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Why Clinton needs to win big in Pennsylvania

Her viability is at risk if she doesn't, analysts say.

from the April 22, 2008 edition

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It's also a battle of geography versus demographics, he says. The same demographics Obama won in the earlier states – younger voters, the more affluent, and African-Americans – he's still winning, and even to a greater degree. Clinton is also building her lead among Catholics and lower-income voters.

The three main battleground areas of Pennsylvania are the Philadelphia suburbs, the Lehigh Valley, and south-central Pennsylvania, around Lancaster.

"It's a chess game; you can play it a number of ways," says Mr. Madonna.

One plus for Obama is the surge of new voters that have registered in Pennsylvania, 270,000 of them since November. Of those, 230,000 are Democrats, or 7 percent of the state party's rolls. In Madonna's latest poll, he found that 52 percent of them are backing Obama. Since Pennsylvania's primary is closed, only registered Democrats may participate, making the state a test of strength among core Democrats.

The run-up to the Pennsylvania primary has been long and hard-fought. It has been six weeks since the last primary – Mississippi (which Obama won, as expected) – and seven weeks since the pitched battle for Ohio and Texas ended. Clinton's popular vote victories in both of those big states saved her campaign from extinction and gave her a burst of momentum going into Pennsylvania.

The next contests, North Carolina and Indiana, could also present Clinton with a must-win scenario. If she wins Pennsylvania, as expected, she then must do well in Indiana, where polls are close, as Obama is expected to win North Carolina handily. The longer this race marches along toward the end of primary season with neither candidate reaching the magic number, and with the candidates trading victories, the greater the chance that Clinton stays in until the final contests in June.

BUT FOR Pennsylvanians, the opportunity to play a role in the Democratic nomination has been a rare and for the most part welcome turn. The last time Pennsylvania mattered was in 1980, when Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts won Pennsylvania by a hair, and took his nomination fight against President Carter all the way to the convention.

This time around, as in all the other hotly contested primary and caucus states, some voters in Pennsylvania are by now fed up with the robo-calls, TV and radio ads, and door-knockers. Others say they just wish the ads were more informative and less attack-oriented.

Last weekend, Lori Felton-O'Brien, a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, decided it was time to choose, so she went to both candidates' websites and discovered that they had basically the same positions.

"It really comes down to who's the more charismatic candidate," says Ms. Felton-O'Brien, who is originally from the blue-collar town of Somerset, Pa. She settled on Obama.

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