The Electoral College Map (9/23/12)

After loading up on YouGov data a day ago, Sunday was much quieter on the polling front. Six new surveys from four states did little to alter the landscape on which the race for 270 electoral votes is waged.

New State Polls (9/23/12)
State	Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Obama	Romney	Undecided	Poll Margin	FHQ Margin
Florida	Mason-Dixon	9/17-9/19	+/- 3.5%	800 likely voters	48	47	4	+1	+0.77
Florida	Public Policy Polling	9/20-9/23	+/- 3.3%	861 likely voters	50	46	4	+4	--
Nebraska	Wiese/Omaha World-Herald	9/17-9/20	+/- 3.8%	656 likely voters	39	53	6	+14	+14.05
Ohio	University of Cincinnati/Ohio Newspaper Organization	9/13-9/18	+/- 3.3%	861 likely voters	51	46	2	+5	+3.36
Pennsylvania	Susquehanna/Republican State Central Committee of Pennsylvania	9/15-9/17	+/- 3.46%	800 likely voters	48	47	5	+1	+6.87
Pennsylvania	Susquehanna/Tribune-Review	9/18-9/20	+/- 3.46%	800 likely voters	47	45	6	+2	--

Polling Quick Hits:
Florida:
To put this in fairly stark terms, there is going to have to be a decided shift toward Romney to break from the +1 Romney to +5 (or so) Obama range that has seemingly lasted for all of 2012. The small advantage the president holds in the Sunshine state is well within reach for the Republican nominee, but the consistency of polling there means that it will take a rather large event or series of events to move the needle.

Nebraska:
Any data from Nebraska is good data even if it confirms what we already knew about the race in the Cornhusker state: It is red and solidly in Romney's column.

Ohio:
Obama continues to lead in the Buckeye state. There have been fourteen polls released in Ohio since mid-August and Romney has led in just one and tie in just one other. Though the margin is higher in Ohio, the same message from Florida resonates here as well. It is all a matter of breaking from the consistency in polling that has emerged.

Pennsylvania:
FHQ wrote a couple of days ago that Pennsylvania is not on the candidates' radars right now and that the publicly available polling backs that up. That is not the case with the two Susquehanna surveys above. Together, both polls represent the closest Romney has been in Pennsylvania since Susquehanna found the race tied back in March. The trajectory of survey data in the Keystone state has been toward the president throughout though. The issue here seems to be that the Romney share of response in these two polls is on the high side given recent polling and Obama's share is only slightly below his recent low point.

For once, both the map and the Electoral College Spectrum remained unchanged after the addition of just five new polls today. The tally still stands where it did in mid-July when FHQ began cataloging and averaging the data. The balance tips toward the president by a margin of 332-206 based on the fact that he has consistently held down leads in all of the various toss up states but North Carolina.

The Electoral College Spectrum1
VT-3 (6)2	WA-12 (158)	NH-4 (257)	MO-10 (166)	MS-6 (55)
RI-4 (10)	NJ-14 (172)	OH-183 (275/281)	MT-3 (156)	ND-3 (49)
NY-29 (39)	CT-7 (179)	VA-13 (288/263)	IN-11 (153)	KY-8 (46)
HI-4 (43)	NM-5 (184)	CO-9 (297/250)	GA-16 (142)	AL-9 (38)
MD-10 (53)	MN-10 (194)	IA-6 (303/241)	SC-9 (126)	KS-6 (29)
MA-11 (64)	OR-7 (201)	FL-29 (332/235)	TX-38 (117)	AK-3 (23)
IL-20 (84)	PA-20 (221)	NC-15 (206)	LA-8 (79)	OK-7 (20)
CA-55 (139)	MI-16 (237)	SD-3 (191)	NE-5 (71)	ID-4 (13)
ME-4 (143)	WI-10 (247)	AZ-11 (188)	AR-6 (66)	WY-3 (9)
DE-3 (146)	NV-6 (253)	TN-11 (177)	WV-5 (60)	UT-6 (6)
1 Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. 2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Romney won all the states up to and including Ohio (all Obama's toss up states plus Ohio), he would have 281 electoral votes. Romney's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and Romney's is on the right in italics. 3 Ohio is the state where Obama crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line.

