Thanks to the Democratic Party's often-inscrutable method of apportioning delegates to its national nominating convention, Barack Obama's resounding victory in Mississippi's presidential primary means that this smallish southern state - with only 33 pledged delegates at stake - will likely negate Clinton's wins in the much-larger (and ostensibly more important) states of Texas and Ohio.
The final delegate tally isn't immediately known. But by winning almost 60 per cent of the vote in Mississippi, Obama could net up to nine delegates from Mississippi, more than Clinton gained on March 4.
So what does it all mean? It means, in part, that Obama got a bit lucky and escaped without any quantifiable damage to his campaign after all the hubbub over Nafta-gate in Ohio and the impact of the Hispanic vote in Texas.
Perception, however, is a trickier thing for Obama. The Clinton campaign has a powerful spin machine right now that is portraying the Texas and Ohio results as leaving Obama's campaign "reeling." This is a bit much, given that it appears Obama actually won the Texas caucuses (the less-publicized element of the Lone Star State's crazy hybrid system). But still, the Clintons can rightfully claim they blunted, at least temporarily, Obama's momentum at a time when many people were writing the former first lady's campaign obituary.
Clinton's strategists are also portraying Obama's wins as somehow less legitimate because many of them have come in smaller states (like Mississippi) and in states (like Wyoming, which Obama won on Saturday) which hold caucuses as opposed to primaries. This is a somewhat less convincing talking point....(Canada.com)