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The war crisis played a problematic role. President Nixon's TV speech came on election eve, and no one could firmly fix its effect—if any. Though McGovern is well known as an antiwar candidate, the President's speech came so soon before the balloting that it may have made little difference.
In the end, McGovern emerged with 41% and Humphrey with 35%, McGovern scored in the university community of Lincoln, lost among the state's Irish Catholics in Omaha, and held the farmers remarkably well. Humphrey had missed his upset. McGovern's aides comforted themselves, perhaps overoptimistically, with the thought that they had set the "radical issue" to rest in the same way that John Kennedy overcame the Catholicism issue in West Virginia's primary in 1960.
Pollyannaism. Ironically, it was in West Virginia that Humphrey found infinitely greater satisfaction last week. He emerged with 67% of the vote in the preference poll there, against George Wallace, who won 33%. It may have been an important psychological victory for Humphrey, whose loss of the 1960 West Virginia primary to Kennedy has been credited with sending J.F.K. to the White House. In fact, as Humphrey watched the West Virginia returns on TV, he offered a characteristic Pollyannaism about that race twelve years ago: "I personally suffered a political defeat, but the nation gained a great President."
This time Humphrey gained more than just votes. He will take a healthy share of West Virginia's 35 delegates into the convention. In a state with one of the nation's highest per capita union memberships and minimal anxiety about busing (the black population is only 4%), Humphrey's ties to organized labor and the state's Democratic machinery were sufficient to reward him with a handsome victory.
Wallace gave only perfunctory attention to West Virginia, preferring to till more fertile ground in Maryland and Michigan. Both states have primaries this week, and in each his constituency is strong. Humphrey and McGovern, the principal contenders, were looking farther down the calendar, to Oregon on May 23 and, more important, to California on June 6. California, with its 271 delegate votes, winner take all, had become the Democrats' new political grail. Victory there might be enough to propel either McGovern or Humphrey to the nomination.
As of last week, the delegate scorecard stood: 338 for McGovern, 241½ for Humphrey, 213 for Wallace.