Polls opened at 6 am eastern time in Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, etc., and will be opening across the country in coming hours. It's primary day, and not to be too dramatic about it, but arguably the fate of the nation is at stake. So, what's on your mind?
P.S. "The end of the beginning" is from the famous Winston Churchill quote: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
UPDATE: Tuesday morning Zogby polls, it's Clinton ahead 46%-41% in NJ, Obama ahead 49%-36% in California, Obama ahead 45%-42% in Missouri, Obama ahead 49%%-29% in Georgia. On the Republican side, Romney leads McCain 40%-33% in California, but trails everywhere else.
UPDATE 8:36 am: I'm seeing predictions of heavy or "record" turnout just about everywhere. We'll see how that pans out as the day unfolds.
UPDATE 12:20 pm by Rob: SurveyUSA's latest polling has Obama 42%, Clinton 52% in California, with similar big leads in other key states. Either Zogby or SUSA or both will look like fools after tonight!
UPDATE 2:00 pm by Lowell: Chuck Todd has an excellent rundown of poll closing times and what to expect this evening. The first results should be from Georgia, where polls close at 7 pm. Then, a whole bunch of states -- Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee -- close at 8 pm. California's polls close at 11 pm eastern time.
UPDATE 5:45 pm by Lowell: The Romney capmaign is accusing John McCain of cutting a "back-room deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney's campaign of conservative change." That would be Mike Huckabee, of course, who won the West Virginia caucuses today after McCain delegates threw their support to Huckabee in order to keep Romney from winning the election. Fun times in the GOP! :)
John
Hillary has been running ahead of Obama by 20 points for a dozen months, and as of today, her lead is gone.
If she doesn't stop Obama today, she will not stop him ever.
Another prediction: Limited to narrow wins in NY/NJ/CT, Arkansas, and maybe a couple other states, HRC looks more and more like an also-ran.
Obama-Webb '08
For example, California, which Clinton led by 25 points in October and 12 points two weeks ago, was once seen as the Clinton campaign's firewall and where they planned to run up an insurmountable lead in delegates. Former Governor Gray Davis, a Clinton supporter, said on MSNBC last week, "I am pleased to be for Hillary Clinton and I expect her to do very well in Super Tuesday. I expect her to win California by a sizable amount, at least double digits, do well in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut."
Based on her huge head start, Hillary Clinton should still win California, but is unlikely to achieve her goal of getting a sizeable share of the delegates.
Our path to the nomination never factored in a big day for us on February 5. Rather, we always planned to stay close enough in the delegate count so that we could proceed to individually focus on the states in the next set of contests.
We fully expect Senator Clinton to earn more delegates on February 5th and also to win more states. If we were to be within 100 delegates on that day and win a number of states, we will have met our threshold for success and will be best positioned to win the nomination in the coming months.
A performance that exceeds those benchmarks, while unlikely, would put is in a surprisingly strong position heading into the rest of the February contests.
While the Clinton campaign is furiously trying to spin the expectations game, it is important to look at where they were in some of the key states just a few weeks ago."
I suppose you could say that this benefits Obama as long as his momentum continues.
Virginia Mayors to Announce Today Their Endorsement of ObamaRICHMOND, VA - Some of Virginia's top mayors will announce their endorsement of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy on a conference call this morning.
Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille, Roanoke Mayor Nelson Harris and Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris will join the call.
Richmond Mayor and former Gov. Douglas Wilder previously announced his endorsement of Obama.
Of the 1,688 pledged -- not super -- Democratic delegates at stake today, 1,078 -- 64 percent -- will be allocated proportionally within state subdivisions. In all but two states, these subdivisions are congressional districts; in New Jersey, delegates are apportioned within legislative districts. In Delaware, delegates are allotted within four local jurisdictions.The vagaries of delegate allocation are such that the difference between 58-percent and 59-percent support in a six-delegate district would mean the difference between a three-to-three stalemate and a four-to-two win.
In other words, those junkies wishing to make remotely meaningful homemade calculations today would need to be armed with district maps, precinct-by-precinct election returns and a good calculator.
A district-by-district analysis prepared by the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman suggests that, based on demographic and socioeconomic performance in early states, an optimal Clinton outcome would be a 604 to 474 majority of district-level delegates in her favor, while an optimal Obama outcome would be a 586 to 492 lead in his favor.
If Clinton wishes to build a 50-delegate lead in this category, she would need her favorable scenarios to play out in 64 percent of districts.
On the other hand, if Obama wishes to build a 50-delegate lead, he would need his favorable scenarios to play out in 80 percent of districts.
