Not Quite Double Digits for Clinton in Pennsylvania Wed Apr 23, 12:30 PM ET
Hillary Clinton needed a double-digit win in Pennsylvania.
And she claimed it last night.
But the final results are likely to deny the wide win to the senator from New York, whose campaign at this point is all about perceptions.
Instead of a double-digit win, Pennsylvania's official count now has her ahead of Barack Obama by 54.6 to 45.4. That's a 9.2 margin and there are still a few precincts uncounted.
This is typical of high-turnout elections. When the all the totals are counted and reviewed, there is fluctuation.
That's why initial results are referred to as "unofficial."
But this variation is a significant one.
Clinton won Pennsylvania, no doubt about that.
But her campaign needed to win big and a double-digit win is definitionally big -- sufficient, in fact, to attract millions of dollars in essential campaign contributions that might otherwise be harder to pry loose.
That's why she's very lucky that she went into today talking about a 10-point win rather than a nine-point win -- or, even, when everything is counted, something smaller than that.
It would be silly for the Obama campaign to make too big a deal of this. That would only add pettiness to a campaign that is already too petty. But for those of us who actual care about the permanent recent, the results from Pennsylvania do matter.