By Max Stoneman

On Tuesday night, the opening salvo of the 22-state Democratic Super Tuesday was a big one: Sen. Barack Obama won Georgia by a huge margin, 67 percent to Sen. Hillary Clinton's 31 percent. This was early in the evening and some pivotal numbers came out of that first state. Obama gained twice the amount of support among white voters in Georgia that he had in South Carolina, which he won last month. Now, he has 43 percent of the white vote in Georgia, proving that his Southern appeal is not limited to large African-American communities. Obama also took Alabama on Tuesday, making a solid bloc of support for his candidacy in the South.

Sen. Clinton, however, had a good night from early on and put together two key groups of states behind her campaign. The first was in the Northeast. Clinton kept New York in her corner, along with New Jersey and Massachusetts. This was a strong rejection of the massive effort put forth by that state's governor and its two senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, in favor of Obama. The big push from the Kennedy family did not pay the dividends that were expected, namely to bring in some crucial, delegate-rich Eastern seaboard states. Clinton's other bloc of support was built by winning Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, where her husband was governor. By winning these Middle America states, Clinton shores up her 50 states strategy.

But Clinton did lose two Northeastern states, Delaware and Connecticut, to Obama. Both of these states had Hillary Clinton in the lead for more than a year and the polls only recently started tracking a rise in Obama's support. As the results started coming from states further west, Barack Obama came up with four decisive Middle America wins in Kansas, North Dakota, Missouri and Minnesota. Just as he did in Iowa one month ago, Obama proved that he has appeal across the nation, in areas that are diverse in makeup and those much more homogeneous. This became obvious in the Rocky Mountains and beyond, where Obama swept up Colorado, Idaho, Alaska and Utah (and three of those states by more than 30 percentage points). Later in the night, Clinton kept the pressure on by winning in Arizona, New Mexico and California, the biggest prize for Democrats with 370 delegates to offer.

But neither Democratic candidate was able to break away from the other on Tuesday. The Democratic National Convention gives proportional delegates to each candidate, congressional district by congressional district. In this complicated rubric, no candidate is truly the "winner" of a state simply by gaining the popular vote. Nevada is a sterling example of this: Clinton won the popular vote back in January, but Obama took away the most delegates. The situation only gets more complicated when considering the impact of "superdelegates," the 796 Democratic Party power brokers who are not elected and not bound by the results of any primary or caucus. Though many superdelegates have already pledged support for Clinton, they can choose to back either candidate at any time.

The results of Super Tuesday could keep the Democrats guessing until their Denver Convention in August. But on the other hand, if the recent surge in support for Obama is any indication, more time without a clear front-runner may make the senator from Illinois the presumptive Democratic nominee before the summer.

Max Stoneman is majoring in Middle East Studies. He is from Salt Lake City.

Copyright Brigham Young University 7 Feb 2008