therefore, ad buys for Super Tuesday will rival those of Super Sunday. But the importance each campaign pays to a state may not be based on the amount of dollars spent there. Rather, it may depend on the amount of time the candidate, their families and key surrogates spend in that state. During the show down in Nevada, for example, Senators Clinton and Obama spent enough time in next door California, a state that boasts 440 delegates - almost 22% of the delegates needed for nomination - that NBC’s Brian Williams accidentally welcomed everyone to Los Angeles, for a debate in Nevada. Perhaps we need more maps.
On both sides, candidates will hope for free media blitzes in the states with the largest amount of delegates. Delegate-rich New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois will all send voters to the polls on February 5th; so don't be surprised if airports from Newark to Sacramento see backlogs as campaign planes rush in and out in the run-up to Super Tuesday.
There will be no rest for the weary, however. Candidates then face the Washington Caucuses, the Kansas Republican Caucus, the Nebraska Democratic Caucus, and the Louisiana Primary on Saturday. On Sunday, the race returns to New England with the Maine Democratic primaries. This may be the first time in many months that candidates pass through New Hampshire without a stop!
Although many polls have the Democratic Primary neck-in-neck, my unscientific polling (I quizzed two friends who early voted already in Tennessee) suggests that it is a dead heat. James and Emily Bowden of Nashville, Tennessee split their vote. However my polling does have a significant margin of error, much like some of the other less scientific groundhogs.
*Punxutawney Phil can’t vote (here’s hoping he can get the twenty-eighth amendment passed; the marmot voting rights act) but he has a better track record of predicting weather than most pundits do of predicting outcomes of elections, Punxsutawney Phil has correctly predicted every spring since, well forever.
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