After spending $15 million in Pennsylvania in the past month and logging hours on the road across the Keystone State, the two Democratic candidates traded just a dozen delegates.

Clinton’s victory, though nearly a full 10 points in the popular vote, was hardly substantial where it counted.  The situation mirrored Texas, which Hillary actually lost in the delegate count, and Super Tuesday’s races, all of which left the campaign nearly unchanged. The election has cost Obama and Clinton together over $350 million to-date with virtually inconclusive results continuously plaguing the race.

Though Hillary did not gain much ground on Obama this week, she did win two critical victories: she cut Obama’s popular vote lead by 25% and picked up a much needed wave of momentum. Almost as important for Hillary has been signs that Obama is wearing down. (His hair is even graying.) His uncharacteristic miscues, such as the comment about rural Pennsylvanians, are leading some Democrats to think that if he can’t go the distance in the primary, how could he withstand the presidency?

Financial expenditures and aging aside, the basic math is in Obama’s favor right now. Given a best case scenario in the remaining primaries, Hillary will still be well short of taking the lead (considering polls in Indiana and North Carolina). The contest will eventually come down to superdelegates, of which she will need 70% to 75% of the remaining undeclared. Unfortunately she has only gotten 4% of the pledged superdelegates since March.

This has led to many calls for Hillary to exit and allow Obama to focus on McCain. But Slate Magazine says Hillary has “every right to stay in the primary race for as long as she wishes” because she could capture the popular vote and sway the superdelegates. Yet, even if she were to win the popular vote, would superdelegates truly strip Obama of the nomination he leads by the party’s rules?

Considering superdelegates are the most important voters now, Democrats will basically be spending money on themselves under the guise of primary elections. The situation would almost be comical if one didn’t consider all the other things $15 million could have bought. How many uninsured Americans could get healthcare from the next $100 million spent in this campaign?

Religiously-minded voters turned out to vote in Pennsylvania yesterday. According to exit polls, 36 percent of voters said they attend church weekly, 45 percent said they attend occasionally, and 17 percent said they never attended at all. Of all these groups, only the last went for Obama over Clinton, prompting God-o-Meter to observe that Barack Obama has a secular base.

Despite campaigning with Catholic Sen. Bob Casey, forming a Catholic National Advisory Council and hiring a full-time Catholic outreach director, Obama got stomped in the Catholic vote – 37 percent of Pennsylvania voters and a key swing group that helped George W. Bush win the White House.

Clinton took 69 percent of the Catholic vote to Obama’s 31 percent. Among the more devout (the 18 percent who attended Mass weekly), she took almost three-fourths of the vote. Among those who attend less often, she still got 65 percent to Obama’s 35 percent.

Exit polls also showed Clinton doing better than Obama among white Catholics if matched against McCain. Eighty-two percent of white Catholics said they’d pick Clinton over McCain, and only 59 percent said the same of Obama. Twenty-one percent said they’d go for McCain over Obama, and 17 percent said they wouldn’t vote at all.

The news may not be quite as bad as it looks for Obama, however. Obama didn’t fare as badly among Protestants, neatly splitting the votes of Protestant weekly church attenders. Daily Kos also notes that Obama has made slight improvements since Ohio, raising his percentage of Protestant votes from 36 percent in Ohio to 53 percent in Pennsylvania. Clinton also won 40 percent of the white Catholic vote in Ohio and less (33 percent) in Pennsylvania. Overall, Obama and Clinton are virtually tied for the Catholic vote in a general election.

And religion isn’t a voter’s sole motivating factor. On the Wall Street Journal’s Political Perceptions blog, Steve Waldman said it’s possible that Obama’s problem with white Catholics is really “just a problem with white, working-class seniors, who in Pennsylvania happened to be Catholic.” George Marlin touched on this when he told Human Event’s John Gizzi that aging, blue-collar, white Catholics mistrust Obama as a “Yuppie liberal.”

Christopher Hitchens adds his biting analysis to theirs:

The apparent front-runner has a lot of work to do before he can count on the support of the old-fashioned households who care about guns, values, churches and other keywords and code words that Mrs Clinton can exploit with more conviction than he can.

While most of the attention in Pennsylvania yesterday was on the battle for the Democratic nomination, the Republicans also held a primary in the Keystone State (as NJLawyer commented in last night’s results thread). The presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain, of course, won, capturing nearly 73 percent of the vote. But what about that other 27 percent? Ron Paul, who has not officially stopped running, picked up 16 percent, while Mike Huckabee, who has dropped out of the race, accounted for a little more than 11 percent of the vote.

Is this a protest vote against McCain, meaning that he still has a lot of work to do to unite his party? It will be interesting to chart this in the few primaries that remain.

The polls have closed in Pennsylvania, and no winner is being projected as of yet.

Here’s some exit polling data from the Associated Press.

