Scout Finch reports at Daily Kos that Clinton raised an impressive $5 million in 48 hours, Obama raised $7.2 million in the same period, a little more than McCain raised — during all of January.
The title of Monica Davey’s New York Times article on the Great Bellweather State’s phat Tuesday vote,”Razor-Thin Margins in Missouri Reflect Nationwide Split,” somewhat contradicts it’s most interesting statistic: Dems 823,754; Reps 589,173.
Also at The Grey Lady, David Brook’s op-ed has some interesting stats amid the faux interview snarkage: “The next states on the primary calendar have tons of college-educated Obamaphile voters. Maryland is 5th among the 50 states, Virginia is 6th. But later on, we get the Hillary-friendly states. Ohio is 40th in college education. Pennsylvania is 32nd.”
Chris Kromm notes a disturbing pair of Tsunami Tuesday exit poll figures in his Facing South post, that 9.5 percent of Democratic voters admit that race was a factor in voting against Obama, while 8 percent of Dem voters said gender was a factor in voting against Clinton. Imagine what the numbers would be on the GOP side.
Elections bird-dog Steven Rosenfeld reports at Alternet.org that 13 percent of New Mexico voters found they were not on precinct voter rolls when they showed up at the polls on 2/5. Some 17 thousand provisional ballots may determine the ultimate outcome.
In his “Digesting the Numbers” post at NDNblog, Andres Ramirez has a statistic that should get Democratic strategists thinking: The number of Latino primary voters increased by nearly a million from ’04 to ’08 in four states alone: NY; CA; AZ; and FL.
In CA also, the Latino turnout exceeded expectations, according to Josh Patashnik’s post at TNR’s The Plank — 29 percent of the CA vote, in stark contrast to the Field Poll’s prediction of 20 percent. Patashnick reports that Field also predicted an Obama win and a 12 percent (of the total vote) Af-Am turnout, compared to the 6 percent who actually voted.

With all the obsessive attention being given to the extraordinarily intense presidential contest, we can all be forgiven if we sometimes forget there’s a congressional campaign underway as well. But Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research have been regularly polling competitive House districts, and their latest analysis suggests that 2008 could be as big a Democratic “wave” election as 2006.
The DCorps analysis is based on a survey that focused strictly on 40 Republican-controlled House districts. In half of them, Democrats have a distinct advantage, as measured by generic ballot support, attitudes towards the parties, favoribility ratings for the incumbent, and all sorts of issue and message testing. And in the other half, Republican incumbents are holding on by their fingernails. In general:

Republican incumbents in this battleground are remarkably weak. They hold a 41 percent approval rating and a net favorability significantly below the national average (just +4 compared to +15). Republican incumbents are even vulnerable in exurban and rural-small town districts, where their approval rating stands below the 40 percent mark and the change and anti-Washington climate is very strong.

As DCorps has argued for many months, Democrats can consolidate their congressional election advantage if and only if they represent a credible agenda for change:

The electorate in this Republican battleground is thirsty for change and their frustrations are driven largely by rising gas prices and global warming, a sense of a lack of accountability in government and an endless war that is costing us billions. Democrats are well positioned to represent the change that voters want in each of these areas.

Since Democrats are already poised to pick up a signficant number of seats in the U.S. Senate, the DCorps analysis indicates that if our candidate can win the White House, she or he (or if this somehow suggests a candidate bias, “he or she”) will have a fighting chance to break the current gridlock and get some serious things done.

In my last post, I talked about Mitt Romney having a tough decision between going medieval on John McCain at today’s CPAC conference, or slowly beginning to fold his tent. Little did I know that the Mittster would use the speech to fold right now.
This should eliminate any lingering doubt about McCain’s nomination. Presumably Mike Huckabee will hang around the campaign trail for a while to see what he can do in a one-on-one with McCain; it’s not like he’s ever counted on fundraising or poll numbers to sustain his candidacy. But it really does mean that many of the conservative disparagers of McCain are going to have to make up their minds pretty fast about where they stand; most of them (particularly in the Grover Norquist/K Street wing of the party) dislike Huckabee as much as or more than McCain.
Nobody’s going to pay much attention to anything else Romney says at CPAC, but you should give his text a gander; whatever his actual views, Romney certainly has internalized the conservative world-view at its most lurid. Did you know that we’ll all soon be broke if the godless baby-killing, gay-loving, porn-watching liberals win this election? That’s the thrust of Mitt’s remarks, centering on the clear example of Europe, where it appears mass starvation is just around the corner:

Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America’s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength.

So, ironically, Mitt Romney has become adept at the rhetoric of squaring God with Mammon just as his odd presidential bid comes to a close. At least he has made one genuine nod towards “strong families” by saving some of his children’s inheritance–assuming us godless liberals don’t tax it away.