Moving forward, the list of states to keep an eye on -- the Watch List -- is also stuck in the status quo. The trio of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin are strategically important to Romney -- if only to make the president play defense -- and all are hovering right around the Lean/Toss Up line. Meanwhile, Florida continues to be perched on another line; just to the Obama side of the partisan line. Those remain the states to watch most intently.

The Watch List1
State	Switch
Florida	from Toss Up Obama	to Toss Up Romney
Georgia	from Strong Romney	to Lean Romney
Indiana	from Lean Romney	to Strong Romney
Michigan	from Lean Obama	to Toss Up Obama
Minnesota	from Lean Obama	to Strong Obama
Nevada	from Toss Up Obama	to Lean Obama
New Mexico	from Strong Obama	to Lean Obama
Wisconsin	from Toss Up Obama	to Lean Obama
1 The Watch list shows those states in the FHQ Weighted Average within a fraction of a point of changing categories. The List is not a trend analysis. It indicates which states are straddling the line between categories and which states are most likely to shift given the introduction of new polling data. Nevada, for example, is close to being a Lean Obama state, but the trajectory of the polling there has been moving the state away from that lean distinction.

Please see:

Frequently Asked Questions about FHQ graduated weighted average methodology.
&
An Update on how to read it in 2012.

Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (9/22/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/21/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/20/12)

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2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Nebraska

This is the thirty-seventh in a multipart series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation by state.¹ The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2012 -- especially relative to 2008 -- in order to gauge the impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. As FHQ has argued in the past, this has often been cast as a black and white change. That the RNC has winner-take-all rules and the Democrats have proportional rules. Beyond that, the changes have been wrongly interpreted in a great many cases as having made a 180º change from straight winner-take-all to straight proportional rules in all pre-April 1 primary and caucus states. That is not the case. 

The new requirement has been adopted in a number of different ways across the states. Some have moved to a conditional system where winner-take-all allocation is dependent upon one candidate receiving 50% or more of the vote and others have responded by making just the usually small sliver of a state's delegate apportionment from the national party -- at-large delegates -- proportional as mandated by the party. Those are just two examples. There are other variations in between that also allow state parties to comply with the rules. FHQ has long argued that the effect of this change would be to lengthen the process. However, the extent of the changes from four years ago is not as great as has been interpreted and points to the spacing of the 2012 primary calendar -- and how that interacts with the ongoing campaign -- being a much larger factor in the accumulation of delegates (Again, especially relative to the 2008 calendar).

For links to the other states' plans see the Republican Delegate Selection Plans by State section in the left sidebar under the calendar.


NEBRASKA

As if it wasn't bad enough that the Nebraska presidential primary is non-binding, now everyone other than Mitt Romney has stopped contesting the nomination in the remaining primary and caucus states yet to have voted. That makes the primary in the Cornhusker state even less consequential. It has been a while since the presidential nomination campaign saw its last non-binding contest with delegates not also directly on the same ballot. One has to go back to the North Dakota caucuses on Super Tuesday for the last non-binding contest. And typically that is the mark of the caucus state: an early start allows for the caucus/convention process to have culminated with national convention delegate selection in a timely enough manner prior to the start of the national convention. Nebraska is atypical in that regard. The process there begins with a May beauty contest presidential preference primary that has no role in the selection of delegates, continues with early June (June 1-10) county conventions where delegates are chosen to attend the July 14 state convention. It is from the pool of county convention delegates at the state convention that the at-large and congressional district delegates are chosen to go to, in this case, Tampa.

In other words, there is a reason that most are following the Nebraska senate nomination races as opposed to the presidential primary. Well, actually there are few reasons.

