Obama packs arenas nine months before poll

Washington: Barack Obama is attracting jaw-dropping crowds at stop after stop. Democratic rival Hillary Clinton would be thrilled with her own big turnouts except that his are so much bigger.

Political insiders are unsure what to make of it all: No one has seen these kinds of crowds so long before Election Day. Do to-the-rafters audiences in the primaries mean Obama will win the Democratic nomination? Or do they simply represent highly motivated fans who eventually could yield to a quieter but larger number of voters for Clinton? Or for the Republican nominee in November?

While some major Republican candidates were struggling to draw 800 people just before the February 5 primaries, Obama spoke before 54,000 on a three-stop last Saturday.

That was approaching the population of Wilmington, Delaware, where he drew 20,000 the next day, which also was the day of the Super Bowl, when many Americans are glued to their television sets to watch the NFL football championship game.

Within 24 hours last weekend, Clinton drew 45,000 people in three cities in Virginia and Maryland. The crowds were reflected in the turnout on primary day, numbers that warm the hearts of Democrats looking ahead to November and cause consternation in the Republicans. In Virginia, where a Democratic presidential nominee has not won in four decades, Democrats outnumbered Republicans at the polls by two-to-one, 970,393 to 481,970, and Obama got 623,141 votes.

Kennedy 'successor'

In arena after arena, fire marshals turn people away. Obama briefly speaks to the disappointed groups, in overflow rooms or freezing parking lots, before addressing the big crowds inside.

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said the last politician to draw such "fervent, huge crowds" was Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968. Unlike Obama, she said, Kennedy started with a famous name and legacy, "which makes this even more extraordinary".

Obama is attracting these crowds without help from big-name celebrities, so they differ from the 30,000-person December event in South Carolina, when Oprah Winfrey joined him.

Clinton has drawn impressive crowds too. They include 10,000 people in San Diego and another 10,000 in San Jose, shortly before she carried California on February 5.