Could there be a glimmer of hope in one of the results?

The next stage of the seemingly never-ending quest to find the nominees for November’s presidential election moves to Washington DC tonight and to the two neighbouring states – Maryland and Virginia.

The success of Mike Huckabee at the weekend has given life to the only serious contender fighting John McCain for the GOP crown. He won two contests on Saturday and there’s a big argument still going on about the Washington state outcome. Although the delegate numbers mean that it’s hard for him to be challenged it does not look good if the near-certain nominee is losing states at this stage.

But it’s the Democratic contest that is getting all the attention and the big question is whether Obama‘s big roll will continue. He picked up four states at the weekend and a further three elections tonight would underline further his front-runner status.

If there is a surprise my guess is that it will be in Virginia. This is from the National Review blog: “My wife and I have never voted for anything left of Republican, frequently voting on the Conservative party line when available. Yet today, we both voted for Hillary in the VA primary. Why? Because it seems McCain has it wrapped up, so why waste our vote on the Republican side; she is a lot less scary than Obama in many ways (better the Devil you know), and I think she is more easily beaten with her high negatives and lack of charisma. So we were part of the high Dem turn out today which I am sure you will hear about. And there is no way we will ever vote Dem in November.”

In the betting Obama has now tightened further to 0.44/1.

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Mike Smithson