With Super Tuesday having slipped into Sleep-Deprived Wednesday, everyone is pointing to March 4th as the next big Democratic president contest. Vermont, Rhode Island, Texas, and Ohio are all up for grabs for a total of 370 pledged delegates.
The conventional wisdom says that Ohio and Texas are Hillary’s to lose. In Ohio, she’s got a lot of establishment support, including the endorsement from Gov. Ted Strickland. In Texas, the large number of Latino voters seems to give her a demographic edge.
However, as Ben Smith of the Politico mentioned after an Obama campaign conference call this morning, Texas isn’t a conventional primary:

It’s a mixed primary and caucus system, with two-thirds of the delegates awarded through primaries and a third through caucuses open only to primary voters.

In a moment of masochism, I pulled up the rules for the Texas nominating process. The two campaigns will be competing for delegates in 31 senatorial districts. There’s a formula for determining how those delegates are appropriated that gives equal weight to the district’s performance in the last governor’s race and presidential election:

Let P equal a given district’s percentage of the statewide Democratic vote in the last gubernatorial election, and let V equal that district’s percentage of the total statewide vote for the Democratic nominee in the last presidential election (district vote/state vote). ( P + V) divided by 2 = that district’s percentage of the total number of Delegates to be elected by the senatorial districts, as opposed to the number to be elected at-large..

That makes up 2/3rds of the pledged delegates. The rest are at-large, assigned through a caucus vote with its own set of procedures.
Obviously, Texas Democrats have a particularly complicated procedure for distributing their delegates, which lends itself to intensive organization. That’s always been on Obama strength, and last night, he absolutely dominated caucus elections — winning Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota and North Dakota. His margins overall were better than 2-1.
That sets up an interesting test in TX between Obama’s organizational strength and one of HRC’s most important demographic advantages. That’s yet another thing to watch as this amazingly close competiiton moves on to the next stage.

