As of mid-day Wednesday, the delegate totals vary widely:
RCP has Clinton ahead, 900 to 824;
Politico gives Obama an 847 to 834 edge;
CNN’s analysis gives it to Hillary 845 to 765.
The truth is out there — somewhere. Meanwhile, check out this map of the California results, as compiled by the LA Times. It shows clearly Obama’s problems yesterday in the Hispanic areas of California.
CNN has just called Missouri for Obama — a very close vote, but a victory nonetheless. Will he take momentum from Missouri into the next phase of the campaign? Even with the loss of the California popular vote, the answer is yes. When the numbers are crunched, and the delegates tallied, Obama will be close to Hillary’s totals, minus the so-called Super Delegates. He will have won more states than Clinton in the last 24 hours, and will have more money. Not bad for an underdog’s campaign.
But the loss of California still points to a fundamental weakness of Obama with Latino voters, as I’ve noted before. I’m guessing that the final tally in California will show that Hillary won more Hispanic Southern California decisively, while Obama captured San Francisco and nearby communities. Ironically, the African-American candidate is finding other minorities less accepting of his candidacy than the white majority. And this is a problem that Obama — big Mo’ or not — needs to address to move on.
The primary races for both Democrats and Republicans are tighter than expected, leaving the final vote tallies to the next eight or so hours.
As of now, the Republican race is most conflicted. The new ranking of Republicans is McCain, Huckabee, then Romney. Each represents one type of conservative: McCain the national security, Huckabee the social, and Romney the economic Republican. It’s a fight among Republicans for the helm of the post-Bush party that will not end at the convention in St. Paul. The delegate split in California may tip the scales a bit, but the currents within the party are unlikely to settle soon.
Democratic eyes are all turned towards California, whose 370 unpledged delegates are quite complicated to apportion. Even as the state is projected as a win for Clinton or Obama, the precise delegate count is yet to be determined.
The next contests will be important for all candidates; only Huckabee has earned new, legitimate momentum from Feb. 5.
From The Corner:
Tonight is not yet over, but I fear that one element in the voting may be a positive rejection of Romney. That seems to be a factor quite as much as an embrace of McCain. Hence the revival of Huckabee in the South. My southern belle wife always warned that many evangelicals would vote for anyone but a Mormon. I was skeptical — and we don’t yet have the exit poll breakdowns on that kind of question — but it looks as if something like that may be at work.
Marc Ambinder on the Republicans:
As politics is a zero sum game, the better Mike Huckabee does, the worse Mitt Romney does… and so it doesn’t matter all too much…that McCain seems to be underperforming, as he is. (It’s going to be mighty hard for McCain to unite the party…but that’s not the story tonight.)
Huckabee’s victories are likely to put enormous pressure on the well-funded Romney to drop out…If his money cannot buy him victories outside a few caucus states, Massachusetts and Utah, he does not have any pretext for continuing.
Matt Yglesias on Romney:
I believe I’ve noted before that I like Mitt Romney. … And right now I think he’s delivering a pretty damn good speech. Education policy expert Sara Mead says “this isn’t a winning message for him” — too negative — but it taps into my anti-Beltway rage (anti-Beltway rage only gets worse when you move all the way into the District of Columbia and realize that the country is run by jerks who ride the Orange Line).
As Obama trended upward in recent days, there was some talk of a Super Tuesday victory that would knock her campaign back onto its heels. That isn’t going to happen tonight, at least barring an upset in California. But he’s sticking near to her, and the next couple of states (Virginia, Maryland, etc) favor him, so the basic takeaway looks to be that the primary will roll on, and this remains a game of delegates.
David Weigel at Reason thinks it is bad news for Clinton.
On the Democratic side, Obama’s late poll surge has truly held up: He’s shredded Clinton’s firewall in the northeast and is winning states (Delaware, probably Connecticut) where Clinton once led by better than 20 points. The states he loses he’ll lose narrowly enough to score about half of the delegates. And the caucus states where he’s expected to do well haven’t been called yet. This isn’t Clinton’s nightmare scenario, but it’s close.
Although no one has called it yet, it looks as though this state will go into Clinton’s column. On the Republican side, Huckabee may well pull off an upset here. Who passes for a conservative among Republicans is once again a very regional matter. In the West, including Arizona, Romney’s Utah base pulls conservatives in, in Missouri and the Deep South, Huckabee is the anti-McCain.
LATimes claims to have Hillary’s talking points re Georgia — and the evening in general. Check them out here.
