The Warrior and the Priest

HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama fought to a draw on Super Tuesday. They won roughly the same number of delegates, and the popular-vote margin between them was 0.4 percent. But Yuval Levin pointed out something odd at NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: In most of the 22 states with elections that day, the results were not at all close. Eleven states were blowouts for Obama: He won eight states by 24 points or more. Seven states gave Clinton lopsided victories.

If you divide the Democratic-primary vote by demographic group instead of state, you see the same pattern. Clinton and Obama have been roughly evenly matched overall, but that parity obscures the strong preferences of different subsets of the voting population. New Mexico was a close election. Two opposing landslides produced that tie: Exit polls showed that Obama took 60 percent of college graduates, while Clinton took 61 percent of voters without a college degree.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama fought to a draw on Super Tuesday. They won roughly the same number of delegates, and the popular-vote margin between them was 0.4 percent. But Yuval Levin pointed out something odd at NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: In most of the 22 states with elections that day, the results were not at all close. Eleven states were blowouts for Obama: He won eight states by 24 points or more. Seven states gave Clinton lopsided victories.

If you divide the Democratic-primary vote by demographic group instead of state, you see the same pattern. Clinton and Obama have been roughly evenly matched overall, but that parity obscures the strong preferences of different subsets of the voting population. New Mexico was a close election. Two opposing landslides produced that tie: Exit polls showed that Obama took 60 percent of college graduates, while Clinton took 61 percent of voters without a college degree.