So the big day has finally come and gone, and the short interpretation of the results is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama remain locked in a tight competition that will continue for at least a month or two, while John McCain’s nomination appears increasingly certain, though accompanied by a notable lack of enthusiasm.
There’s enormous confusion today about the delegate count on the Democratic side, primarily because actual delegate awards in many states await final certified returns. One objective estimate has Obama slightly ahead in terms of pledged delegates won yesterday; another gives Clinton a tentative lead. Overall, her significant lead among superdelegates ensures that she does indeed lead Obama in total delegates to date. RealClearPolitics estimates that Clinton currently has 900 delegates, and Obama 824. That’s without, BTW, any delegates from MI and FL, and with approximately 400 superdelegates remaining undeclared. But want to know how close Super Tuesday really was? A calculation by Tom Schaller (with votes still out, especially in NM) gives Hillary Clinton 50.2% of the total votes cast yesterday, and Barack Obama 49.8%. Now that’s a tie!
On the Republican side, it’s a very interesting situation, that can best be summarized as follows: John McCain looks beatable, but not by either of the actual candidates still in the race. Mitt Romney did well in a handful of western caucuses, but didn’t win a single primary outside MA. And while Mike Huckabee had a very good day, his strength remains isolated in states with large conservative evangelical voting populations. It’s almost impossible to see a “path to the nomination” for anyone other than McCain, though his continuing palpable weakness among self-identified conservatives doesn’t seem to be going away.
I thought it might be useful to look at the results from the point of view of the anticipated story lines I wrote about yesterday:
1) Turnout: Anecdotally, turnout was high yesterday in most of the country, and in both parties, with Democratic turnout once again being far more impressive. It’s difficult, however, to make the sort of comparisons with past turnout levels that were common after IA, NH and SC, for the simple reason that very few Super Tuesday states have had competitive primaries in the recent past. Two that did have significant 2004 Democratic primaries were GA and TN; Democratic turnouout in GA was up by more than 60%, and in TN, by about 50%. BTW, D and R turnout in the Deep South states of GA and AL was roughly even, reversing a recent trend towards much higher GOP turnout.
2) Exit Polls: By the time polls closed in the East, much of the political cognoscenti of the whole wide world had seen early exit polls showing what looked like a very big night for Barack Obama. He appeared to lead in three major states (MA, NJ and AZ) that he ultimately lost, and the margin for HRC in CA grossly undershot the actual vote. Though outside the blogs, political observers were careful not to explicitly report these exit polls, they undoubtedly affected the coverage. Meanwhile, early exit polls for the Republicans appeared to systematically overstate the vote for Mitt Romney, showing him ahead in two states (MO and DE) where he wasn’t ultimately competitive, and suggesting a strong Romney vote in others (e.g., CA, IL and GA) that never actually materialized. This, too, probably influenced coverage as the shank of the evening was dominated by news of one disappointing Romney result after another (indeed, on MSNBC, discussion of whether Romney would withdraw kept getting comically interrupted by “calls” of late caucus states for the Mittster).
3) Expectations: In general, the television networks did a reasonably good job of not letting expectations dominate their interpretation of the results, particularly on the Democratic side. In no small part, that’s because conventional expectations had shifted so rapidly in the runup to Super Tuesday that the media narrative never quite adjusted. Two weeks out, Super Tuesday looked likely to be a Clinton romp, with the big question being whether Obama could win enough delegates to avoid giving HRC a prohibitive lead. But then reports of an Obama Surge in state after state, along with the realization that he would likely win a lot of midwestern and western caucuses, began to shift expectations towards something resembling a draw. A handful of late polls, mostly by Zogby, seemed to suggest the possibility of an Obama “breakthrough,” and that theory was reinforced by the early exit polls. But in the end, a tie was pretty much reported as a tie, with some gabbers viewing this as good news for one candidate or the other. On the Republican side, there was a lot of talk last night about Mike Huckabee’s relatively strong performance, with some suggestions that he had displaced Romney as the main challenger to McCain. But in general, a big step towards the nomination by McCain was the expectation, and nothing happened to unsettle it.
4) Racial/Ethnic/Gender/Partisan Voting Patterns: this was undoubtedly the most complex cluster of story lines for Super Tuesday. The Democratic results, featuring Obama wins in a variety of lily-white caucus states, pretty much reburied the “Obama Can’t Win White Voters” talk that developed just before SC. Obama also appears to have won white voters in CA. There was a burst of early media excitement when the exit polls for GA were released, showing Obama getting over 40% of the white vote there; but right next door, in AL, the vote was more polarized on racial grounds, with Obama’s white vote coming in at 22%. Tons of pre-Super Tuesday buzz suggesed that Obama might be making gains among Latinos, and Clinton’s advantage in that demographic were reduced somewhat in AZ and NM. But in general, she maintained a better than 3-2 margin among Latinos, and attracted a very large Latino turnout in CA, while winning 69% of their votes (an interesting footnote is that a rarely-mentioned racial group, Asian-Americans, went even more heavily for HRC in CA than Latinos, and represented a ;arger percentage of the CA vote than African-Americans). Meawhile, Obama continued to consolidate his hold on African-American voters, scoring in the high 80s among them in GA and AL, and winning more than 60% even in NY, and about 80% in NJ).
Nothing happened on Super Tuesday to disturb the pattern of a sizable gender gap on the Democratic side, with the overall composition of the electorate favoring HRC, or of Obama’s strength among self-identified independents. Obama managed to win the female vote in GA and AL, where he obtained monolithic African-American support, but nowhere else outside of IL in the primary (as opposed to caucus) states. As for the partisan breakdown, Obama comfortably won independents even in states he lost (AZ and CA); in one very tight open primary, MO, Obama won 67% of the indie vote, which made up 22% of the electorate.
Thanks to the closed nature of most of the Republican primaries and caucuses, John McCain continued to overcome the perception that he can’t win without indies. But he also continued to struggle among self-identified conservatives. In IL, which he won with nearly a majority of the vote, he took only 35% of conservatives (Romney won 34% and Huckabee 23%). And in CA, where McCain won 42% overall, he trailed Romney among conservatives by a 39-33 margin.
There are plenty of other dimensions of the Super Tuesday vote I could go into or simply haven’t had time to look at, including age, income, and issue preferences. It’s safe to say, however, that the big story lines: a tie between the Democrats, and slow but steady progress by McCain towards the nomination, are pretty much settled.