Nebraska delegate breakdown:

• 35 total delegates
• 23 at-large delegates
• 9 congressional district delegates
• 3 automatic delegates

At-large allocation:
Again, don't look to the primary as to how the delegates in Nebraska will be allocated. The state convention is where all the delegate action will happen. In terms of the at-large delegates, Article VII, Section 3.b,d of the Nebraska Republican Party constitution covers the selection of at-large delegates.² Delegate candidates file with the party no more than ten business days following the primary and are selected at the state convention. State law binds delegate candidates to the presidential candidate to whom they are aligned as indicated on the filing form. [Filing as an uncommitted delegate candidate is also an option.] This is a soft binding mechanism as delegates selected to attend the national convention are to use their "best efforts" to support the candidate to whom they have pledged. "Best efforts" is undefined in the statute and there is no specified penalty for not observing the intent of the pledge on the filing form.

Congressional district allocation:
Nebraska state law calls for district conventions to be held for the purposes of selecting congressional district delegates -- among other business -- "immediately after the adjournment of the state postprimary convention". That will take place on July 14. Article VII, Section 3.c further defines the procedure, calling for the district delegate candidates, like the at-large candidates, to file no later than 10 business days after May primary.

Automatic delegate allocation:
Though the national committeeman and committeewoman are elected at the state convention in presidential years (Article IV, Section 1), neither assumes office until after the national convention in the same year. Nebraska Republican Party state chairmen are elected in odd years (Article IX, Section 4). All three automatic delegates from Nebraska are in place then and will not change hands prior to the Tampa convention. All three are unbound and free to endorse or vote for any Republican presidential nomination candidate of their preference.

--
¹ FHQ would say 50 part, but that doesn't count the territories and Washington, DC.

² Relevant sections of the Nebraska Republican Party constitution related to delegate selection:
Article IV
Representatives on Republican National Committee
Section 1.  In each year when a President of the United States is to be elected, the State Convention shall elect a National Committeeman and a National Committeewoman to take office at the close of the succeeding National Convention.  The State Chairman shall certify the names of the National Committeeman and National Committeewoman so elected to the National Committee.


Article VII
Post-Primary Conventions
Section 3. National Convention Delegates
(a)  In each Presidential election year, delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention shall be elected in the manner specified in this Section 3, as authorized by the Rules of the National Convention.


(b)  All National Convention delegates designated by the Rules of the National Convention as at-large delegates shall be elected at-large by the State Convention.  All National Convention alternate delegates designated as at-large alternates shall be elected at-large by the State Convention following the election of at-large National Convention delegates.


(c)  All National Convention delegates and alternates designated by the Rules of the National Convention as district delegates or district alternates, respectively, shall be elected by the caucus of delegates of that U.S. House of Representatives district at the State Convention in accordance with the Congressional district boundaries delineated under Nebraska State law.  Candidates for National Convention District delegate and District alternate delegate shall file for election in person or by mailing a notice of intent to the State Headquarters postmarked no later than the 10th business day after the state primary election.  Only persons elected and credentialed as delegates or alternates to the State Convention shall be qualified to be elected at the State Convention as District National Convention delegates or alternates. 


(d)  At-large candidates for National Convention delegate and alternate delegate shall file for election in person or by mailing a notice of intent to the State Headquarters postmarked no later than the 10th business day after the state primary election.  Only persons elected and credentialed as delegates or alternates to the State Convention shall be qualified to be elected at the State Convention as at-large National Convention delegates or alternates. 


(e)   All candidates for delegate and alternate at the State Convention shall designate the presidential candidate to whom they are committed or state that they are uncommitted, and shall be bound by such commitment if elected, all in accordance with Nebraska State Law.  Delegate and alternate candidates shall indicate their commitments by mailing a notice to State Headquarters, postmarked no later than five business days prior to the date registration for the State Convention commences.


Article IX
State Party Administration
Section 4.  ELECTION AND TERMS OF OFFICE.  The Chairman and Treasurer shall be elected by the State Central Committee at a meeting held no later than May 1 of each odd-numbered year.  The Vice Chairman, the Assistant Chairmen, the Secretary, the General Counsel and the Finance Chairman shall be appointed by the State Chairman with the approval of the Executive Committee as soon as practicable after the election of the State Chairman and shall take office immediately, subject to the approval of their appointments by the State Central Committee at its next meeting.  The term of office of the State Officers and members of the State Central Committee shall be approximately two years.  They shall serve until their successors have been elected.

