Is Clinton Back? Delegates, delegates, delegates

And the race goes on. As James Carville said on Meet the Press on Sunday--speculating about what Clinton wins in Ohio and Texas would mean for the race--it helps her rewrite the narrative. And it does. Whether it was the ads or backlash against Obama or sympathy for Clinton doesn't matter. What last night's results mean is that the Democratic primary voters are still almost evenly divided as to who their presidential nominee should be. The Obama campaign's contention is that it still maintains a sizable lead in the delegate count and that the results from the four primaries last night do not significantly affect that lead. However, with the wins she managed yesterday, Clinton now has something to back up the argument that all Obama does is win in small and/or red states. All the while she's winning the states that are important to the Democrats in November.

The race now shifts to Wyoming this weekend and Mississippi on next Tuesday. On paper, both look like Obama territory. Wyoming is a caucus state and Mississippi has a high African American population on par with other states Obama has won (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina). But there is a catch. And for Clinton, it easily extends this race to Pennsylvania. [Well, I suppose the press is largely discounting Wyoming and Mississippi anyway; already having shifted the focus to the April 22 contest in the Keystone state.] Those are states and the fact that Obama should win them fits the newly crafted narrative of this race. He wins caucuses, small states and red states. She wins the big prizes. And that can't be welcome news for the Obama camp. If Wyoming and Mississippi are discounted, then his chances of shifting the tenor of this race [again!?!] are diminished in the process. So while Obama may have the delegate lead still, his campaign is now on the defensive.

Oh, and I suppose the supedelegates come into the picture at some point. If the contests between now and next Tuesday can't help Obama, then the report that surfaced yesterday that some number of superdelegates may break for him in the near future might. That becomes a contest of its own; one (and maybe only) that may possibly assist Obama in countering the Clinton wins from last night.

All the while, this race has devolved to certain point of negativity and is unlikely to return. And that brings us back to divisive primaries. If this Democratic race continues the slide into negativity, that affects the party's ability to heal those divisions before the convention and in the time between then and the general election. So McCain sits back and smiles, having wrapped things up officially last night. And who can blame him? The longer the Democratic race strings out, the better his chances in November seem to become.


RESULTS:

Ohio

Rhode Island

Texas

Vermont

I'll be back later with a look ahead to the rules in Wyoming, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of looking at polls of Wyoming Democrats.

This Used to be Super Tuesday: Results from Texas, Ohio and the Northeast

And we're off. Could the Democratic race enter the end game Barbara Norrander (2000) discussed in her JOP article? Today's primaries could prove decisive for the Democrats and should put McCain over the top for the GOP nod.

10:34pm: This is going to go on for a while. I'm off for now, but will be back in the morning with a wrap up. In the meantime, keep up to date online with the live blog over at The Caucus.

10:30pm: Things are tight in Texas. Ohio is giving Clinton a slight edge with many of the state's urban areas yet to report. And President Bush is set to meet with John McCain tomorrow and endorse him. McCain may want to avoid too many photos with the president. Of course, those may not matter in November if Clinton and Obama continue to tear each other apart.

9:55pm: As we approach the 10 o'clock hour, we can begin to reflect a bit on the night so far. McCain has wrapped things up on the Republican side. Exit polling out of Ohio (according to The Fix) is showing a very tight race there. As you begin to look at the Election Guide maps (Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont) on The New York Times site, you see a lot more purple (Clinton) than green (Obama). Of course, land doesn't vote, people do.
...unless those people are being "actively disenfranchised."

9:24pm: Huckabee concedes the GOP nomination to McCain. The last of McCain's challengers are out of the race now and he can officially shift gears toward the general election and toward unifying the Republican party behind him. Oh, I suppose he could continue to browbeat the Democrats too while he's at it.

9:23pm: The streak is over. Clinton has won in Rhode Island.

9:17pm: A conference call by the Clinton campaign to highlight the problems in Texas was overrun by an Obama lawyer who claimed they were only complaining because Clinton was losing. You can't make this stuff up. This is why I'm a political scientist. This night has shown one thing (Well, two if you count John McCain officially wrapping up the nomination.): if the Democratic race stretches beyond tonight/tomorrow, it will get ugly and potentially threaten the party's chances in November. That is on the table now.

9:06pm: McCain has been projected the winner in Texas by CNN. Oh, and they also mention that he's sealed the deal on the GOP nomination too.

9:01pm: The complaints have spread south, The Caucus is reporting:

Clinton Complaints: The Clinton campaign is holding a conference call right now to report irregularities in Texas, where they say voters are being “actively disenfranchised.”

Among the complaints, they say that at “numerous locations,” Obama supporters “have taken over the caucus and locked out Clinton supporters.”

Yeah, this race could get ugly if it stretches on past tonight.

9:00pm: Polls are closed in Rhode Island. Now the Texas caucuses are the only event in town. Everyone else is counting votes.

8:55pm: Rhode Island is up next as are the counties held open longer in Ohio and the Mountain time zone's areas of west Texas. All at the top of the hour.

8:40pm: Politico is the source for some juicy speculation. First they broke the story that Clinton may go after Obama's pledged delegates and now they report that Obama has silently lined up a slate of superdelegates who are set to announce their support in the near future. This slate may prove moot if Obama wraps things up tonight. That story remains to be told.

8:38pm: Polls have been held open longer in the Cleveland area to accommodate for the high turnout there today.
---from Politico.com via the Obama campaign

8:32pm: I missed it earlier, but the caucuses got under way in Texas at 8:15pm. Party business first or presidential preference? What will they do? Here's hoping for the latter. Otherwise, it could be a long night.