As you get ready to follow tonight’s election results (unless you’ve decided to get a good night’s sleep and just read it about it tomorrow), there are some media “story lines” to look for as the evening progresses, which may have as much impact on the nomination races as the actual results. I’ve compiled a handful of these after spending far too much time watching and reading the pre-Super Tuesday analysis on the networks and in the papers and blogs.
1) Turnout: early network coverage of Super Tuesday usually features some characterization of turnout, particularly on the Democratic side, where past 2008 primaries and caucuses have shown record turnouts in every state. Keep in mind, however, that (1) a lot of today’s primary states have heavy early/absentee voting (viz. California, where half the total vote may be cast that way), which means that official turnout estimates will be more reliable than anecdotal evidence of long lines or high percentages of voters showing up at a given precinct; and (2) the states holding caucuses obviously won’t know anything about turnout til the events themselves.
2) Exit Polls Show This or That: Given the confusion we’ve seen earlier this year over leaked exit polls, “early” exit polls, “adjusted” exit polls, and so forth, it’s a good time to read Mark Blumenthal’s timely primer on exit polls, posted today. Mark is mainly talking about the “horse-race” aspect of exit polls, which badly burned news networks have gotten more cautious about. But you can still expect promiscuous use of exit poll data to analyze voter demographics, which will affect several of the story lines discussed below.
3) Expectations: As I said yesterday, political media types love expectations games like a wino loves zinfadel-in-a-box. At present, the prevailing expecations line on the Democratic side is a close outcome in terms of delegates and state “wins,” though there’s a bit of a trend towards an expectation that Obama will win at least one or two of the big states where polls have been tightening (e.g., CT, MA, NJ, AZ or CA). If HRC wins the close states, she may be adjudged the “winner” despite a lot of talk that a “tie” benefits Obama in the long run. On the Republican side, the prevailing expectation is that John McCain will all but wrap up the nomination tonight. Anything Mitt Romney can do to place that conclusion in doubt will be considered a “win,” even if it’s a stay of execution. BTW, one of the guaranteed cliches you’ll hear if McCain does well is: “It’s Mardi Gras for John McCain, and tomorrow, Mitt Romney will face an Ash Wednesday.” Count on it.
4) Racial/Ethnic/Gender/Partisan Voting Patterns: Two big continuing story lines in the Democratic contest have been the “racialization” of voters (e.g., Obama’s getting increasingly large percentages of the African-American vote, but a declining percentage of the white vote), and HRC’s advantage among Latino and female voters. At present, the fact that Obama is likely to win several primaries and caucuses (e.g., KS, AK, MN, and WA) in heavily white states may get attention, or the talking heads may instead focus on relatively low Obama tallies among white voters in the South (AL, AR, and GA). The struggle for Latinos will dominate coverage of NM, AZ and most of all CA. And as always, evidence in any one state that HRC has won because of very strong showing among women will get significant attention. In both parties, expect some analysis of how candidates are doing with independents and partisans; there’s a lot of media interest in the idea that Obama and McCain have special appeal to indies, and//or are weak with partisans. Keep in mind, BTW, that although you’ll be hearing about “open” and “closed” primaries that invite or reject independents from participation, some states have EZ re-registration rules that make participation by indies in “closed” primaries possible.
5) “Tune In Tomorrow”: Though political media truly hate irresolute results, and demand thumbsucking total analysis before signing off at night, there are some things we are just unlikely to know tonight. I did an extended discussion yesterday of the situation in CA, where a slow count and a vast number of absentee ballots may make choosing a winner impossible tonight, unless the exit polls show a big winner. A buch of too-close-to-call races could lead the punditry to either call it a night, or impose a meanng on what they know. That would certainly play into the Obama-wins-ties story line on the Democratic side, or the Romney Death Watch story line on the GOP side.
There are other story lines that may develop, some of them subsidiary, such as the impact of various Kennedy endorsements on the Democrats or the crisis of anti-McCain talk-radio conservatives among Republicans. And as always, there could be an event that surprises everyone.