Recent Posts:
2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: West Virginia

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: North Carolina

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Indiana


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Nebraska Dems Stick with Caucuses Over Primary but Move from February to April

Nebraska Democrats for the first time in 2008 abandoned the Cornhusker state's May presidential primary as a means of allocating national convention delegates and instead adopted a February caucus. The Nebraska Democratic Party will in 2012 again choose delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte through a series of caucuses. Instead of February, however, the state Democrats will begin the process with precinct caucuses on April 14.

Thus far Democratic caucus states are using the freedom caucus states have in terms of scheduling their delegate selection events -- no partisan conflicts, no checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches, etc. -- to move to later dates. With the pressure of having to hold an early contest that may come from a contested nomination race, Democrats in some caucus states are opting instead to go later and take bonus delegates in the process. That is becoming clearer as more caucus states' Democrats submit draft delegate selection plans for public comment.

[Hat tip to The Green Papers for the link.]

Recent Posts:

Hawaii Democrats Zero in on April 7 Precinct Caucuses

Wyoming Democrats' Draft Delegate Selection Plan Indicates April Caucuses

Oklahoma House Passes Second March Primary Bill

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Omaha to Obama

Unless, Missouri somehow flips to Obama, this will be the final tally of the 2008 electoral college.

[Click Map to Enlarge]

Recent Posts:
A Slideshow Chronology of the Electoral College on Election Night

Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps

What About Nebraska's 2nd District?

What About Nebraska's 2nd District?

As Rob pointed out in the comments section, the electoral vote for Nebraska's 2nd district is still undecided. You can see in the live blog from Tuesday evening [/Wednesday morning] that I made some mention of whether the whole slate of electoral votes in the Cornhusker state would go for McCain or be split in any way. However, I didn't account for that. Basically, I didn't have time to edit that into the map (...and probably should have made that change yesterday, but didn't) on Tuesday night.

The latest is that there were in excess of 10,000 early votes yet to be counted with McCain holding around a 600 vote lead. That hasn't changed since yesterday, and there doesn't appear to be any deadline or time at which we can expect to know the result (as with those Rockingham County votes in North Carolina the other day).

[Click Map to Enlarge]

With that in mind, we'll pull that electoral vote off the board and we'll color it in when the results are official. It appears as if Obama will take the district, though. If we focus on just those early votes -- and not the additional 5000+ provisional ballots -- if Obama gets the same 61% of the vote that he received throughout the rest of the early voting in the state/district (That isn't clear, but I suspect that refers to the district instead of statewide.), then the president-elect stand to gain about 2400 votes. Enough to pass John McCain, in other words.


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More on North Carolina: UPDATE

Iowa and Nebraska: The Caucus Question 2008 Wrap Up

This is more housekeeping than anything else. However, I wouldn't want to pose a question like the caucus question and not gather a full data set for the 2008 cycle. The flooding in Iowa in mid-June pushed the Democratic convention there back two weeks and around that time I was heading out of town (...and thinking about other things). That said, here is how things finished in both Iowa and Nebraska:

Iowa Final Tally: 37.6% of the Vote, 71.1% of the Delegates

Nebraska Finally Tally: 67.5% of the Vote, 66.7% of the Delegates

Just as a refresher, the premise of the caucus question is that there is movement in the level of support for a candidate throughout the steps of caucusing. Factors that intervene are how early the original contest was, how many steps -- and thus opportunities for delegate support to shift -- were there in the caucus process, and how many candidates competed. In most years during the frontloaded campaign era, it is fair to say that with nominations clinched early, competition dropped, making it a foregone conclusion that the front-runner/presumptive nominee would gain as the process progressed. With the Clinton-Obama contest stretching to the last days of actual contests in 2008, there was a natural opportunity to see if, in fact, there was anything to this caucus question idea.

With Iowa and Nebraska, you have two states on opposite ends of the spectrum. Iowa had the earliest contest; one that was competitive to say the least. And the near equal distribution of the vote between Clinton, Edwards and Obama demonstrated that. In Nebraska, Edwards had already dropped out and Obama had apparently laid the grassroots foundation in a caucus state that would, collectively with the other caucus states, prove the cornerstone of his successful nomination run. In other words, Nebraska was not as competitive as Iowa.

