The 2008 Democratic nominating campaign will be remembered as the longest and closest in the history of the Democratic Party. Throughout the campaign the party's nominating rules were debated by the campaigns, members of the media, and over dinner tables across the country. Never before had the inner workings of an American political party's selection process been under such scrutiny for so long. As the nomination campaign continued unremittingly, the debate began to focus on which candidate would in fact be more electable in the November general election. While each candidate chose a different set of metrics to gauge their potential general election strength, both focused on one widely available source, the results of state Democratic nominating contests. At the time, many argued there was simply no connection between a candidate's performance in a nominating contest and their potential general election strength, and at the time, it was impossible to measure given the general election had not taken place. Now, a closer examination is possible. This study employs ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis to model the relationship between a candidate's performance in a nominating contest and their subsequent performance in the general election.
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