Deconstructing the Media's Clinton-Obama Ouija Board

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

How the Pundits are Misattributing Momentum to Natural Demographic Political Differences

By Rob Richie
Executive Director
Fair Vote

Introduction

Sen. Hillary Clinton had a good night this week in West Virginia, winning a landslide victory by nearly 150,000 votes over Sen. Barack Obama. Clearly, she must now have that fickle thing called "momentum," right?

Of course a week ago the same candidates had quite different results in North Carolina and Indiana, where Obama won those states collectively by some 210,000 votes. So, the logical conclusion would be that Obama had the "momentum" and must have now lost it.

But what happened between then and now to change the contest so dramatically?

Nothing, really -- and yet the pundit class and many in the media will try to find meaning (read: momentum) into these numbers. But in reality, too many of the nation's talking heads are playing with a Ouija board and tailoring their analysis to fit the pre-written story-line du jour.

In reality, much like American political districts and states can be predictably divided into red, blue and purple areas, Democratic primary voters can often be predictably slotted into the Obama and Clinton camps (and the messages they represent, particularly on the breakdown of change versus experience). Each side has its areas of strength, both within states and among states.

This political determinism has been masterfully demonstrated by the Obama campaign strategists, who through methods they have not made publicly available, have predicted nearly every primary and caucus result thus far. What we've been seeing since February 5th are results that largely track what the Obama campaign projected would happen in a memo mistakenly released to Bloomberg News on the morning of February 6th. A lot has happened since then on the campaign trail, from controversies over Clinton facing sniper fire in Bosnia to statements by Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, but the Obama campaign's memo projects most state winners and their victory margins with uncanny accuracy.

This fact highlights the misleading nature of the horse-race style coverage of the presidential race, which masks the mostly static nature of the national race by filtering it through the day-to-day narrative of the news cycle.