Today’s Washington Post has a fascinating article that details the Obama campaign’s strategy throughout the primary process.  The focus on small caucus states appears to have two causes: first, the campaign sought to compete where Clinton was weakest; second, the campaign focused on exploiting the electoral rules to grab every spare delegate.  The former reason motivated the campaign to send volunteers and staffers to small, solidly Republican states like Alaska and Kansas, where the campaign could beat the Clinton machine for the hearts of those voters, many of whom rarely get a chance to play a role in Democratic Party presidential politics.  The latter reason caused the campaign to zero-in on the different delegate formulas.  For example, the story explains that Obama won more pledged delegates from Nevada than did Clinton, even though she won the vote in the state, because his support was concentrated in districts in which an odd-number delegates could be given.  The strategy certainly paid off, although just barely.  Another factor that the article does not mention is the psychological role of winning primary (or caucus) after primary. Obama rattled off a string of 10 primary and caucus victories after Super Tuesday; the news coverage produced by that string, even though some (Utah and Nebraska) of those states were small, heavily-Republican states, was incredibly important to convince super delegates and voters that Obama was winning the nomination.  This undoubtedly helped his candidacy’s viability and his own electability image.
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