AFP

ADD Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia to the list. Barack Obama has swept on without a loss since fighting Hillary Clinton to a draw in last week's “Super Tuesday” voting for the Democratic presidential nomination. He won four contests over the weekend and, on Tuesday February 12th, added three emphatic wins in the Potomac river region.

For the Clinton campaign the list is different. Mrs Clinton's advisers find a variety of reasons to dismiss almost all of Mr Obama's recent successes. Some (such as Maine and Washington) are “caucus” states that reward enthusiastic party activists but which leave many ordinary voters at home. Others are Republican-heavy states (Nebraska) that Democrats are unlikely to win anyway in the general election in the autumn. Others still (Louisiana, Maryland, Washington, DC) have big black populations that can be expected to vote for the first black candidate with a decent shot at the presidency.

But Mrs Clinton is running out of good reasons for why she should lose so many different states and by such big margins. Virginia voted for Mr Obama by 64% to 35%. Maryland went to him 59-37%, and Washington, DC, by a whopping 75-24%. Virginia, especially, is hard to ignore. Its demographic mix is not too different from neighbouring Tennessee, which Mrs Clinton won handily on Super Tuesday. It sends over 80 delegates to the summer's nominating convention. And although not usually considered to be a swing state, the suburbs of Washington, DC, and the capital (Richmond) are growing more Democratic, giving the party a hope of snatching it from its usual place in the Republican win column come November.

Moreover, Mr Obama won nearly every significant group: among men and women, church-goers and church-avoiders, liberals and moderates, the well and the less educated. He nearly tied with her among white voters and took 90% of blacks. Most polls had predicted Mr Obama would win; none said that he would win by 28 percentage points.

Those looking for signs of a Clinton collapse will also note that her deputy campaign manager quit on Tuesday, after her campaign manager stepped down on Sunday. They will also point to Wisconsin and Hawaii, which vote next Tuesday. Polls now show Mr Obama to be strong in Wisconsin and he grew up in Hawaii, which is also expected to be favourable.

But Mrs Clinton is not out yet. Pundits rushed to declare her campaign fatally wounded before she triumphed in New Hampshire in January. They pronounced a wave of Obama momentum before she took all the big states she needed on Super Tuesday. Equally, it would be unwise to count her out now as she can claim roughly the same number of delegates as Mr Obama, if not so many states.

Mrs Clinton's “firewalls” are the states of Ohio and Texas, which vote on March 4th. Both are huge delegate hauls, and polls show her to be strong in both. Her problem is that the proportional system the Democrats use—and especially in Texas's convoluted system—mean that she cannot just win them to right her campaign. She needs to win them big. Her campaign strategist, Mark Penn, dismisses the idea of momentum in the Obama campaign, noting Mrs Clinton's comeback in New Hampshire and the perceived fizzle of Mr Obama's momentum before Super Tuesday. But as February wears on, with Mr Obama notching win after win, some have started to compare her strategy to that of Rudy Giuliani. New York's former mayor tried to ignore early Republican contests, which he derided as small and disadvantageous for him, betting on Florida and Super Tuesday. That failed spectacularly. Counting on huge wins in Ohio and Texas looks risky for Mrs Clinton too.

On the Republican side, John McCain swept the Tuesday primaries as expected, and is the certain Republican nominee. Mr Obama, in his victory speech, began to act like the Democratic standard-bearer, taking shots at Mr McCain's staunch support for the Iraq war and for promising to keep George Bush's tax cuts. Mr McCain fired indirectly back, saying “To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.” This was an unveiled reference to Mr Obama's habit of sounding grand themes more often than policy details.

Both men could be jumping the gun. Mrs Clinton's resilience and the political machine she built with her husband cannot be counted out. And there is the unresolved question of the “superdelegates”, unelected Democratic Party bigwigs and certain officeholders, who may upset the Democratic apple-cart by voting for a candidate who did not win among ordinary, elected delegates. But Mr Obama is savouring yet another big night. He is now the front-runner.