M.I.S.S...Oh, it's time for Mississippi (...before the long layoff)

Well, off we go again for the last time before the Pennsylvania primary rolls around on April 22. With no debates scheduled and obviously no contests to be waged, it will be an interesting time in this race. Not since before Iowa on January 3 have we had such a span between events (...and even then it was in July 2004. We can thank North Carolina for having an extended court debate over congressional districts for pushing that primary-turned-caucus to that late date. So, at least the wait won't be that long).

It will be an interesting stretch simply because the frontloaded system wasn't suppose to allow for this sort of contest. Super Tuesday had proven the decisive primary day since at least the 1996 cycle. [And one could argue, as I have, that, even though the race wasn't wrapped up in the way that McCain finished things off in Texas and Ohio last week, the nominations for the GOP in 1988 and the Democrats in 1992 were all but over on Super Tuesday.] As we go forward then, both the campaigns and those political junkies following them will be in for a different sort of battle. The "backloaded" system of cycles past yielded breaks more like what we saw between Wisconsin and Texas-Ohio than what we will witness from Mississippi to Pennsylvania. Of course, the campaign started in late February instead of early January then, so that accounts for the six weeks to be endured starting tomorrow. In other words, there is quite an unprecedented void to be filled.

Tonight we have Mississippi on the menu. As we saw in last week's post, the state fits the profile of the other deep South states that have gone thus far (and have gone to Obama).
The average margin of victory in those other contests (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina) was a hair more than 25%. That is the number to keep your eye on tonight. If Obama clears that hurdle then it is on to Pennsylvania with an argument of "He was supposed to win that one" from the Clinton campaign. If she can get the margin under 25 or even 20 points then she may be able to say that she did better than expected. Granted, that's a tough argument to make when that type of margin will yield a pretty big disparity in the delegates won from Mississippi. However, there's a long time until Pennsylvania (Have I mentioned that yet?) and the Clinton folks could try out that line of argument. The polls (via Real Clear Politics) are indicating that something under 20% is possible for Clinton. The average of the five polls taken since last Wednesday is a bit more than 15 points. Turnout was expected to be lighter than what it has been in other states this cycle. Much will depend on how much of the electorate tonight is comprised of African Americans. The bigger that percentage, the better Obama is going to do.

Early on (8:22pm) no results have come in from the Magnolia state (polls closed at 8pm eastern).

Speaking of results, Obama managed another caucus win in Wyoming over the weekend. There's nothing too shocking about the win. However, some of the results were interesting. No, not the 10-10 vote tie in Niobrara County. Teton County in the upper northwestern part of the state (just under where Yellowstone is) began its meeting at 4pm (mountain time). This was after nearly 90% of the caucus results were in (and reported--leaning toward Obama). And how did Teton County come out? It was an 80-20 split for Obama; by far his largest margin and in the county with the third highest vote total. Now I know how those Californians feel on presidential election night. We'll call it the west coast (of the Yellowstone River) bias. That may not have been the cause (Hey, Jackson Hole is in Teton County.), but that is a pretty drmatic shift in what had been a 55-40 race to that point. That pushed Obama over 60% across the entire state, giving him an extra delegate at Clinton's expense.

Still nothing out of Mississippi at the 8:40pm mark. Time to check the exits over at the Drudge Report. From the AP report, Obama won the black vote 9:1 with that group making up about half of today's voters in Mississippi. That's a recipe for success but also one that speaks toward a racial division within Democratic primary voters. Obama does do well in red states, but in the South, the racial polarization could potentially hurt efforts for the Democrats to make inroads there. In other, more homogeneous red states Obama does well also (among the select few who caucus), but will that be enough to make gains in those states? Those are the questions that Clinton's wins last week planted in the minds of Democratic primary voters (at least those who haven't voted) and as long as the narrative continues along this path, the longer the race will remain at a stalemate.

8:48pm: I've got to stop following the results on the New York Times site. There's something to be said about being cautious about making a call, but at the same time, everyone else has already (presumably at 8:01pm) call it for Obama.

What does that seemingly inevitable result mean for the race?

"He was supposed to win there."

"But remember the delegates."

And so it goes on the march to the Keystone state.

