WASHINGTON, 5 March 2008 — If America's presidential race could be likened to the sporting world, the Tuesday primary contests would have the Democratic party challengers Sen. Hilary Clinton (New York) and Sen. Barack Obama (Illinois) competing in a showdown poker game, with Clinton betting her last dollar on a pair of 2s; and the Republican contenders Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee locked in the final two minutes of a one-on-one basketball game, with McCain ahead of Huckabee by 40 points: if Clinton or Huckabee don't overcome these odds and win big, the race for the White House may be over for them.
In recent weeks, McCain and Obama have consistently sustained frontrunner status for their respective parties (since Jan. 4, Obama has won 11 straight primaries), but their rivals have each experienced small but encouraging popularity surges in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the four states where critical primaries will take place on March 4.
In Texas, Huckabee has seen his poll numbers surge due to strong support from Christian conservatives -- a voter base that made him the surprise winner in Iowa, and has made him McCain's strongest competitor ever since.
Since December, Clinton's 20-point leads over Obama in the delegate-rich states of Ohio and Texas have vanished. However, recent television appearances by Clinton on youth-oriented comedy programs like "Late Night with David Letterman," "Saturday Night Live," and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" have lately seem to have bolstered her poll ratings.
Clinton's increased support may also be due to her setting the terms of the Democratic political debate in these final days before these critical primaries.
Five days ago, her campaign began broadcasting TV advertisements entitled "The Phone Call at Three a.m.," which preyed on the fear of voters by questioning Obama's ability to deal with a crisis that awakens an American president in the middle of the night.
Next, the Clinton camp leaked a story to the press that a top Obama aide had discussed his candidate's views about the contentious North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with a Canadian official; Clinton contended that the Obama's surrogate had refuted many of the assertions the Illinois senator had made about NAFTA. (Canadian diplomats eventually refuted this rumor, but the damage had already been done.)
Despite the unending nature of the 2008 primary process, the ability of both Obama and McCain to appeal to the moderate core American voters that propel candidates to the White House was affirmed by a Rasmussen poll commissioned on Monday by the Washington Times. The survey found that voters regard Obama as being more likable than Clinton and McCain combined. Yet, one quarter of the voters surveyed who identified themselves as Republican said they found McCain and Obama equally acceptable as a presidential nominee.
