Barack Obama ought to be able to sweep the Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia primaries.

Why? Well, the black vote, of course, naturally favorable demographics among white voters, and the equivalent of a political atomic bomb in the Washington, DC / Baltimore television markets (a combined 3.3 million household (counting overlap) between the two).

Both states and the District are already polling heavily for Obama. Obama will easily carry Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Baltimore City in Maryland. The other key voting block for Obama is overeducated white people, of which there are legion in both Northern Virginia and Montgomery County. Obama has greatly affected the electorate of all three in two overlapping television markets. His marginal cost per voter is much less than Hillary’s, and he goes into tomorrow with a varying twenty percentage point lead in each contest.

Though the heavy immigrant population in Northern Virginia initially favors Hillary Clinton, which some media outlets have made too much of (see, for example, the CNN piece on Asian/American voters in Washington State) the numbers do not seem to be there for her to carry the state (more of an overview can be found in this Baltimore Sun blog piece here). The heavy black vote around Richmond, along with the ire of former governor, now Richmond mayor Doug Wilder towards the Clintons, makes the other primary population center of the state a difficult challenge for Hillary to overcome.

Two hundred and thirty seven delegates are at stake tomorrow for the Democrats. the most to be had in a single day behind only March 4th, where 444 are up for grabs when Texas, Rhode Island, Ohio and Vermont are decided.

If Obama takes a noticeable delegate lead tomorrow, we might see Hillary Clinton appoint her stylist, who I also understand has no campaign experience, to bounce the ship off the iceberg.

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