Three stats to give Hillary hope

Hillary Clinton still has an uphill climb to the nomination, but three sets of figures buried in the post-Texas, post-Ohio analyses should give Barack Obama pause. The first is the women's vote. In Ohio, the female-male voting proportion was 59-41, which both tells you something about who votes and also how much Hillary is pulling women to the polls. Among white women voters in Ohio, Hillary got 67 percent of their vote. And she is stoking their enthusiasm by being feisty during tough economic times, while husbands take out their troubles at the corner pub. The second set of numbers pertains to Obama's appeal to independents and even Republicans (known as Obamicans). This crossover appeal supposedly gives Obama a better chance to defeat McCain than Clinton, with her more partisan approach. However, recent polls cited by Karl Rove in his election analysis show "almost twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans support Mr. Obama." If so, Clinton's strategy of energizing the Democratic and female base may make more sense than Obama's transpartisan appeal. The third set of figures has to do with the states where Clinton has won (mostly big states and likely to deliver Democratic votes in the fall) and those favoring Obama. Here's how Marie Cocco does the math: Add up all the states he has won in his historic drive to become the nominee, including all of those small and deeply "red" Republican states where the Obama supporters boast of their candidate's transcendental appeal, and so far Obama has won in places representing 193 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Add up Clinton's victories thus far and she has triumphed in states representing 263 electoral votes.