Hillary Clinton's impressive victory today in Puerto Rico reinforced the fact that she is a very popular candidate among the latino population. Keep in mind, the latino population represents a substantial group of voters nationally.
When you combine this with her impressive following of middle and lower income voters and women voters, she seems to be the more viable candidate.This is supported by the fact that she is leading in the popular vote.
Clinton won Puerto Rico decisively, 263,120 or 68 percent of the votes to Barack Obama's 121,458 or 32 percent. She picked up 38 delegates to bring her total to 1,915.5. Even in losing, Obama moved closer to the nomination with 17 more delegates, bringing his total to 2,071, 47 shy of the 21118 to win the nomination outright. There are 31 delegates up for grabs with Tuesday's final primaries involving Montana and South Dakota.
An important consideration in the awarding of delegates is that Obama has won a number of delegates from caucuses held in some states instead of by overall democratic popular vote.
The caucuses are not truly reflective of the overall selection since they are the result of relatively small number of voters in an informal setting who are not necessarily authorized to vote and in some cases, voting more than once.
With the strong following that Clinton has generated and particularly in the larger swing vote states, she should continue campaigning up to the Democratic convention.
She has also proven that polls show she is the stronger candidate against the Republican nominee, John McCain. After all, when everything is said, the whole Democratic campaign is geared to select the candidate who can win the presidency, and to increase the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
Retired Col. Irving Davidoff of New Smyrna Beach writes a regular column for NSB News.