As Ed noted yesterday, there’s a whole lot of voting left in the Democratic presidential nomination contest after today’s Super Tuesday extravaganza. At present, there are 1366 pledged delegates who will be chosen in 15 primaries and 6 caucuses stretching from February 9 to June 3 (exact delegate counts may change due to “bonus delegates” awarded by the DNC for gender and racial balance purposes).
February 9: Louisiana Primary — 56 pledged delegates; Nebraska Caucus — 24 pledged delegates; Washington Caucus– 78 pledged delegates
February 10: Maine Caucus — 24 pledged delegates
February 12: Virginia Primary — 83 pledged delegates; District of Columbia Caucus — 15 pledged delegates; Maryland Primary — 70 pledged delegates
February 19: Hawaii Caucus — 20 pledged delegates; Wisconsin Primary — 74 pledged delegates
March 4: Ohio Primary — 141 pledged delegates; Texas Primary — 193 pledged delegates; Rhode Island Primary — 21 pledged delegates; Vermont Primary — 15 pledged delegates
March 8: Wyoming Caucus — 12 pledged delegates
March 11: Mississippi Primary — 33 pledged delegates
April 22: Pennsylvania Primary — 158 pledged delegates
May 6: North Carolina Primary — 115 pledged delegates; Indiana — 72 pledged delegates
May 13: West Virginia Primary — 28 pledged delegates
May 20: Kentucky Primary — 51 pledged delegates; Oregon Primary — 52 pledged delegates
June 3: South Dakota Primary — 15 pledged delegates; Montana Primary — 16 pledged delegates
Some of the delgate counts you see differ from this one because they include unpledged delegates–i.e., superdelegates, who aren’t and cannot be bound by any state’s primary or caucus results. Presently, about 400 of them are undeclared, and you could see some shifting in allegiances based on voting in the various states.
While a “brokered convention”–i.e., a convention where no candidate has a majority of delegates going in–remains unlikely in what has pretty quickly become a two-candidate race, the sheer number of superdelegates (totalling 796) could keep things mathematically in play even if one candidate has a solid lead among pledged delegates. So don’t get too tired of the nominating process tonight. There’s a long road ahead.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

As Democrats prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, there’s a new public opinion survey for NPR conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner in conjunction with Public Opinon Strategies that shows (1) the landscape still favors Democrats in the general election; and (2) that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bring different strengths to the table in running against probable Republican nominee John McCain. Put simply, HRC currently does better among Democrats, while Obama does better among independents and Republicans.
Here’s the GQR summary of the research:

The race between John McCain and either Democratic candidate produces a very close national race for president — although voters want to be voting Democratic and want the Democrats’ direction on issues and leadership qualities.
Democrats can win with either candidate for president, though the races look totally different. Hillary Clinton has already consolidated Democrats who came away from the primaries even more positive about her. That energy can put her in the race, though gains with independents are key. Barack Obama too gained popularity in the primary among Democrats but also with independents — allowing him to split independents evenly with McCain. But with Obama, a fair number of Democrats support McCain, almost balanced by the proportion of Republicans who split off to support the Democrat. Both races are close but they produce totally different politics and strategies for the general election.
Voters want the Democrats to lead the country, however.
49 percent support a generic Democrat for president, 5 points ahead of the Republican candidate. The support for the Democrat has not changed a point in many months. As the actual Republican nominee has emerged, many dislodged Republicans have moved back to their candidate.
Voters have watched the primaries closely and say they much prefer the Democrats’ issue priorities and their qualities of leadership. The post-primary environment is very favorable for Democrats.
When one takes McCain’s position on Iraq and the economy and contrasts that with the Democrats, voters show a strong aversion to McCain’s direction. Voters want to begin troop withdrawals, not create a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. Voters favor a stimulus with investments, unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts, not simply making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.

For those Super Tuesday voters who value electability, this survey shows either Democrat should be able to win, but may follow two distinct tracks to a majority.