8:23pm: Ohio, we have a problem. Well, this is hardly scientific, but the counties are being shaded in on the Democratic map of Texas on the New York Times Election Guide. Ohio remains completely colorless. The Caucus via the AP is reporting that the Secretary of State in Ohio has asked for court permission to keep polling locations in Sandusky County, Ohio open until 9pm (see their 7:54 post)..

8:13pm: Ooh, The New York Times has moved the pretty maps from the state by state Election Guides up to the front page for tonight's contest.

8:06pm: Here come the lawyers. Both Democratic campaigns are complaining about voting problems in Ohio. See, I told you Ohio couldn't buy a break. If you recall the divisive primaries post from last week, you may want to mark tonight down as the official point at which competition changed to divisiveness. It has been brewing since the debates, but may boil over after tonight if the outcome is still undecided.

8:00pm: Polls are close in Texas (Well, the polls in the eastern time zone at least.).

7:44pm: I should note that McCain also won in Vermont (see story below on the Obama projection there). Vermont is a solid winner-take-all, so McCain takes all 17 of those delegates, inching closer to that 1191 mark he needs.

7:33pm: McCain is the projected winner of Ohio. With the system there winner-take-all both in congressional districts and statewide, his share of the 88 delegates at stake in the state should get him about half way to the 177 he needs to break the 1191 barrier and win the nomination.

7:30pm: Polls are closed in Ohio.

7:21pm: Ohio closes up shop here in just under ten minutes. I doubt we see such a rapid projection of the winner in the Buckeye state. Flooding caused some polling places to be moved to accommodate voters in the southern part of the state. Ohio just can't seem to buy a break during election time. Officials there certainly hope this isn't foreshadowing of things to come in November. Of course, that is the story USA Today ran last week: stating that higher turnout like the 2008 primaries, could mean problems once the general election rolls around.

7:00pm: Polls are closed in Vermont. Best to just get another win out of the way. Before you could blink, Vermont went, as expected to Obama. The Drudge Report is indicating that the exit polls in the other three states are deadlocked. That's to be expected to some extent, but if your the Clinton camp, you have got to be hoping that what once seemed like a done deal in Rhode Island doesn't end up being the last nail in the coffin tonight when polls close there at 9pm. Change is apparently the winning theme in the exit polls as well, pushing experience on the back burner. Again, the Clinton team better hope that they have been able to co-opt some of that change message that Obama has used effectively to this point.

Primary Day: The Texas-Ohio Edition [Vermont and Rhode Island too]

Welcome to this, the 14th round of Primary Season 2008. With a week off, the contests in Texas and Ohio have received a ton of scrutiny from all angles. So much so, that there has been a kind of calm before the storm (Well, not between the top two Democratic contenders.) as today's contests approached. The media have said what they're going to say about the rules in Texas and changes in voting method in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. With so much time (and so much is a relative term here) the void has been filled by Clinton attacks on Obama. That has been the new story/news story. And the momentum seems to be with Clinton on this; her campaign has planted the seeds of doubt on Obama. Oh sure, the source there is her campaign, but the polls that have come out in Texas and Ohio the last few days back that up.

The Real Clear Politics poll averages in those states showed movement toward Obama late last week in both states. In Texas, those averages gave Obama a slight advantage (within the margin of error) after having been down double digits just two weeks prior. Now, while the Texas race is still a dead heat, the recent polls are giving Clinton that slight edge there (still within the margin of error and still susceptible to Obama's caucus success during the state's delegate selection night cap). In Ohio, Clinton's double digit leads shrunk to as few as four percentage points late last week. With the exception of the most recent Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll (showing a tie), the most recent polls in the Buckeye state stretch the Clinton advantage back to around seven percentage points. So while claims that the infamous "3AM ad" (and that link has a further link to the 1984 phone ad that Mondale ran against Gary Hart as well) is the reason for the momentum shift may be spurious, on its face at least (and in the media) it appears to have had an effect.

Is all the momentum talk moot anyway? That's the contention of the Obama camp; which is claiming that narrow victories by Clinton in these states doesn't get her any closer in the pledged delegate count. The expectations game has been played by both sides on this one and how these contests and their results are perceived will depend to a large degree on how the media reports things tonight.

For those following at home the night will progress like this: Vermont's polls close first at 7pm (all of these times are Eastern). Even given the scant polling that is available from Vermont, it looks as if Obama will kick the night off with an easy win. Ohio strikes next with voting being cut off there at 7:30pm. Call it a hunch, but I doubt this one gets an immediate call/projection from any of the networks. What you might hear is, "too close to call." The polls in Texas close next at 8pm and will most likely resemble the Ohio situation from a half hour earlier. An hour later, voting in Rhode Island stops. Now this one looks like a Clinton win, but what Rhode Island does is keep the media paying attention to results. All the while, the Texas caucuses will have been going on. And Texas Democrats have adopted a system similar to the one used in Iowa to get "unofficial" results from the caucuses out in a quicker fashion. Whether those "results" come out before or after Rhode Island or in relation to the Texas/Ohio projections is a matter that will be solved tonight. Either way you look at it, with these contests potentially proving decisive on the Democratic side, it will be a fun night to follow.

[UPDATE: For those of you like me out there--without suitable cable access--ABCNews.com is streaming coverage of the returns tonight online. None of the three major networks is allotting any time to coverage of the presidential races tonight, yield to regularly schedule programming. ABC is awfully nice to give the online-only class a shot at actually seeing something on a primary night not named Super Tuesday.]