Wyoming Democrats, You're Up!: An Examination of Event Scheduling

It is interesting that the Wyoming Republican party moved their caucuses to January 5 and got lost in the shuffle; stuck between Iowa (Jan. 3) and New Hampshire (Jan. 8). Cowboy state Democrats, on the other hand, opted to wait it out and adhere to their scheduled March 8 caucus date, and they will end up receiving more attention than the GOP contest in Wyoming despite the move. Bill Clinton stumped for Hillary in the state on Thursday and both Hillary and Obama were in the state yesterday (see Slate.com for a map of the stops).

Candidate stops are only part of that equation though. Clinton made two stops in Wyoming yesterday while Obama stuck to where he's been successful--college towns--with a stop in Laramie at the University of Wyoming. But that doesn't differ from the number of visits the Republican candidates made. Fred Thompson was in the state soon after he announced in September and Mitt Romney made three stops in the state on November 18 (see again the Slate.com map linked above). So Republican visits actually outnumbered those of the Democratic candidates (Of course you'd have to control for the number of candidates still in the race at the time...if you were to use this as a measure of attention. More Republicans were in the race at the time of their Wyoming caucuses than there are Democrats now that their caucuses are being held.).

Media attention figures into this as well. Media attention though, is largely a function of candidate attention to a state. So why are Wyoming Democrats getting more "attention" now than their Republican counterparts in the state got in early January? Much of it has to do with timing. Both contests were the only events on their respective dates, but the Republican caucuses were sandwiched between Iowa and New Hampshire on the same day as bookend New Hampshire debates for both parties. In other words, the Wyoming GOP did not have a recipe for success. That the Democrats in the Cowboy state do, is more a function of the competitiveness of the Democratic race at this point than the state party's decision to hold a March 8 caucus. [Plus being between Texas-Ohio and Mississippi is a lot different than being between Iowa and New Hampshire.]

Typically, demand for calendar dates is frontloaded. So having a contest that is the only event on a particular date or week is a much more difficult proposition early on the calendar than later. The tradeoff though, is that those "only event" contests (those not named Iowa or New Hampshire) are, more often than not, on dates that come after the point at which the nomination(s) has (have) been decided. The outcome then is that attention wanes because the state is not decisive. Let's use Pennsylvania as an example. The late April primary date in the Keystone state has been outside of the "decisive zone" during the Super Tuesday era. So while the state is rich in delegates, it is not in decisiveness. Since the contest is still competitive for the Democrats this cycle and almost guaranteed to be when Pennsylvania rolls around on April 22, the state should receive more attention than is usual. In fact, you could argue that since both the Clinton and Obama camps are after Philadelphia ward leader endorsements this weekend, attention is already greater than it has been in the past.

Wyoming Democrats then are getting a bit more attention than you would otherwise expect this year. Caucuses got under way there early this morning with the last one commencing at 4pm (mountain time) this afternoon. Results may trickle out as the day progresses like they did for the Republicans in January, but won't be fully in until later this evening. There are already reports that (surprise) turnout is high at at least one caucus. Seven of the states 18 total delegates are on the line today.

Superdelegates: The Deciders [March Edition]

Since it has been a few weeks, I'll bump this post back to the top. We've endured the Obama surge and the Clinton counter, and now the focus is shifting back to the superdelegates as the decisive faction of delegates in the Democratic race (not necessarily the way the DNC would have wanted things to play out). Ohio senator, Sherrod Brown was on NPR this morning talking a bit about the calculus that superdelegates go through in making their decisions.

In the post linked at the outset of this one, I go through some of the steps in this calculus. It had changed somewhat as Obama made his surge over the last few weeks, but as Clinton rebounded on Tuesday, the race was pushed back into doubt. That, in turn, brought the superdelegates and their decision making calculus back to the fore.

One thing that we can add to this calculus is that since the race has continued a month beyond Super Tuesday, the pressure to wrap this nomination up has intensified. That pressure though, is counterweighted by the desire among superdelegates (and perhaps the DNC) to avoid the perception that they are the ones making the decision.

