From Scott Horsley on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday last weekend (July 14th):
Republicans are fighting just as hard for Virginia, believing, as Mr. Obama does, that whomever wins the state will have a good chance of winning the White House.
A “free relative” clause whomever wins the state serving as the subject of a that-complement clause. Within the free relative, whomever is serving as the subject (despite its accusative case); standard English has
that whoever wins the state will have a good chance … [subject clause underlined]
“that whoever wins the state” outnumbers “that whomever wins the state” in ghits 10 to 1 — roughly 60 examples to 6, when irrelevancies and duplicates are omitted — but whomever occurs as a complement subject surprisingly often, and in the writing of experienced writers in serious contexts. These examples are the -ever parallel to the “unprovoked subject whom” cases I talked about in an earlier posting.