Feel free to comment on this key battle in the Keystone State as the results roll in …

UPDATE (8:45 p.m.): Fox News has projected Hillary Clinton the winner …

UPDATE (8:58 p.m.): AP agrees. … Now we wait to see by how much …

UPDATE (9:04 p.m.): CNN joins the bandwagon and proclaims a Clinton victory …

UPDATE (11:15 p.m.): With 85 percent of the vote in, Clinton’s up 55 percent to 45 percent …

After weeks of bad bowling, whiskey-imbibing, attacks, counter-attacks, and talk of bitter, small-town voters, the Pennsylvania primary comes to a resolution – or at least a vote – today. Here’s your key to the Pennsylvania primary.

POLLS

Clinton started with a 14-point lead at the end of February. Obama narrowed that lead and today, Clinton has a Real Clear Politics Average lead of 6.1%. The race may come down to undecided voters and who turns out to vote.

KEY VOTER GROUPS

A candidate’s ability to capture these groups helps predict electability in November.

White Catholics. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton leads Obama 66-29% among this group, which is also key in the general election. Obama became the first presidential candidate to hire a fulltime Catholic outreach director and got endorsements from some prominent Catholics, but God-o-Meter wonders if Catholic reticence could be Obama’s biggest stumbling block in November.

White, working-class men. WSJ says they’re a swing constituency with a growing concern about the economy, and Hillary Clinton leads 49% to Obama’s 44%. Obama usually leads among white men, and Quinnipiac University gives Obama a lead (53-42%) among all men.

Rural, small-town voters. This is the group Obama seemed to disparage when he said, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Obama’s comments seemed to make little difference in the polls, but Clinton leads among rural Democrats 58% to Obama’s 37%.

DEFINING VICTORY

Pundits say an Obama win might mean Clinton dropping out, but most expect a Clinton win. The margin of victory is relevant, though. According to the Wall Street Journal, former DNC chair Steve Grossman defines a “convincing victory” as a five-point win. The Los Angeles Times puts it at 10 points. Salon says Gov. Rendell deems a 6-7 point Clinton win “tremendous.” Mother Jones Blog splits the difference: “Over 7, victory for Clinton. Under 5, victory for Obama. Anywhere from 5 to 7 and we call it a draw.” Clinton shrugged it off today: “I don’t think the margin matters.”

Delegates make a difference, too. Obama is about 377 pledged delegates from winning the 2,025 he needs to clinch the nomination. He’s 139 delegates ahead, and even if Clinton wins the popular vote, she probably won’t get the delegates she needs to close that lead. The Washington Post crunches the numbers and says the candidates could evenly split the delegates.

According to the New York Times today, Pennsylvania Democrats are getting antsy over the long-term effects of Obama’s remarks seeming to disparage small-town voters. They’re starting to wonder if Obama will be able to overcome charges of elitism, and they’re worried the fighting will hurt the Democratic nominee. Other pundits counter that the impact will be minimal.

In a private San Francisco fundraiser, Obama said unemployment and economic stagnation make small-town voters bitter:

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

In The New Republic, John B. Judis says Obama’s remarks will hurt him in the upcoming primaries and the general election. Judis calculates that Obama needs 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote to win in November and that McCain has some advantages with this group: his war-hero status and moderate politics. Obama could sway them “on every day economic issues,” Judis says. But “Obama’s heart doesn’t appear to be in it.”

In a Real Clear Politics analysis, Jay Cost says superdelegates are reticent to endorse Obama because of his difficulty with the voting group he may have offended: “We’ve seen enough data to know which socioeconomic groups [Obama’s] he’s having trouble with: rural/small town whites who do not make a lot of money.

Republicans will try to use Obama’s remarks to their advantage, and Obama’s fully aware of it. In a speech to the Associated Press, McCain already said the Great Depression never shook the faith and patriotism of small-town Americans:

Nor did they turn to their religious faith and cultural traditions out of resentment and a feeling of powerlessness to affect the course of government or pursue prosperity. On the contrary, their faith had given generations of their families purpose and meaning, as it does today.

But the polls themselves indicate the impact may be less than people think. One poll shows Obama gaining a small advantage since his remarks hit the news. Other polls show little movement either way. SurveyUSA found that while a majority of regular church attenders and gun owners disagreed with his remarks, the majority (53% of regular church attenders and 55% of gun owners) didn’t find his remarks offensive.

Daily Kos dismisses the story as overhyped, and Andrew Sullivan says it’s ironic: “I’m beginning to suspect that the only segment left in America that genuinely feels that elitism is a problem for Obama are … the elites.”

There are hand-drawn signs, black Sharpie arrows on printer paper, pointing down the hallway in an imperative parade, each declaring, “Vote!”

The destination, marked by a grand finale of arrow signs around a door, is the graduate student office for the Social and Public Policy program at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. On a high counter inside the office is a stack of pink-white National Mail Voter Registration Forms. Perched next to the forms is a grad student distributing pens to registering students.

“It never gets crowded,” he admits of student involvement in the voting drive. “But there’s a constant trickle.”