One of the more interesting variables going into tomorrow’s Super Tuesday events on the Democratic side is how the chattering classes choose to measure victory, and of equal importance, how they contextualize the results in terms of the nomination contest.
On the first issue, “victory” could be measured by total delegates won, by the percentage of state contests won, or by performance against expectations. The sheer number and highly variable size of the states and territories participating in Super Tuesday probably makes the second measurement unlikely. The first measurement makes the most sense, but as we learned in Nevada, it isn’t that easy to assess delegate totals in time to come spilling out of the mouths of television talking heads or the keyboards of print reporters trying to meet an evening deadline.
As for expectations measurements, which political observers love like a wino loves zinfadel-in-a-box, it’s all gotten a bit complicated in the last few days. A week ago, HRC looked likely to win a large majority of the contests, especially in the big states not named Illiinois, and many of them by double-digit margins; this expectation nicely set up Obama to “win” on Super Tuesday by picking off an unexpectated state or two, or coming close enough to win nearly half the delegates in mega-states like CA. Now that Obama’s had a well-publicized surge in the national and state polls, along with a bunch of newspaper and celebrity endorsements, he runs some risk of failing to meet expectations if he loses the big contests by any margin.
Complicating the Super Tuesday Election Night picture immeasurably is the time factor. Polls won’t close in CA until 11:00 p.m. EST. And just as importantly, CA officials are expecting a very slow count. A 2007 ruling by the Secretary of State required the replacement of most touch-screen voting machines by paper ballots, which are obviously harder to count. Moreover, many absentee ballots will be dropped off at polling places, and won’t be counted until after the on-site ballots are completely compiled and reported. One estimate is that 13% of the vote won’t be counted at all on Election Night.
What all that means is that unless exit polls show a decisive winner in CA, the big national election night story will be about other places, such as MA and CT, where Obama appears to have all but eliminated big early HRC leads in the polls, or NJ, which has tightened up. Again, the results could cut either way according to the “expectations” yardstick.
But that leaves the other issue I posed initially: how will Super Tuesday be reported in terms of the overall nominating contest? Barring a big win by either candidate tomorrow night, that question is actually easier to answer. It’s finally beginning to sink in that Super Tuesday won’t be the decisive event that nearly everyone (myself included) thought it would be a couple of months ago. Yes, 1681 delegates will be apportioned based on Super Tuesday results. But another 1300-plus delegates will be determined by later contests (the exact count is almost impossible to determine based on such imponderables as last-minute affirmative action delegate allocations), and at present, 400 superdelegates remain undeclared. Even after that, there’s the prospect of a fight over the current rule barring the seating of delegates from MI and FL.
It’s possible, of course, that a monomaniacal determination to pick a clear winner and loser tomorrow night will lead the commentariat to decide that Obama’s got irresistable momentum, or that HRC’s turned back his challenge and is again “inevitable.” But we’re probably at that point where the hard numbers of delegates won should begin to displace all the psychobabble in nomination contest discussion.

With Clinton and Obama together budgeting $19 million for Tsunami Tuesday-focused spots, American politics hits a new milestone — “the most ambitious and geographically expansive television effort in a presidential primary,” according to New York Times political reporter Adam Nagourney.
As Nagourney notes, the ads are mostly positive, avoiding attacks on the opponent. He cites the example of Obama’s ads in Minneapolis and Albuquerque, where anti-war sentiment runs high, emphasizing his early opposition to the Iraq War. In Hartford and Fargo his ads focus on economic fears. Senator Clinton’s California ads address environmental concerns, energy and foreign oil dependence and she is running ads stressing “economic anxiety” across the nation.
Chris Bowers has an Obama-Clinton poll averaging chart that ad-buyers will find of interest. Clinton supporters will be encouraged by Bowers’ chart, which shows Obama leading in 3 of 22 states. But the chart averages snapshot polls, and some recent polls show Obama gaining rapidly. In another recent Open Left post, “Super Tuesday Ad Buys,” Bowers riffs on Nagourney’s article and notes that Clinton has apparently decided not to advertise in three states, Illinois, Kansas and Georgia.
The larger ad agencies are reaping most of the benefit of the Obama-Clinton ad blitz. But one of the most powerful ads being deployed — via internet — the pro-Obama “Yes We Can” spot, was produced by Will.I.Am, a member of the uber-hip “Black Eyed Peas” and directed by Bob Dylan’s oldest son, Jesse Dylan. The ad is a dazzler, featuring inter-cut shots of an attractive cast of young celebrities singing the words of Obama’s inspiring “Yes We Can” speech. No doubt it will be emulated in many future political ads. Both opponents and supporters of Obama will find it instructive regarding the art of political ad-making on the internet. The Clinton campaign has a bank of three dozen ads, including endorsements from RFK, Jr. and the grandson of Cesar Chavez, at this gateway link.