In Iowa, then, there was room for improvement for Obama. In Nebraska, on the other hand, any gains would have been hard to come by for Obama or Clinton. The battle for gains in Iowa, though, centered on John Edwards' delegates and most moved over to Obama. The others opted to stick to their guns and continue to back Edwards instead of moving toward Clinton. So, while initial estimates had the delegate breakdown in Iowa pegged at a 16-15-14 Obama/Edwards/Clinton split, Obama ultimately ended up with a 32-4-9 distribution of pledged delegates heading to Denver next month.

In Nebraska, the story was slightly different. Obama won the post-Super Tuesday caucus in the Cornhusker state handily, but had nowhere to go. Even after having clinched the nomination, a total consolidation of Nebraska's delegates didn't happen for Obama as it might have in a less competitive enironment. Clinton was able to improve based on her delegate numbers rounding up at the state convention in two of Nebraska's three congressional districts as well as in the statewide tally.

What emerges from this tale of two states are three possible options: 1) a move toward Obama, 2) a move toward Clinton and 3) no movement at all. Iowa, we can pencil in as a gain for Obama, and Nebraska most resembles the no movement group of caucus states.

The Caucus Question: 2008 Movement
Obama Moves	Clinton Moves	No Movement
Alaska Iowa Nevada	Colorado Kansas	Hawaii* Idaho Maine Nebraska North Dakota Wyoming ... Texas**
*The delegate decisions in the Hawaii process were determined by the first step. The decisions made at the Hawaii state convention were bound by the precinct caucus decisions. The Aloha state was prevented from exhibiting any movement. **Texas defies any of these characterizations. Initially the movement from the first to second step was toward Obama. From that point to the state convention, though, some support drifted back toward Clinton.

That the environment was so close had much to do with the overall lack of movement that we saw throughout the various caucus processes. In a "normal" cycle, the front-runner/presumptive nominee would have been able to peel off most, if not all, of the opposing delegates. But that has a lot to do with the amount of space between first and second place. There was barely any light between Clinton and Obama. That had the effect, in most states, of causing Clinton delegates to stay true to who they backed in the first place. And that is the story of this historic nomination race: that it was so close. That competitiveness overwhelmed the possibility of seeing any variation in the delegate movement based on how early a state held its caucus or how many steps a particular state's caucus process contained.

Note: If I can get a hold of the GOP data for comparison, I'll revisit this. That data though has been difficult to come (and the reason there hasn't been a Republican series of caucus question posts.).


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Guam: Oh Well, So Much for Frontloading the General Election

Here Come the Results...and the Delegate Count

As Mike Huckabee has been apt to do during this cycle, he struck first. He won the nation's first contest in Iowa. He won the first contest of Super Tuesday in West Virginia. And, as I posted earlier, he won the first contest of this weekend in Kansas. His win there kicked off the results of the day. Results that are just now starting to come in.

I'll resist the urge to go faux game show voice on you and declare, "Tell them what they've won," (Well, I just did it, didn't I?) but here is the picture that is beginning emerge this evening. This is going to sound like a broken record from Super Tuesday night and its aftermath, but caucuses are Obama's territory. He's been given the nod in both Nebraska and Washington (state). And by the same large margins he enjoyed in the caucuses on Tuesday night (two to one in both cases). At some point these large margins in the caucuses are going to help him catch up with (or increase) and pass Clinton's delegate total. His totals relative to hers will increase because the margins in these caucuses are so large compared to the near even division of delegates in most of the other primaries.

While we're on the subject of delegates, the New York Times has a couple of good pieces up now. One discusses the disparity in delegate counts from the networks, new outlets and the campaigns while another details the efforts of the Clinton and Obama camps to lure superdelegates into their folds. The members of Congress they spoke to in the latter article, seemed a bit unnerved by the task of potentially choosing the party's nominee. They seem to be biding their time, hoping that one of the candidates emerges as the winner at the conclusion of primary season.

Saturday's Results:

Kansas GOP

Washington: Washington Democrats are nearly two-thirds done with their vote tallying, and state Republicans have yet to report any results. The party's web page even turned up nothing; only the message that results would come to light starting at 6pm(PT) or fifteen minutes ago by my watch.