Anthony Corrado and Tad Devine, two of the leading experts on the Democratic delegate selection process and veterans of past party delegate hunts, offered in a recent analysis that "these rules make it very difficult for a candidate, even a frontrunner, to build large delegate margins, especially in a race featuring two strong challengers."
They go on to predict a close delegate contest and raise the possibility that "super delegates" -- elected and party officials whose positions give them automatic seats at the convention -- could ultimately make the difference in the outcome.
Democrats are likely in for a wild ride.
http://rasmussenreports.com/pu...
Wild speculation:
1. Statistical noise within the MOE.
2. Movement dispersed nationally (so bump Clinton's numbers up 1% in all of the polls in states across the country).
3. Late deciders movement in Super Tuesday states (e.g. count 2 to 3% extra in Clinton's Super Tuesday state numbers).
4. Just as likely it could be due to more substantial movement in one region e.g. New Jersey/New York/Connecticut/Massachusetts -- representing 4%-7% in these states primarily with other states remaining roughly the same.
I don't have any hard data on this one, but I'd guess #4 just because.
In Los Angeles County, voters requested 742,000 absentee ballots, a record for a primary and second only to the number requested in the general election 2004.
It appears some early bird voters are now upset that they cast their ballot so early.
Could early bird voters who cast ballots in CA for Edwards actually end up helping Obama by keeping Hillary's margin lower over Obama among early voters? I think that is a good possibility.
http://www.google.com/trends?q...
The trends data can be looked at based on which regions and cities the searches are located in. For past primaries there have been big spikes in Iowa, South Carolina (interestingly New Hampshire never showed up in the comparison).
Earlier this past week right after the Kennedy endorsement Massachusetts was #4 on the list -- since then it's dropped a few slots to #8.
I don't have a copy of the list from Monday, but it looks like Alabama has moved up the list several spots this week -- not as big as South Carolina, but I think this one could be significant for Obama (the link also provides a comparison of searches for Obama relative to Clinton -- it looks like twice as many people are searching for Obama's name as Clinton -- other states like Massachusetts, Nevada, and DC -- not a state granted -- are much closer).
Nevada is an interesting one -- I seem to recall that it was in the top 10 list earlier this week, but it looks like it's moved up today (my guess is that a lot of the people doing searches are gamblers looking for information for wagers -- plus the numbers are based on the past 30 days and include the days when the Nevada caucus took place).
In recent days Missouri and Georgia have also moved up the list.
1. South Carolina, United States
2. Alabama, United States
3. Nevada, United States
4. Missouri, United States
5. Georgia, United States
6. District of Columbia, United States
7. Tennessee, United States
8. Massachusetts, United States
9. Illinois, United States
10. Connecticut, United States
Cities listed are:
1. St Louis, MO, USA
2. Chicago, IL, USA
3. Minneapolis, MN, USA
4. Denver, CO, USA
5. Washington, DC, USA
6. Atlanta, GA, USA
7. Boston, MA, USA
8. Reston, VA, USA
9. New York, NY, USA
10. Phoenix, AZ, USA
Reston, VA is kind of a mystery -- although it may be that DC traffic is being routed through Reston, which accounts for its placement on the "cities" list.
And what effect, if any, will the Superbowl have on the primary in NY and NJ? Before you laugh, remember that NYC is holding its celebration for the Giants today which is sure to bring lots of folks in from NJ and upstate NY, people who might not make it home in time to vote. Is it possible that Hillary's support of the Giants might cost her votes in Jersey?
Survey USA 2/3-4 has it at Clinton 52% Obama 42%.
ARG 2/3-4: Clinton 49% Obama 45%
Suffolk 2/1-3: Obama 40% Clinton 39%
Rasmussen 2/2: Obama 45% Clinton 44%
Zogby has been polling daily with a consistent upward trend line for Obama. Its last figure for Clinton appears anomalous -- unless its most recent poll accurately captured a significant last minute shift.
Reuters/C-Span/Zogby 2/3-4 has it as Obama 49% Clinton 36%.
Reuters/C-Span/Zogby 2/1-3: Obama 46% Clinton 40%
Reuters/C-Span/Zogby 1/31-2/2: Obama 45% Clinton 41%
Clinton - 46
Obama - 47
Would democrats be satisfied with if the nominee is:
Clinton - 72
Obama - 71
Just caught part of the report, so I'm not sure where the sample was drawn from.
Maybe I give them too much credit.
OK, here's a more important poll. My son just informed me that Mr. Moore's 8th grade civics classes at Buford Middle School, 90 students, held a straw poll today. Preliminary results were 70 for Obama, while Hillary and Republican candidates split the rest.
My kid voted for Obama.