Penn: Obama hasn't won "significant" states

Via Josh Marshall, Mark Penn is spinning again -- check out this silly quote:

"Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?" Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. "That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama."

As I've shown, it's true that Obama has not done as well in larger states, but the claim that he hasn't won "any of the significant states" is silly.

What makes a state "significant"? The most obvious metric is how close it was in 2004. And if you sort the states that have voted so far by the competitiveness of the 2004 presidential vote (and exclude Florida and Michigan), you can see that Obama has won six of the ten closest states (Obama votes below are expressed as a proportion of the total Obama+Hillary vote):

State	Kerry	Obama
NH	0.50	0.48
IA	0.49	0.57
NM	0.49	0.49
MN	0.51	0.67
NV	0.48	0.47
WA	0.53	0.69
NJ	0.53	0.45
CO	0.47	0.68
DE	0.53	0.56
ME	0.54	0.60

However, Penn probably preferes to sort the states by population since that includes California (also, he referred to Illinois in making the statement). If you parse the states that have voted so far that way (again excluding Florida and Michigan), you can see that Obama has won four of the top ten:

State	Obama
CA	0.45
NY	0.41
IL	0.66
GA	0.68
NJ	0.45
VA	0.65
MA	0.42
WA	0.69
AZ	0.45
TN	0.43

Of course, with all that said, we should be cautious about extrapolating from the primary to the general election.

Update 2/17 9:37 AM: TNR's Noam Scheiber makes a similar point in responding to Clinton supporter Harold Ickes's claim that Hillary has won important swing states and Obama hasn't.

Comments

[Rob]

Given that the Democratic nomination contest will almost certainly be decided by the superdelegates, one wonders about the wisdom of Penn's dissing all those superdelegates who are not themselves from the high-population states he regards as "significant."

The reason Mark Penn is spinning like crazy to whoever will listen is that the campaign is pimping him. (Don't expect to hear that on MSNBC, since Hillary Clinton has been successful in stifling dissent there.)

[Speener]

This is the Clinton strategy - diminish the importance of any state/group that votes for Obama - She didn't win South Carolina - it doesn't count because of the black vote. She didn't win Iowa, Washington, etc - well those are caucus states, they don't count (does Nevada count btw?); now it's the latest wins don't count because they're not from significant states.

So if you don't live in California, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or New York; not a woman or hispanic; - you just don't matter to the Clinton campaign. That's democracy at work.