In a poll just released by Quinnipiac University, Hillary Clinton is running ahead of John McCain in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio—three swing states that, according to electoral lore, are necessary to win the presidency.

The poll also shows McCain would beat Barack Obama in both Florida and Ohio:  read more »

Tuesday, March 4, around 8 p.m., Bill O’Reilly bounded across a chilly studio on the first floor of the News Corp. building on Sixth Avenue toward the desk at the back of the room.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Barnes—were wrapping up another back-and-forth session, chewing over the night’s early returns. Mr. Kristol made an observation about the rationality of voters. A producer announced a break.  read more »

Meet Todd Appelbaum, a 46-year-old from Columbus, who wore a shirt that says “Osama for Obama” to the Clinton campaign’s election-night event in Ohio last night.

The white t-shirt, with an image of Barack Obama dressed in traditional Somali garb, is adorned with a blue Hillary Clinton button, although Appelbaum is not what one would call a real Hillary Clinton supporter.

“I voted for Hillary today,” he said, “because I’m concerned that, God forbid, Barack Obama will beat McCain. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

A couple of observations about one of the big Clinton talking points after yesterday’s Ohio win: the notion that you can't win in the fall without winning the big swing states that Hillary Clinton is winning in the primaries.

("We need a Democratic candidate who can win battleground states like Ohio!" she said last night.)  read more »

Hillary Clinton had a very good night on Tuesday, the first time in a while that can be said.

But for her to emerge as her party’s nominee, it will take Democrats deciding that their standard-bearer should be the candidate who won fewer pledged delegates, fewer popular votes and fewer states in the primary and caucus season.

The March 4 results weren’t nearly decisive enough for her to make headway in the race for delegates, where she still lags about 100 behind Obama. And she still trails Obama by hundreds of thousands of votes in the cumulative national popular vote.  read more »

A few short minutes after Ohio was called for Hillary Clinton, the candidate took the stage in a blizzard of confetti, next to her daughter, Chelsea, and key Ohio supporters.

“Thank you, Ohio,” said Clinton when the applause finally died down.

Clinton wasted no time in making the case that her convincing win in Ohio again brought her back from the brink and justified the continuation of her campaign.  read more »

It's been called, guaranteeing at the very least that tomorrow's stories won't be about whether or not Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race.

The official count may not be in, but Terry McAuliffe is ready to call it.

“Let me be crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is not going anywhere,” he told reporters just now at the Clinton watch party here in Columbus. “She’s going to Denver as the nominee.”

“We are going to win three states tonight,” he said.

Two things are obvious: If Hillary Clinton can somehow win both Texas and Ohio, she stays; if she loses both states, she’s tuna fish.

A third possibility—a split decision—will present Clinton the justification to push on if she wishes to, but without any clear way to win.

Let’s say Hillary wins Ohio (as the latest polls suggest she will) and falls just short in Texas (as polls also indicate). For the sake of it, let’s also say she wins Rhode Island, where the lower-income white Catholic voters among whom she has done so well elsewhere predominate, and fails in Vermont, a state rich with the reform-minded progressives who are so taken with Obama. In other words, let’s say Tuesday produces a tie—in states won, total popular votes, and delegates accrued.  read more »

Now, according to the Clinton campaign, it’s “NAFTAgate.”

That’s what Howard Wolfson just called the controversy about Barack Obama’s senior economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, allegedly telling Canadian officials that Mr. Obama’s sharp attacks on NAFTA were only “political positioning.”  read more »