It should be an interesting day in Washington at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee, that hardy redoubt of the Hard Right. The big event is at 3:00 p.m., EST, when John McCain addresses the group. At last year’s CPAC gathering, McCain was the one GOP presidential candidate who didn’t bother to show up (even Rudy Giuliani appeared in order to bend the knee); every reference to him from the podium drew lusty boos.
Now he’s closing in on the Republican presidential nomination amidst the dashed dreams of many conservative activists, and he has to decide whether he wants to assuage the crowd with some tasty panders, or accept their wrath and cash it in for some general election credibility. Actually, he may do neither, and instead take the advice of Kate O’Beirne and Ramesh Ponnuru, who suggest that he spend his time at CPAC lashing the Democratic foe, in hopes that most conservatives won’t follow Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and James Dobson in threatening to take a dive in November.
McCain’s trial is complicated somewhat by the fact that Mitt Romney will speak at CPAC several hours earlier. And the Mittster, of course, has his own tough decisions to make. Does he challenge McCain with a fiery speech demanding that conservatives stick to their prejudices and reject the Arizonan? Or does he start making those conciliatory noises necessary to slowly fold his tent, save some money, and keep his options open for a future presidential run? After his CPAC address, Romney has the unpleasant task of trudging up Capitol Hill to meet with the hordes of GOP members of Congress who endorsed his candidacy. He’ll have to come up with something better to say than: “Stick with me til the accountants say it’s time to quit.”

(Note: this is crossed-posted from TPMCafe.com).
Now that an extended Democratic nomination contest appears almost certain, there’s been an explosion of renewed interest in the “brokered convention” scenario, which really just means a nomination that’s in doubt after the primaries and caucuses are over. The big topics (explored especially well at OpenLeft.com) have been the battle over the 796 superdelegates, who are not bound by election results, and the possibility of a pre-convention or convention credentials fight over the Michigan and Florida delegations, who currently have no seats (or even hotel rooms) in Denver.
There’s a more mundane but still significant problem with the situation: who will plan and execute the convention itself in the absence of a putative nominee?
National political conventions, despite the increasingly meagre live network television exposure they secure, are large, complex operations. Much of the initial preparation–fundraising, logistics, and site development–are done many months in advance, by local committees working with national party committees. But when it comes to the really crucial functions of a convention, such as who will speak when, what they will say, and how the whole show is presented to television viewers and to a massive international news media presence: every decision, major or minor, has in recent years been made with totalitarian authority by the putative nominee’s staff.
As it happens, I’ve been a small cog in the machine during the last five Democratic Conventions, working in the script and speechwriting shops. To a large extent, convention operations are run by a floating circus of people, most of whom have been doing this as long as or longer than I have, who have regular day jobs and report for convention duty every four years. While the nominee’s staff don’t necessarily involve themselves in every minute detail, they have total veto power over everything that happens at a convention, and usually do micromanage the schedule, the speakers’ list, and most of all the message. In 2004, for example, the Kerry-Edwards campaign set up a two-tiered vetting system for every speech (the second tier, where I worked, controlled what went on the teleprompter), and imposed strict message discipline on even the least important afternoon two-minute address (Al Sharpton was the one speaker who defied both the schedule and the message rules, with electrifying effect). All media communications were coordinated by the nominee’s staff as well. And while much of this “controlling” activity happened at the convention itself, or in the week before it, the systems obviously had to be set up much earlier.
So: who’s going to make all these decisions, and set up these systems, if the nominee isn’t known until right before the convention, or until the convention itself? In theory, the DNC would step in, but keep in mind that every single DNC member is also a super-delegate and thus an actual or potential candidate partisan. And it’s not as though there’s any sort of generic schedule or message that can be planned that might not compromise one candidate or another, or the party as a whole
It gets worse: the last really serious platform fight at a Democratic Convention was in 1968. Indeed, the platform committee presentation is typically made to an empty convention hall in the middle of the day, and begins with a motion to dispense reading of the document, perhaps fluffed up by a short thematic speech. If the nomination contest is still in any doubt, platform fights might very well serve as maneuvers by one or both of the candidates to pry lose delegates, none of whom, BTW, will be bound by convention rules to stay with their pledged candidate (most of the non-superdelegates will have been chosen carefully by campaigns, and some may be bound by state laws and party rules). Who even remembers how to manage a platform fight? Who will plan the timing and structure? Nobody knows.
Moreover, in an open convention, every single speaker could represent a time bomb. In the recent past, speakers methodically echoed the convention message set by the putative nominee, and concluded every speech with a ritualistic invocation of the names on the ticket. What if many or most of the speeches tout one candidate over another? Will there be fights over the candidate preference of every politician seeking to get on the schedule? Will delegates and guests get into cheering contests after every speech? Nobody knows that, either.
Maybe, perhaps even probably, none of this chaos will ensue; with only two viable candidates for president, the odds of an open or “brokered” convention remain quite low, and really depend on so close a race that superdelegates or disputed delegations hold the balance of power. And perhaps the excitement associated with a truly deliberative convention outweighs all the concerns I’ve mentioned.
But it is time for Democrats to start thinking about these decisions, lest the convention devolve from excitement to a big, confusing, and divisive waste of precious time.

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.