UCSD Political Scientist Talks About Where the Presidential Election is Headed

Ioana Patringenaru | March 10, 2008

On March 4, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton won two critical primaries in Texas and Ohio, ending a 12-primary winning streak for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. That same day, Arizona Sen. John McCain secured the Republican nomination. This Week@UCSD asked UCSD political scientist Gary Jacobson where the presidential election is now headed after last week’s contests.

Q: In January, you had predicted that Sen. Hillary Clinton would clinch the Democratic nomination by a small margin. What do you forecast now that Clinton broke Sen. Barack Obama’s winning streak with victories in Texas and Ohio?

Gary C. Jacobson

A: The race for the nomination is now very close. Obama still has a slight lead in delegates, which will be hard to overcome because the Democratic Party allocates delegates proportionally [rather than on a winner-takes-all basis]. The contest is likely to come down to a fight about what to do with delegates from Michigan and Florida that the Democratic Party originally decided not to seat. It will also depend on superdelegates [prominent figures in the party, including elected officials, who make up about 10 to 15 percent of delegates]. For now, it looks like the party will be divided, which is the last thing they need in a fight against Sen. John McCain. But neither candidate will give up as long as he or she has a prospect to win. No one is going to fall on their sword for sake of the party.

Q: What does Sen. Clinton need to do to secure the nomination?

A: She needs to get more votes. She made some in-roads with the electorate by suggesting that Obama is not tough enough on national security and that his speeches are like a soufflé, tasty but lacking substance. That didn’t shift the tide fully in her direction, but it brought her back in the game.

Q: What about Sen. Obama? What does he need to do?

A: He has to convince people that he is tough enough on homeland security and national defense and that there is substance beneath the rhetoric. He has to show that he is the best hope to defeat McCain — and polls suggest that he is.  He has to show that he can withstand attacks by the Clinton camp, which will pale in comparison with what he can expect to get from the Republicans if he wins the nomination.

Q: What is the cause of Clinton’s comeback in the March 4 primaries?

A: Her comeback is due to increased support among white men, women and Hispanic voters. She is going to have to sustain that momentum in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Also, Clinton’s attacks on Obama have had some effect. She had to undermine the magic and there’s no way she could have done that by staying positive. Now, Obama has to do what he did in the primaries leading up to March 4, where he did well with white male voters. He has to convince everybody that he’s not just this young guy with a mellifluous voice. He has to show that he has the gravitas to be president.

Q: What about Clinton’s argument that she has won primaries in states that will be key to win the general election.

A: She defeated Obama in these states, but that does not prove that she would be the strongest candidate against McCain in November, when a different dynamic will be operating.

Q: Why is this fight for the Democratic nomination so close?

A: You have two credible candidates, both of whom have strong but somewhat different followings. Neither one has been able to generate a clean lead. It’s gone back and forth, expressing demographic divisions in the Democratic Party. They are not ideological divisions. They are divisions that run along lines of race, class, gender, age and education.

Q: What do you think Sen. McCain is going to do now that he has secured the Republican nomination?

A: He has lots of time and he can take pot shots at both Clinton and Obama, which he will do. But he has to figure out a way to differentiate himself from President George W. Bush, without alienating people in the Republican Party that still support the president. If the Democrats manage to portray a McCain presidency as a third Bush term, he will lose.

McCain also has to outline his ideas about what to do to improve the economy. If he just says that Congress and the White House should make the Bush tax cuts permanent, that’s not going to get him very far. He’s got to come out with an economic program of his own.

On the foreign policy front, he has to figure out how to answer this question: Knowing what you know now, would you have invaded Iraq? That’s a tough question for him. If he says yes, he will alienate independent voters, a large majority of whom think the war was a mistake. But if he says no, he will alienate the majority of Republican voters who still support it. That’s sort of the dilemma that he has to deal with. McCain will probably try to avoid that issue by arguing that we should forget the past and think only about what we should do now. And he will say he is best suited to determine what needs to be done now.

Q: What is the next step?

A: Now, the next big contest is Pennsylvania. But all the other smaller primaries may matter. Clinton and Obama are so close that picking up 10 or 15 delegates here or there might make a difference. So far, in these small-scale enterprises, Obama’s people have out-organized Clinton’s people by a large margin.