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.

In what will probably be the big Democratic political news of the day, MoveOn.org announced its membership had decided to endorse Barack Obama for president. It appears that Obama narrowly got over the two-thirds-vote hurdle that MoveOn had created for this cycle in terms of an endorsement. In 2000, Howard Dean narrowly missed a lower majority-vote threshold for the endorsement.
What will the impact be? The MoveOn press release linked to above unsubtly notes that 1.7 million members of the organization live in Super Tuesday states. There will also almost certainly be an unsubtle effort in the news media to link Obama to some of MoveOn’s more controversial actions, particularly the famous “General Betrayus” ad last September. But at a time when the Super Tuesday competition was already tightening up, the endorsement will most likely be viewed as another contributor to a late surge by Obama.

Since many members of the chattering classes have already weighed in with general impressions of last night’s excellent Clinton-Obama debate from Los Angeles (Noam Scheiber’s take was reasonably close to my own), I thought I’d mention just one factor that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention: the impact on the Democratic debate of John McCain’s emergence as the likely Republican nominee.
It was most noticeable on the immigration issue, where the cramped defensiveness of past exchanges gave way to a wonkathon that mostly centered on the question of the extent to which illegal immigrants are depressing low-end wages (though Wolf Blitzer made every effort to drag the candidates back to the tedious and highly misleading question of drivers’ licences). The simple reality is that John McCain’s history on immigration reform largely takes the issue off the table in a general election contest. It could still play hell in down-ballot races, but unless McCain does a full-scale massive flip-flop, immigrant-bashing won’t be a major feature of the presidential discussion.
Just as importantly, McCain’s extremist position on Iraq is setting up a contrast that should benefit the Democratic nominee. It’s no wonder that his “100 years” remark on the duration of the U.S. combat deployment in Iraq came up a couple of times in last night’s debate. And McCain’s championship of the Iraq “surge,” which he’s now mentioning in every other breath, is another large target. Obama’s litany on post-surge conditions in Iraq (“we’re now back to merely intolerable levels of violence with a dysfunctional government”) last night was a good preview of what we’re likely to hear from either Democrat in response to McCain’s “victory” talk.
Given the widespread concern of a lot of Democrats about McCain’s viability in a general-election contest, it’s important to keep in mind that he brings some specific weaknesses to the table as well, even if his age and temperament don’t wind up becoming problems for him.
Speaking of partisan contrast: Anyone who watched the two California debates over the last two nights had to come away deeply impressed by the superior level of discourse in the Democratic event, and its general spirit of party unity. It ended, after all, with the audience practically coming unglued with joy at the suggestion of a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket. Had anyone suggested a McCain-Romney or Romney-McCain ticket at the end of the remarkably shallow Republican grudge match in Simi Valley, it would have been considered a very bad joke.
Just yesterday, Karl Rove penned an article for The Wall Street Journal that concluded:

Both Democrats and Republicans are in spirited and, at times, heated contests. The difference is Democrats are running a nasty race that has as its subtext race and gender. The Republican race, on the other hand, is a serious debate about serious ideas.

I suspect the Boy Genius would like to take those words back today.

Coming soon to a Republican Talking Point near you:
National Journal has published its 2007 ratings of U.S. Senators, and lo and behold, Barack Obama is dubbed the “Most Liberal Senator.”
This brought back some memories for me, because four years ago I got involved in a complex and heated argument with the NatJo folks (largely offline) about the same designation awarded to Sen. John Kerry, who by a strange coincidence, was also running for president that year.
I discovered that the methodology for these ratings involved some very questionable rules. One involved ignoring missed votes (extremely common among presidential candidates), with the even more questionable exception of eliminating whole categories of votes if the Senator missed an arbitrary percentage of them, making the rating then depending on whatever was left. Another problem was the exceptionally subjective definition of “liberal” and “conservative.” Party-line votes, whatever their substance, were defined as ideological, and in some cases (e.g., votes to resist GOP tax cuts for violating budget rules) votes that united “liberals” with some conservatives were labeled “liberal” entirely.
I haven’t had a chance to look at NatJo’s current methodology–beyond noting they’ve now decided against rating Senators with a large number of total absences, a practice that exempts John McCain (but not Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) from any rating or label, and which, if it had been employed in 2004, would have made John Kerry “Unrated” instead of “the Most Liberal Senator.”
But fortunately, Steve Benen at Political Animal has leapt onto these ratings like a panther, and made a lot of the points I’ve just made above, with updated examples. Meanwhile, Brian Beutler has the best general description of the NatJo system: “This is philistinism masquerading as social science–it’s the U.S. News College Guide of Washington politics.”
Much of this controversy, of course, could be avoided if National Journal and others who do these ratings would simply use the term that the senators they are describing actually apply to themselves: “progressive.” “Liberal” has of course been contaminated by many years and many billions of dollars of stereotyping abuse by the Right. Moreover, it’s confusing because it means something entirely different in the international context: more like “conservative,” in fact. “Conservatives” would undoubtedly howl if the National Journal decided to provide them with a label they rejected, such as “Reactionary” or “Authoritarian” or “Bushian.” Why the double standard?
Let’s hope these ratings receive the cold shoulder they deserve.