A series of head-to-head polls shows Barack Obama is more likely to beat John McCain than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama backers highlight breadth

Super Tuesday was a draw on paper, but Sen. Barack Obama’s strategists have begun arguing that his broadly-distributed wins — in states as varied as North Dakota and Georgia — make him especially well-positioned for a fall match-up with the likely Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, one of a number of Obama’s prominent endorsers from states that either swing or consistently vote Republican in presidential elections, told Politico in a phone interview that Obama’s appeal reaches well beyond the Democratic base.


“I hear every day from Republicans and independents in Kansas that they would be willing to cross party lines if they like the candidate’s vision,” Sebelius said. “I hear every day that Barack Obama is a candidate they would feel very comfortable supporting and would be eager to support.”

Indicative of his red-state allure, Obama also has been endorsed by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), whose state went 67 percent for President Bush in 2004; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), whose state went 55 percent for Bush; and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who represents a state that delivered 53 percent for Bush.

At the same time, Obama has defied conventional wisdom by attracting endorsements from prominent women, including Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who was the first executive director of EMILY’s List.

A series of head-to-head polls shows Obama is more likely to beat McCain than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Among them is a new Time magazine poll showing Obama with a 7-point advantage in the theoretical matchup, while McCain and Clinton are deadlocked.

On Tuesday, Obama won in states holding primaries, which tend to attract more casual voters, and caucuses, which consist largely of party activists. He won more states in total, and essentially tied Clinton in the popular vote and in the delegate count.

He won in states with high percentages of African-American voters and in those with almost none. He registered wins in the Northeast (Connecticut), the Midwest (Missouri), the South (Georgia) and the Mountain West (Idaho and Utah).

By winning across the national landscape and in both primaries and caucuses, Obama helped put to rest one of the key reservations that Democrats harbored about his candidacy — whether he has the kind of broad appeal that can carry him to victory in November.

The Obama campaign on Friday released a strategy memo that made explicit an argument that the senator has increasingly been making on the stump. It was titled, “The Candidate Who Can Win: Barack Obama is beating Hillary Clinton with Independent voters and can beat John McCain in November.”

The memo points to the general election as a reason for Democrats to support Obama now — encouraging activists to consider Electoral College math nine months ahead of time.

“On Super Tuesday, in six red states that had primaries or caucuses for both Republicans and Democrats, Obama won and got more votes than the top two Republicans combined,” the memo said. “These states — Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and South Carolina — account for a total of 53 Electoral College votes.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer called the idea that Super Tuesday revealed red-state strength for Obama “a rather ridiculous argument.”



“Sen. Clinton won in every region and pulled a significant number of voters in states that will be crucial to Democratic efforts to take back the White House,” Singer said. “She won in red states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arizona and Arkansas, as well as in reliably blue states like California, New York and Massachusetts. She beat Sen. Obama in the youth vote, the supposed source of his strength, in California and Massachusetts. She won 110 of the 115 jurisdictions in Missouri, including rural regions — if you look at a map of how the votes were distributed, the entire state looks like Clinton country.”

But in Kansas, a state that went 62 percent for Bush in 2004 and where Obama won 74 percent of the vote Tuesday, Sebelius said Obama has the best chance to “rebrand Democrats” to broaden the party’s appeal in what has been a closely divided nation.

“This is very good for our party in the long term,” she said. “People have been identified and mobilized, and an army is being put together in a state where, frankly, Democratic presidential campaigns have not seemed interested or involved in years and years.”