The more analysis that comes out about the results from Tuesday’s election, the more it becomes clear that this was a fairly clear victory for Barack Obama. The press has treated it pretty much as a tie, which is a bit grating–they were quick to call defeats for Obama when he did not meet exaggerated expectations, but they won’t give Clinton the same scrutiny. The fact is, Obama won Super Tuesday–in more ways than one.

First of all, despite Hillary’s taking the big states like California, New York, and New Jersey, Obama picked up 49% of the popular vote vs. Hillary’s 47%, and–it seems–roughly the same percentage of delegates. In other words, Obama won. Strange that this isn’t the story out there; when Hillary beat Obama in New Hampshire 39 to 36, it was a “stunner” because polls in the day or two before the primary had Obama ahead by a few points. Well, before Super Tuesday, Hillary was ahead in the polls more than Obama was in New Hampshire, and he beat her in a result that was much more stunning–but the media yawned, and called it a “wash,” or even sometimes a Clinton “victory.”

The fact is, Obama was playing catch-up, and down to the last minute, was down in most of the polls, especially in the Super-Tuesday states. See this post by Kos, showing polling data right up to the day before the election, which showed Obama momentum, but also that the polls had Hillary with a clear lead. He should have lost, by all expectations–and needed to stay within a few hundred delegates behind Hillary to stay in the race. Super Tuesday was supposed to be Hillary’s chance to knock Obama out of the race altogether, and yet Obama actually came out ahead. How is that, by any measure or stretch of the imagination, a “victory” for Hillary?

One should note also that Obama actually exceeded expectations more than Hillary did; where the polls called for them to get a certain amount of the vote, Obama gained more than the polls predicted more often and more strongly than Clinton did:

Some call Hillary the winner because she has more delegates–but only when you count the “super-delegates” into the equation. However, these were not votes “earned” on the day of the election, rather votes granted to her by a few powerful people some time ago, when Hillary was way out in front, and considered to be the shoo-in for the candidacy. One can hardly count that as part of Tuesday’s elections. If you count only the delegates earned, on the actual election day, then Obama comes out ahead.

Add to this the fact that Obama is poised to win 6 out of the next 7 races in February, and rack up a lot more delegates, and Hillary’s “victory” appears even more hollow.

Furthermore, while Hillary won the big states (except for Illinois) on Super Tuesday, she won fewer states than Obama, and the states she won, she won by more shallow margins:

Of the 9 states with a Clinton lead, all save for one (Arkansas) were taken with less than 60% of the vote. Of the 13 states Obama won, only 5 were taken with less than 60%; 5 more were won with 60~70% leads, and three were won with a 70~80% majority landslide. This helps explain why Obama got more delegates.

What’s more, Obama is raking in the money, while Clinton is having a hard time scraping together enough to pay the bills. She had to “lend” herself $5 million (money on loan from her senatorial coffers), and on top of that, was forced to ask her top staffers to go without pay. Obama out-raised Hillary in January by a two-to-one margin or more. And despite a big push by the Clinton campaign to get as many donations as possible, she has raised only half of what Obama has generated since the polls closed on Tuesday–Obama has gotten over $7.5 million, while Hillary has raised somewhere between $3 and $4 million in the same time period. Obama raised $5 million of that in less than 24 hours–the same amount that Hillary loaned to herself.

On a side note, there is a Hillary development that is troubling me: Hillary seems to have made a friend out of Rupert Murdock, the ultra-conservative media magnate who founded Fox Noise and has worked to wreck the progressive cause. In 2006, he hosted a fundraiser for Hillary, donating money to her campaign himself–in 2007, she got $40,000 from Fox News executives. And now she’s double-dog daring Obama to a Fox Noise debate.

If you recall, John Edwards spearheaded the boycott of Fox News as a debate host earlier last year, and Obama and Hillary jumped on board. The principle is sound: don’t put yourself in the hands of the propaganda machine of your political opponents.

Except now, Hillary is tossing progressives overboard and hopes to score some points with a political maneuver which smacks of party betrayal.

One can only assume that the dirty campaigning she tried in South Carolina is not exhausted yet (she’s just getting smarter in how to carry it out), as things get tight for her campaign and she faces a month-long stretch in the doghouse.