As Charles Mahtesian reports from Politico, one of the many small issues that have added up to Mitt Romney’s probable failure to win the Republican presidential nomination is the cold shoulder he’s gotten from GOP governors, among whose ranks he recently served.
It’s actually a factor that might have been a pretty big deal. In 2000, George W. Bush benefitted from being the consensus choice of the conservative movement and the K Street crowd. But in terms of his credibility as a “reformer with results,” and his electoral heft in primary states, it certainly mattered that 24 fellow Republican governors endorsed him.
Mitt has a total of three governors on his endorsement list, none of them exactly household names: Heineman of NE, Carcieri of RI, and Blunt of MO (who’s retiring this year). McCain has six, including such biggies as Ah-nold of CA, Crist of FL, and Perry of TX. True, the other former governor in the race, Mike Huckabee, has just one: Rounds of SD. But given Mitt’s money, organization, and recently acquired conservative-movement street cred, his poor standing among governors is surprising. Hell, he hasn’t even been the beneficiary of the obligatory David Broder column about the superior qualifications of governors for the White House.
What makes this phenomenon even more remarkable is that Romney chaired the Republican Governors’ Association during the 2006 election cycle, which put him in the position of raising and spending a record $20 million to support the campaigns of many of the chief executives who now spurn his own candidacy. But in fact, says Mahtesian, Romney may have turned this political asset into a liability, by tilting RGA expenditures and publicity towards his own agenda for 2008:

“Right or wrong, the general impression was that he spent way too much time on himself and building his presidential organization,” said a top Republican strategist who has worked closely with the RGA in recent years. “I don’t think anyone ever questioned Romney’s commitment to the organization or the work he put in. They questioned his goals or his motives. Was it to elect Republican governors, or to tee up his presidential campaign?”

Any way you slice it, the Mittster really screwed up on this front. It’s enough to note that if Charlie Crist had possessed enough regard for Romney to stay neutral instead of endorsing John McCain–or for that matter, if Jeb Bush had liked him enough to endorse the candidate of most of his closest associates–the former governor would have won Florida, and the dynamics going into Super Tuesday might be very different.
As Barack Obama so aptly said of Romney during last week’s Democratic presidential debate, for a guy with such a rep as an entrepreneurial whiz, Mitt’s had an exceptionally lousy return-on-investment rate for the money and preparation he’s devoted to this campaign (though not as lousy as Rudy Giuliani, who spent $50 million to win exactly one delegate). His proselytizing work, financial and otherwise, among Republican govenors is another case in point.

Amidst the blizzard of endorsements rolling out in the Democratic presidential contest right now, it’s unfortunate for Hillary Clinton that this unwelcome one will get a lot of attention for its sheer absurdity.
Yes, the loathsome (not a word I use lightly, or would apply to much of anyone else in politics) right-wing “pundit” Ann Coulter says she’ll “campaign for Hillary” if John McCain is the Republican nominee. On Hannity and Colmes, no less.
It says a lot about the condition of the Republican commentariat that some conservatives are taking Coulter’s ravings seriously enough to try to logically rebut them. Indeed, RealClearPolitics just put up a link to a blog post by Captain’s Quarters’ Edward Morrissey entitled: “Has Ann Coulter Finally Jumped the Shark?” Which leads to the question: Can a shark jump the shark?
Maybe conservatives will finally get fed up with her tiresome act and stop buying her books and otherwise giving her publicity, consigning her forever to the footnotes of future dissertations on the debasement of American politics in the Bush era.