Voting drives are not new to universities, but the intensity and response of students is a phenomenon of this year’s election process. In Pittsburgh, the top three universities alone make up a hefty potential voting bloc, with nearly 40,000 students total between the three enrollments.

In the wider region of Pennsylvania, student enrollment from the five largest universities tops 130,000—over 1% of the state’s population. Many of these schools, such as the Pennsylvania State University, with an enrollment of 83,000, are positioned in the conservative center of the state.

With fewer registered democrats in those central Pennsylvania regions, students there tend to have a disproportionate impact on democratic primaries. This is likely to be a serious boost to the student-friendly Obama campaign. According to CNN, Obama has performed poorly among white middle-class voters, but he does remarkably well with voters ages 18-34.

Launching his week-long Pennsylvania bus tour on Friday, Obama held a signature rally at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, which stands across a four-lane avenue from the University of Pittsburgh. True to location, the crowd looked and behaved more like a college classroom than a community forum. After one of the senator’s talking points, one young woman shouted out, “I love you, Obama!”

The candidate chuckled a response, but the message was clear: the aging Italian mothers of Northern Pittsburgh were not in attendance, but the students from across the street were there in force.

Last Sunday, at a private fundraising event in San Francisco, Barack Obama commented on the problems his campaign has had wooing working class voters frustrated with the current economic conditions: “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The comments, which were posted on The Huffington Post website yesterday, were immediately challenged by Obama’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and the John McCain campaign. “It’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter; well, that’s not my experience,” Clinton said. “Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.” Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain, added, “It shows an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

This morning, Obama admitted, “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.” He then went on to put a positive spin on what he said: “When you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about you know how things are changing.”

Barack Obama went bowling in an attempt to win the hearts of Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters. According to serious pundits (including Jon Stewart), however, his dismal bowling failure chinks his rock-star armor and casts doubt on everything from his manliness to his personal character.

Obama dropped by the Pleasant Valley Bowl (Altoona, Pennsylvania’s “Hottest Night Spot“) and tossed a bowling ball for the first time in 30 years. He threw a couple gutter bowls, went for seven frames until he scored a spare, and then called it a day. Final score: a pitiful 37 out of 300 possible points.

The Baltimore Sun consoles him: “From a public relations standpoint, it was a ten-strike.” The Sun may have spoken too soon.

Sports pundits were hardly impressed. According to Media Matters, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough mocked Obama as “dainty,” said “Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man,” and doubted the tie-wearing, book-reading candidate’s effectiveness in winning working class voters. NBC’s Harold Ford defended Obama’s athleticism and fawned a bit: “It showed a human side to him. … It showed a very humble side to him.”

Conservatives were even less impressed. Over in National Review’s Corner, Byron York speculated that Obama has alienated “those blue-collar workers who are said to be the key to victory.” Michael Goldfarb found much significance in the fact that Obama stopped at the seventh frame: “Quitting and making excuses when things get tough…it doesn’t bode well. … It would be nice if Obama showed a little resolve in anything but sticking by his anti-Semitic preacher.”

Jon Stewart echoed their concerns on a Daily Show segment mocking media coverage: “How can you keep our jobs from going overseas when you can’t even keep the ball out of the gutter?”

On April Fool’s Day, Hillary Clinton herself took the opportunity to posture as the tougher, more experienced bowler and (of course) mention that 3 a.m. phone call again:

I’m prepared to play this game all the way to the 10th frame. And when this game is over, the American people will know when that phone rings at 3 a.m., they’ll have a president who’s ready to bowl on Day One.

Pollsters may have given Pennsylvania to Clinton, but Pennsylvania voters have yet to do so. With the state’s considerable student population and minority voting blocs, the New York senator may find her lead in the Keystone State somewhat difficult to preserve.

Clinton’s double-digit lead in Pennsylvania opinion polls (she leads 49% to 39% in a Rasmussen poll from March 25) is not news. Obama has been floating almost 10 points behind her for months. With Philadelphia’s 43% black population likely to lean towards Obama, Clinton’s lead relies primarily on support from the Pittsburgh region and the middle of the state.

That support, however, may prove less than stable. Figures from the Federal Election Commission show Obama now leads in monetary support from the Pittsburgh region. With $356,277 total raised at the end of February, Obama has overwhelmed Clinton’s total of $210,471. The Clinton campaign trails behind even the now-defunct Giuliani campaign, which picked up $315,110 from the Pittsburgh area before dropping out of the race in January.

Alongside the superior fundraising, Obama has also recently gathered the support of popular Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who defeated Sen. Rick Santorum in a landslide 2006 election. The national significance of Sen. Casey’s support was underscored by renewed calls for Clinton to step out of the race on Saturday.

Perhaps the most dangerous element for Clinton, however, is time. Obama’s widening lead in national polls (up to 50% against 43% on March 29) may only further dishearten Clinton supporters as the month drags on towards April 22.