Nebraska Dems
from the New York Times
from the Nebraska Democratic Party

Louisiana: Very early on in the Pelican state (We're talking 0% reporting.), here's what we see:
Democrats
Obama 59%
Clinton 28

Republicans
McCain 58%
Huckabee 19

9:39pm: There are some tight races shaping up for the GOP in Washington (Huckabee 25.9% McCain 26.6--16% reporting) and the Dems in Louisiana (Obama 40.3% Clinton 40.7--still 0% reporting).

The morning after:
Not surprisingly, 0% reporting doesn't mean a whole lot. Once the rest of Louisiana start sending in their vote tallies, it was clear that Obama, as he had in Nebraska and Washington, had won a convincing victory. Louisiana also delivered something of a surprise on the Republican end. Though Mike Huckabee won in Louisiana, he didn't get any delegates out of the victory. The winner of the GOP primary in the state had to win a majority of the vote to be allocated the twenty delegates at stake. Those delegates will now go to the Republican national convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul unpledged. All but six of the remaining delegates on the line in Louisiana (21) will be awarded at next weekend's state convention.

In Washington, the Republican race was a tight, four-way affair. McCain and Huckabee were separated by about two percentage points (25.5 - 23.7) with 87% of caucus sites reporting. Ron Paul (20.6) and Mitt Romney (16.5) were just a handful of points behind though. To be clear, those latter two won't factor into the media discussions of the results today, but it is clear that they received a good bit of support in the state.

What does it all mean? Well, on the Republican side, McCain is in the same position he was in on Tuesday night. He is in great shape in the delegate count in relation to his main competitor. However, he doesn't have things completely wrapped up as candidates at the same point in past cycles (post-Super Tuesday) and it never looks good to lose any contest when you are the "presumptive" nominee. I'll be honest: I hadn't thought of this until yesterday when I saw some Huckabee supports talking about it. Is his candidacy now about winning or stopping McCain from winning? It may not be the Huckabee campaign's intention, but this sentiment is starting to rise up from within the anti-McCain faction of the party. The goal is not to have Huckabee necessarily become the nominee, but to keep McCain from gaining the 1191 delegates necessary to become the nominee. That could trigger a brokered convention with McCain as the clear frontrunner, but it would be a brokered convention nonetheless. Will this happen? I doubt it. These sorts of things just don't happen in a party like the Republican party that operates from the top-down.

And on the Democratic side? Well, Obama's run through yesterday's three states has put the pressure on the Clinton campaign to be sure. Maine is seen as hospitable territory for her. And as such, it becomes the closest thing to a must win since the race hit New Hampshire. And with the Potomac Primary coming up on Tuesday (three primaries with a sizable African American presence), it may be Clinton's last best shot before the race hits Texas on March 4. To be clear, Virginia is seen as a good opportunity for Clinton as well, but not as good as Maine is today. All wouldn't be lost with another Obama win (in another caucus), but it is incumbent upon the Clinton folks to stem the tide of the Obama momentum before it is too late.

Super Tuesday Meet Super Weekend (...and, oh yeah, Romney's Out)

With Super Tuesday this past week, the presidential nomination race(s) waved goodbye to the contest by contest progression and ushered in multiple contest delegate selection days (or weekends). On tap this weekend are Saturday caucuses in Washington, Nebraska (Democrats only), Kansas (Republicans only) and the Louisiana primary. Maine Democrats caucus on Sunday. The Caucus has some of the lowdown on the contests.

Here's the line up for today:
Kansas GOP: Things get under way there at 11am(ET). Kansas should give us the first glimpse at the race post-Romney. The big question is how competitive Huckabee will be now that McCain is transitioning into party unifying mode.

Nebraska Dems: Nebraska Democrats abandoned the longstanding, late May primary in favor of this February 9 caucus for this cycle. The county meetings have staggered start times but the state party's web site claims that results will start coming in around 8:15pm(ET) this evening. As I've made clear over the course of this week's posts, Obama has done well in caucuses, so it will be interesting to see if that streak continues. Turnout is high in at least one precinct.

