Helped or Hurt?

[politicaltipster]

There are two questions:

1) What would have happend had the primary schedule been more compressed (i.e. the Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virigina primaries had taken place before Easter)?

2) Would it have been better for Obama to have won the primaries on the same night as McCain rather than in June (i.e. by winning in Texas and Ohio)?

In answer to (1).

I think that had there not been a massive gap between Wrightgate and the Pennslyvania primary, Hillary would have won by 15 points rather than 9 and the Superdelegates who drifted to Obama during that period would have stayed on the sidelines or gone over to Hillary. So, to that extent the massive Easter break helped Obama.

In answer to (2).

The extended primary process also helped Obama on balance. Although it created a lot of buyers remorse in the Democrat's it also created the mirage of the PUMA as a Hillary groupie, rather than as a disaffected Democrat. Given that the need to pander specifically to Clinton voters was one of the main motivating factors behind the disaster that was Palin, I think that the extended primary helped Obama. Also, I think the McCain campaign could have done with boost to morale provided by people paying attention to the McCain leads of nearly 10 points that the polls were reporting at one stage.

However, if we assume NAFTAgate, Bittergate and Reallyproudgate were specifically products of the campaign, and would not have occured if Obama was concentrating on McCain, then the longer campaign was a negative (although only the middle incident was really memorable).