What to Look For in Tonight's Results from WI and HI

First of all, there's only one thing to look for in HI: whether it's anything other than an Obama win of more than 5 points.  Obama should win HI; he's the hometown boy, the only serious candidate for President born and raised in Hawaii, at least since it became a state.  [Trivia: Obama's Senate colleague Daniel Inouye was elected to Represent Hawaii in Congress two years before Obama was born.]  He should win it solidly.  So HI will only be a story if Clinton comes close or wins.  

Whatever story that comes out of tonight, other than the delegate tallies, will therefore most likely come out of Wisconsin.  Wisconsin has always provided Clinton her best shot of derailing Obama and picking up a win between Super Tuesday and the contests in TX, OH, VT and RI two weeks from now.  If Obama wins, it will be interpreted as another win, and the questions will continue whether Hillary Clinton is as strong a candidate, whether she can win in OH and TX, and whether she's as strong a general election candidate as Obama.  If Clinton wins, the stories will be that it was too soon to write off her candidacy, and people will raise doubts about whether Obama can close a deal.  Hillary Clinton will  declare it her third comeback, after her win in NH and her wins in CA and MA on Super Tuesday.  

Obama has benefited from +80% performance with African-American voters.  His advantage among African-Americans should be just as great, but Wisconsin's population is only 6% African-American, so for him to win WI he will need to do better among White voters than he did in the states he lost on Super Tuesday, such as California and Massachusetts.  Obama's wins in Maryland and Virginia last Tuesday showed increasing strength among White voters.  Like Virginia, independents can vote.  And with McCain declared the presumptive Republican nominee, the perception is that there's little reason for independents to vote in the Republican primary.  

The type of voters in WI should offer some glimpse of what to expect in Ohio.  The suburbs of Milwaukee and the counties that border Illinois have a similar demographic and political character to northern Ohio.  These voters—more Catholic, unionized, working class and tied to manufacturing than Democratic or swing voters in most of the rest of the country—have been giving Hillary Clinton decent margins of victory.  If she can hold on to these voters, her chances look OK in Ohio and in the Pennsylvania primary a month later.  If Obama wins among these voters, and especially if he can significantly narrow the margins with white women Democrats, it will be a grim portent for the Clinton campaign.  

In the nine days following Super Tuesday, Obama spent over 50% more on advertising than Clinton.  In Wisconsin, Obama was on the air advertising for six days before Clinton aired her first ad.  That probably explains some of the movement to Obama over the last two weeks; recent polls show him with a lead greater than the margin of error.  Clinton has spent time and money in Wisconsin, but she hasn't prioritized it like she has Texas and Ohio.  If she wins, her team looks great.  If she loses it narrowly, they'll look like they blew it, that if they spent more time and money there they would have won.  (This will be hard to know, however, because it's possible they just didn't have the money to win or keep Wisconsin close and at the same time defend their leads in OH and TX.)  If they lose by a 5-10 points, from a strategy standpoint they'll be shown to have made the right allocation of resources, but the message will continue to be that she's on a losing streak since Super Tuesday's split decision.  

The polls in Wisconsin close at 8:00 PM Central time.