Washington: Both the Democrats and Republicans begin caucusing at 4pm(ET). The questions in the Evergreen state on both sides are similar to the questions posed above. Is Huckabee in this thing or is he out of his element outside the southeast? For the Democrats, can Clinton reverse the Obama caucus streak. It may be late on the east coast before we have an answer to either question.

Louisiana: The sole primary on the day's calendar closes its polls at 6pm(ET) on the Democratic side and at 9pm(ET) for the GOP. Louisiana is different than the rest of the South demographically, but Huckabee should gain a boost from whatever evangelical presence there is in the state. Likewise, Obama should do well among African Americans and in the state despite the way that Hurricane Katrina disproportionately ravaged that segment of the Pelican state's population. Thirty-two percent of the population was African American during the 2000 census before Katrina hit.

Tomorrow's slate is Maine, Maine and Maine. The Pine Tree state's Democrats have the spotlight all to themselves on Sunday as caucusing goes on across the state throughout the afternoon. And hey, it's a caucus, so Obama should have the advantage, right? Clinton does have the support of the governor (from The Fix):

Maine (Feb. 10 caucus): Although Maine holds a caucus, this is a state where Clinton is putting on a serious effort to win. Former president Bill Clinton will be in Portland tonight and Sen. Clinton will hold a rally in Orono on Saturday. She has the support of Gov. John Baldacci (D) and sees Maine as a chance to break up a potential string of Obama victories on Saturday as well as demonstrate the strength of her support in the Northeast. Women are expected to be a significant portion of the electorate as well, which should work to Clinton's benefit. Obama isn't handing the state over, having sent Rob Hill, who handled the campaign's field efforts in New Hampshire's primary, to Maine just after that state's vote on Jan. 8.

Here's more on the candidates' efforts in Maine from The Caucus.


I'll be back later today to look at the results as they begin coming in and discussing the ramifications of the outcomes (...if it isn't too late).

Meanwhile, I'm coming in a couple of days after the fact here, but still find this worth bringing up. Mitt Romney suspended the operations of his campaign on Thursday; ending what looked like the last, best challenge to McCain in the Republican race. And that's no knock on Huckabee. Romney was situated in a similar ideological area as the former Arkansas governor, but had plenty of his own money at his disposal. And money is what will be needed if a serious challenge to McCain were to be made. In the end though the math was just too difficult for Romney to overcome. Without winner-take-all contests dominating the landscape of contests in the next month, the task of catching up with the delegate total McCain has post to this point was a nearly insurmountable task. So now the focus shifts to McCain and Huckabee. McCain seemed as if he were opening a general election campaign with his speech a the CPAC conference. Huckabee meanwhile will continue to have to operate on a shoestring budget in the coming days and begin to wonder if the national party will start putting pressure on him to drop out of the race himself. It will be interesting to see how the media plays the seemingly decided GOP race in the face of the competitive Democratic battle as these contests continue.

It is Official in Michigan and Nebraska Dems Embrace an Early Caucus

Michigan solidified its presidential primary position with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's signature on Tuesday. The Democratic governor signed SB 624 into law moving the state's 2008 presidential primary to January 15. You can read more from the AP and from CQ. This is a daring move from lawmakers and party leaders in Michigan though. With the DNC leveling its all or nothing delegate ultimatum to the Florida delegation and with the RNC not holding back either, Michigan is gambling for sure. Also not helping is the fact that the top Democratic candidates have now pledged to skip out on campaigning in any states violating the Democrats delegate selection rules. It will be an interesting showdown between Michigan/Florida and the national parties as this thing plays out. Both states appear to be taking a defiant stance.

Also, Nebraska Democrats made the news on Wednesday after deciding on abandoning delegate selection by primary. The typical late May primary has been dropped in favor of a February 9 caucus (the same day as the primary in Louisiana). The state party claims the move was made to "energize the party." Energizing by creating a contest that fosters lower turnout. I know I'd be energized if I was a Nebraska Democrat. Jokes aside however, both Nebraska and Louisiana would be the first in line to be important should the de facto national primary on February 5 produce muddled results.