Signifying nothing

By Fester:

Hillary Clinton looks to have won the state of Pennsylvania by a little more than 9 points.  I am betting that comes down by a couple of tenths of a point when the provisional ballots are fully counted and confirmed to have come from registered voters. 

So what does this mean?

Not much.  According to this diarist at Daily Kos who is doing a compilation of district by district delegate counts, it looks like Hillary Clinton will be leaving Pennsylvania with a net of ten to thirteen pledged delegates.  A win is a win except when it is an insufficiently large win.  Obama's basic objective was to keep things close and while his campaign would have preferred to have kept it closer, the distribution of votes was sufficient for him to increase his proportional lead in pledged delegates despite losing the delegate fight.  Going into the night, Hillary Clinton was down roughly 160 pledged delegates with 600 remaining so she would have to win 65% if the remaining pledged delegates to catch up.  This morning she is down roughly 150 delegates with 450 remaining so she would need to win 67% to catch up. 

According to her campaign logic there is no reason to drop out as the funding is pouring in last night that will support another two weeks.  But what was a very low probability chance of creating enough uncertainty to strong arm the nomination has become a slightly lower probability.  Her option space is still collapsing.

And as far as who voted for whom, it was a mixed bag.  Obama's campaign can make the credible claim that on a demographic by demographic basis, they improved their performance relative to Ohio.  This is most notable among elderly voters where what was a forty point gap closed to a twenty point gap.  Pennsylvania just has so many more old people that Clinton's net margin was as large if not larger in Pennsylvania than in Ohio despite a much lower yield.   But the basic demographic coalitions and their breakdowns have held fairly firmly in the past four months, and that did not change last night.