Interesting division of victories/losses on the Democratic side. Hillary strong in NE and Rust Belt communities, Obama does well in some northern Plains states and Rockies. Look for Missouri and California results soon.
Hillary’s win in Massachusetts must be gratifying for her campaign, New Jersey less a surprise. If Connecticut doesn’t go to Obama, Clinton winds up with a good night. The key data, according to CNN, comes from Illinois: only 52 per cent of Latino voters voted for Obama — not a good sign for him as things move westward.
If you’re looking for partisan, real-time analysis of tonight’s results around the web, the following are a good start:
Right-Leaning:
Left-Leaning:
The Economist Democracy in America team is blogging from around the country, and for comic relief, there’s always the inside-the-Beltway favorite, Wonkette.
News organizations around the globe are watching tonight’s voting closely. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) offers an interactive map, a commentary board plus this guide to “Who’s backing who” among other features. Germany’s Der Spiegel takes to the street to see who Berliners would like to see lead after what it calls the “divisive” polices of President George W. Bush, while the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera posts updates from its correspondents across the country.
Democrats in Georgia have selected Barack Obama as their candidate (CNN/NBC/FOX).
The Republican side in Georgia, the only state whose polls closed at 7pm EST, is a three-way contest between McCain, Romney, and Huckabee.
Programming Note: It is still early, and as the exit polls are released we will have analysis of exit polls and trends, in addition to the best of the live-blogging around the web. Stay tuned.
San Francisco — Everyone repeats the importance of California in this election year, and it’s easy to understand why. The large number of convention delegates at stake for both parties, the huge number of Electoral College votes gained by the winner of the popular vote in November, and the media and financial power of this state cannot be overlooked. In an earlier post (“California Scenesetter,” 1/31/08), I recounted the way that today’s Democratic primary vote will affect the selection of convention delegates.
Here it is, once again, in brief: In both parties’ primaries, there are essentially 53 races — one for each Congressional District. The winner in each District gets a certain number of delegates; some delegates are awarded by state-wide vote tallies; then there are the so-called Super Delegates — elected officials, party officials, etc. You get the picture. If California yields statewide vote totals that don’t correspond to the division of delegates — possible only in the Democratic race — then many Californians will be frustrated. Shades of the presidential vote in November, 2000.
But that’s not the only calculation that could give us a headache tomorrow. Up to half of California voters vote early, by mail. That means ballots will be opened today that may have been cast as early as January 7th (before the New Hampshire primary!), when Biden, Richardson, Kucinich, Edwards and Dodd were still in the running (and, on the Republican side, Thompson and Giuliani). What if, as one local columnist notes, something in the course of the last four weeks caused you to change your mind?
Then there’s “Decline to State.” Here in California, only registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary, but those who “decline to state” a party affiliation can vote for a Democratic candidate. That’s almost 20 per cent of all registered voters. Will the Democrats wind up regretting that they let independents vote in their primary? Will Republicans regret that they didn’t let independents vote in theirs?
But the largest calculation, the one no one quite has a handle on, is the Hispanic or Latino vote. One third of California’s population is Hispanic — one of every five registered voters. Only 6.4 per cent of the population is African-American. The early Clinton advantage in California had much to do with the loyalty of Latinos to Bill Clinton. The durability of that advantage, despite recent polls, owes much to the backing of key politicians in the Hispanic community — including political powerhouses Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa and California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez. Granted, the leading Hispanic newspaper in this state, La Opinión, endorsed Obama, but can this possibly be enough?
The Nevada caucuses showed that Obama could gain impressive endorsements, yet fail due to lack of support in the Hispanic community. The Clinton campaign must be counting on this. That’s where Bill and Hillary devoted enormous time and attention in recent days.
Days before the New Hampshire primary, pollsters stopped polling. Obama had it wrapped up, they said, by 10, or 15 percentage points. Instead, Clinton campaigned hard through the weekend in town halls and small groups all around the state. In her victory speech, Clinton said that in New Hampshire, she had found her voice.
On the eve of Super Tuesday, that voice is sore. Clinton, like Obama, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Paul, has been traveling across the country reaching out to voters in all 22 Super Tuesday states. Time and resources are limited, however, and the campaigns forfeited town hall-style campaigning in favor of large rallies. (Obama in particular has attracted vast crowds.) To reach out to voters in all of the states, the Clinton campaign purchased an hour of television time on the Hallmark Channel tonight, inviting questions form volunteers and supporters in each of the states with primaries tomorrow (also on her website at http://townhall.hillaryclinton.com). A nod from the campaign to New Hampshire past successes, perhaps…?
