Above Average Tuesday

Tomorrow is the biggest day left in the primary season with 218 delegates up for grabs in North Carolina and Indiana (split 134/84).

Going into today, Obama seemed to have a solid high single digit lead in North Carolina with Hillary having a similar (perhaps slightly narrower) outlook in Indiana.

As I've discussed before, SUSA has had the best results predicting the final outcome of primaries so far this cycle. That being the case it's worth noting that the SUSA poll has Obama underperforming the polling average in both states (9 pt. Hillary margin in Indiana, and a 5 point Obama margin in North Carolina).

At this point Hillary needs to out perform expectations by a good deal. It is now mathmatically impossible for her to catch Obama in pledged delegates. Even if you count Florida, it's dang near impossible for her to catch up in popular vote. If she were to pull out a stunning 4-6 point upset in North Carolina along with a 10 point win in Indiana, she MIGHT get enough momentum to pull this out, but that's just not going to happen. Her only realistic chance is for some totally unforseen disaster to strike Obama rendering him unelectable (like, well, if he were to die or be thrown in prison).

UPDATE: I wanted to point out that if Clinton and Obama each win by about the same margin in the states where they're ahead, it's a net pick-up for Obama. Even just keeping the margin the same (which would probably mean a fair sized win for Clinton in Indiana along with a very narrow loss in North Carolina owing to NC's larger number of delegates) would be a loss for Clinton. There aren't many more delegates to win out there. Every contest that she doesn't close the gap is essentially one she loses, because each time there are even less possible delegates left with which to catch up. Put another way, if the margin remains the same, Clinton will need to win a greater percentage of the remaining delegates to pull ahead. Like I said, practically speaking Obama would have to be rendered completely unelectable for her to pull this out.