'Penn-hio': New primary, familiar look

When Ohio organizers for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama packed up their cars and drove east last week, the state in the windshield looked pretty much like the one in the rearview mirror.

It wasn't the scenery that was familiar, but the demographics. Pennsylvania, the next big battlefield in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, could be Ohio's statistical twin in some ways.

Welcome to Penn-hio.

Clinton turned around her campaign last week with three primary victories after a month's worth of losses to Obama, with the centerpiece being her win in Ohio, a traditional bellwether state. She won there by 10 percentage points, receiving overwhelming support from older voters, white women, blue-collar workers, and whites without college degrees.

Pennsylvania is enough like Ohio to give Clinton the edge heading into the April 22 primary, though there are some economic differences that could become significant. Indeed, some experts say the winner might be determined in Southeastern Pennsylvania, with its more diverse population and stronger economy.

Pennsylvania is older and whiter than Ohio and the nation as a whole, according to the 2006 census estimate. Pennsylvanians make less money than the national average, just as Ohioans do, though Pennsylvania has more college graduates.

A little more than 15 percent of Pennsylvania's population is older than 65 - third-highest in the nation - compared with 13.3 percent of the Ohio population. That also could be in Clinton's favor, as the New York senator has received some of her strongest support from older voters.

In Ohio, older voters were 14 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls. (Clinton carried the seniors with 72 percent to 26 percent for Obama.) Just under a quarter of the likely voters in a Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania last month were 65 or older.

Moreover, Pennsylvania ranks first in the nation in the percentage of its residents who were born in the state.

That's mostly because the state has fewer immigrants from abroad and from other states than most, said Gordon DeJong, a professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University.

"We don't have a lot of people who have brought their politics with them from someplace else," DeJong said. "That long-standing pattern . . . makes it inherently more conservative politically on both sides, not just Republican vs. Democrat but within parties."

The racial mix in the two states is roughly the same - 10.7 percent of Pennsylvania's population is black, compared with 12 percent in Ohio, according to the Census Bureau's 2006 estimates. Eighteen percent of Ohio voters Tuesday were black, as were 17 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats who told Quinnipiac pollsters that they were likely to vote in the primary.

Obama, who would be the first African American president, has relied on landslide margins among black voters in his winning coalitions.

In Ohio, about half the electorate last week consisted of white, non-college-educated voters, and Clinton beat Obama among that group, 71 percent to 27 percent, according to exit polls.

Obama has had problems drawing support from white working-class voters but had improved, so the Ohio results raised questions that his campaign thought had been put to rest about the breadth of the Illinois senator's appeal.

"I don't buy into this demographic argument," Obama told reporters last week. "In Missouri, Wisconsin, Virginia, and many of these states, we've won the white vote and the blue-collar voters. . . . They said that about Wisconsin, and we won by 18 points."

In some contests, Clinton has had problems drawing white men. In Ohio, they supported her overwhelmingly.

"White men are the swing voters of the 2008 Democratic primaries," said Chris Borick, a pollster and political scientist at Muhlenberg College.

Another factor that looks good for Clinton: Only people who have registered as Democrats by March 24 will be eligible to vote in the party's Pennsylvania primary. Obama has run best in primaries where independents and Republicans can participate.

The Quinnipiac poll projects that 59 percent of the Democratic electorate in Pennsylvania will be female, the same percentage as in the Ohio electorate, giving Clinton a solid base on which to build.

Younger voters have been a key Obama constituency, and people younger than 45 were 44 percent of the Ohio electorate. Polls suggest about a quarter of Pennsylvania voters will be younger than 45.

Roman Catholics have been a key constituency for Clinton, and Pennsylvania has many more Catholic voters than Ohio. Up to a third of the electorate in Pennsylvania could be white Catholic voters, a group Clinton won by 31 percentage points in Ohio.

But some differences between the states could shape the Pennsylvania playing field.

In Ohio, half the Democratic vote, according to state party officials, came from areas north of the Ohio Turnpike or through which the highway passed, a classic Rust Belt region of depopulated towns and declining manufacturing base.

In Pennsylvania, half the delegates to the Democratic convention will be awarded in the slice of the state that starts just north of the Lehigh Valley, includes the Philadelphia area, and extends to the south of Harrisburg. The area is more prosperous East Coast than depressed Midwest.

"In suburban Philly, you might have a Democratic electorate with higher levels of education and more financial resources, and those voters have been better for Obama than Clinton," Borick said.

Ohio also has a higher unemployment rate than Pennsylvania and seems to have suffered more in the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent years, analysts said. Anger at free-trade agreements was a major factor in the Ohio primary.

"Pennsylvania having a bigger range socioeconomically makes us different from Ohio," said Democratic political consultant Ken Smukler, who is not working in the presidential race. "I don't believe you can run an anti-NAFTA campaign in Southeast Pennsylvania and have that be a deciding factor."

And, of course, demographic categories don't always determine how people vote. A campaign is a fluid thing.

"In seven weeks, you never know what is going to hit," Smukler said. "Remember, in Iowa, the top-priority issue was Iraq? Now it's the economy. Nothing stays the same in this primary."