Polling figures show another story: the race among Democrats is tightening, but McCain plans to solidify a victory. With only hours remaining before polls open, the candidates can only hope that their contacts and surrogates around the country can line up a state-by-state win. In the Republican race, the night will likely be short. Among Democrats, the polls can only foreshadow an early morning.
Yesterday’s dramatic upset was on the football field. Football polls and pundits were proven wrong, victims of the thousands of variables in sports that can, properly aligned, lead to improbable results.
How about tomorrow? How different is the game of electoral politics? We’ve been through a long season already, with upsets, twists and turns. Who predicted six months ago, when John McCain was broke and had just fired most of his staff, that he would be the Republican front-runner today?
Didn’t Mitt Romney have the wealth, entrepreneurial background, and appearance of a successful Republican candidate?
Of course, tomorrow the new front-runner could himself be upended — but don’t count on it.
Like football, Republican primaries are winner-take-all. McCain need not win by much on Super Tuesday to take away the lion’s share of Republican delegates and become, in effect, his party’s nominee.
Democrats, in their primaries and caucuses tomorrow, won’t dispatch the vanquished, but instead will award them enough delegates, in enough states, to continue the game into overtime.
Remember the Nevada caucuses? Obama lost the overall tally, but wound up with one more convention delegate than Hillary. A similar outcome could easily be the result of California’s primary.
In these few remaining hours before balloting begins, there is plenty of talk of momentum. Look at Bill Clinton’s subdued campaign remarks before an African-American church on Sunday . What a contrast with the heated attack he made on Obama’s “fairy tale” just two weeks earlier. The Clintons realize that some of what they’ve done has backfired. The question is — how much?
As a journalist and communications specialist, I know the media love conflict. But the media could not create the conflict and drama that we’ve seen this year, they just happily accentuate it. The spectacle of the Kennedy dynasty abandoning all caution to declare its divided loyalties — Teddy and Patrick for Obama, Kathleen and Bobby Jr. for Hillary, Ethel and Rory for Obama and yesterday — suddenly on stage with Oprah in Los Angeles — Maria Shriver, wife of the Republican governor, supporting…Obama!
One senses that, after all, there are some intensely personal choices being made, not just political calculations.
More calculations will be made tomorrow evening, when we’ll know if there was a political upset to match the one in football we saw yesterday. Those standing on the sidelines, watching, include Democrats who have yet to declare their sympathies (Edwards, Gore, Richardson) and some Republican conservatives (Bennett, Kristol) who regret that, for now at least, most of the youth and passion are found on the other side of the field.
This week the primary campaigns became national, with ad buys and travel from California to Alabama to Minnesota. For the past year, though, observers around the world have watched the candidates in newspapers, television, and the Internet.
The candidates—Democrats physically, Republicans ideologically—resemble a cast of the characteristic diverse America. From last week’s New York Times:
The personalities of the Democratic contest in particular — the potential harbinger of America’s first African-American or female president — have fascinated outsiders as much as, if not more than, the candidates’ policies on Iraq, immigration or global finances.
And there is a palpable sense that, while democratic systems seem clunky and uninspiring to voters in many parts of the Western world, America offers a potential model for reinvigoration.
In these last days before Super Tuesday, international media are giving their readers all the details.
In the UK, many newspapers have sections devoted to the U.S. elections, many writing as prolifically as American journalists on the topic. The Guardian, in addition to its Guardian America service, tracks developments in the race on at least a daily basis. The Times of London, now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., devotes front page pieces to the race this weekend. The Economist this week offers no fewer than five articles on the election, describing topics from twittering to analysis of McCain’s win in Florida.
Papers throughout the rest of Europe follow suit. In Germany, Der Spiegel foreshadows Super Tuesday and Die Zeit provides a form for former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to ask the candidates twelve questions. Le Monde and Le Figaro find room for analysis of the election amid news that French President Sarkozy has married, and La Repubblica in Italy links to a new Obama Girl video. [links in original languages]
This is just a sampling of news and cover stories around the world; as the NYT notes, readers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are particularly engaged this election season as well. From time to time, interest is piqued and U.S. news becomes world news. Readers this primary season may be as hopeful of change as many Americans.
Update: James Forsyth at FP Passport noted on Friday afternoon the same phenomenon, saying the election has brought the world to change the way it sees America, or at least until the honeymoon is over and most realize that the U.S. has not become the internationalist nation for which they hope.