Via Josh Marshall, Mark Penn is spinning again — check out this silly quote:
“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”
As I’ve shown, it’s true that Obama has not done as well in larger states, but the claim that he hasn’t won “any of the significant states” is silly.
What makes a state “significant”? The most obvious metric is how close it was in 2004. And if you sort the states that have voted so far by the competitiveness of the 2004 presidential vote (and exclude Florida and Michigan), you can see that Obama has won six of the ten closest states (Obama votes below are expressed as a proportion of the total Obama+Hillary vote):
| State | Kerry | Obama |
| NH | 0.50 | 0.48 |
| IA | 0.49 | 0.57 |
| NM | 0.49 | 0.49 |
| MN | 0.51 | 0.67 |
| NV | 0.48 | 0.47 |
| WA | 0.53 | 0.69 |
| NJ | 0.53 | 0.45 |
| CO | 0.47 | 0.68 |
| DE | 0.53 | 0.56 |
| ME | 0.54 | 0.60 |
However, Penn probably preferes to sort the states by population since that includes California (also, he referred to Illinois in making the statement). If you parse the states that have voted so far that way (again excluding Florida and Michigan), you can see that Obama has won four of the top ten:
| State | Obama |
| CA | 0.45 |
| NY | 0.41 |
| IL | 0.66 |
| GA | 0.68 |
| NJ | 0.45 |
| VA | 0.65 |
| MA | 0.42 |
| WA | 0.69 |
| AZ | 0.45 |
| TN | 0.43 |
Of course, with all that said, we should be cautious about extrapolating from the primary to the general election.
Update 2/17 9:37 AM: TNR’s Noam Scheiber makes a similar point in responding to Clinton supporter Harold Ickes’s claim that Hillary has won important swing states and Obama hasn’t.