Clinton Ekes Out a Troubling Win in Kentucky

It appears Hillary Clinton has eked out an extremely narrow win in the Kentucky primary.  As I noted yesterday, Kentucky would give some indication of her ability to overcome her lack of popularity in “coal country” and give us an idea of how much more difficult general election wins in the critical states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, which also have large sections of coal country, would be.  Well, a win is a win; and yes, she did get clobbered in those coal producing areas, getting percentages in the 30s and even 20s in some counties.  But what was more surprising was how strongly Sanders did in areas that Hillary expected to dominate. Admittedly, the estimated turnout was only 20%, but even that was up from the 12% in 2012, so it is a small sample size. Kentucky was always going to be a good opportunity for Sanders, with its primarily white and working class population. But the Clinton campaign exerted a decent effort to win this election, so it should be troubling that it was such a tight result.