The DNC may need to change how this superdelegate discussion is playing out in the media though. Instead of allowing the superdelegates to be portrayed as instruments of the party that have been given the power to potentially overturn the will of the people, they need to begin talking about the superdelegates as the arbiters of the various Democratic primary and caucus voters. If they begin talking about how the race is a tie and will continue to be through June, then it becomes necessary for some individual or group to break the tie. Well, they have a trusted panel of 796 individuals in place to make such a decision. Does that line of argument hold water? Maybe, maybe not. But the superdelegates as unfair institutional quirk, is not working for the DNC. The complication here is that the superdelegates too, may be unable to effectively break the tie. But that's a story for another day.

The Clinton End Game Strategy

If you haven't caught this story yet, be sure and pop over to The New York Times and check out the end game scenario from the Clinton camp. You have got to love a discussion of primary states in a general election (almost electoral vote) context:

"Campaign advisers said they believed Kentucky and West Virginia could ultimately be in play."

Florida and Michigan: The Elephant(s) in the Room

As Clinton's victories plunged the race for the Democratic nomination back into doubt yesterday, the Florida/Michigan question was brought up yet again. Ever since the two states held non-sanctioned primaries ahead of the February starting point for all states not named Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the idea of a do over contest has been floated as a possibility, albeit a far-fetched one. [FHQ should take this opportunity to remind its readers that this is an issue on the GOP side as well. Republican rules called for any state holding a contest awarding delegates before February 5 to lose half its delegation. And that includes New Hampshire, Wyoming and South Carolina. Iowa and Nevada were exempt because no delegates were at stake during the first rounds of their caucus processes.] The tension on the issue was ramped up further today as the governors from both Florida and Michigan (Republican governor Charlie Crist-FL and Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm-MI) issued a joint statement calling for their states' full slates of delegates to be seated at their respective conventions. This plea didn't fall on deaf ears at the DNC, where chairman, Howard Dean, was quick to issue a response. Essentially, his argument was that the states both held contests in violation of the national party rules and that they had until June 10 to submit and carry out a new delegate selection plan.

Round and round the merry-go-round goes. Let's break this situation down from the perspectives of each of the parties involved (The status quo takes this issue all the way to the convention and becomes another issue altogether, so our focus here will be on weighing the pros and cons of a do over caucus or primary for each group.):

1) The national parties:
(Pros)--With the hard line the DNC is taking, a revote is the best case scenario for them. Delegates are seated, voices are heard, rules are followed and you have a slate of convention delegates willing to participate in any rule making session involving the 2012 cycle. Oh and a convention fight is averted. Also, the candidates get to spend time in both states, building important organizations for the general election.
(Cons)--Does this solve the other problem facing the party--an near equal division of delegtates between the top two candidates vying for the nomination? No, probably not.

2) The state parties:
(Pros)--Delegates are seated, voices are heard.
(Cons)--$$$$. Where is the money to pay for an all new contest going to come from? The cost of the primary was a point of contention when the bill to move Michigan's primary was being debated in the state legislature there. I doubt with the economy heading south, that the legislature, the governor or their constituents will be willing to fork over the necessary cash to pull this thing off. That leaves the state party with the tab. They also have to swallow a bitter pill when having to basically cave to national party rules. [Of course they could continue the game of chicken and wait for the Rules and Bylaws committee to blink first before a floor fight breaks out at the convention. That falls in the "don't play with fire, Scarecrow" category though.] I'm not as clear on the economic situation in Florida, but the price tag for a do over would be considerable in a state of that size; big enough to scare off a GOP-controlled state legislature from acting. UPDATE: Now I have a better idea of the situation in Florida, thanks to The Caucus, via the Miami Herald. The state legislature won't be paying for a new contest there:

"Pointing to the state's grim economic outlook, state legislative leaders, all Republicans, ruled out paying for another primary. The Jan. 29 vote, which also included other statewide and local issues, cost about $18 million.

'There is no money this year,' said House Speaker Marco Rubio, the West Miami Republican who spearheaded the idea of moving up the primary date to increase the state's clout."

For the latest from Michigan, here's a story from the Detroit News (via The Caucus).

3) The candidates [This is a tough one because it differs from candidate to candidate.]:

(Pros)--For Obama, it means actually being on a ballot in Michigan. For Clinton it means getting a chance to actually beat Obama instead of the "artist formerly known as 'uncommitted'" in Michigan and to beat him again in Florida. Also, Obama likes caucuses. With Wyoming on Saturday set to be the last caucus before Puerto Rico in June, another series of caucuses would potentially be a welcome sign. For Clinton though, she'd have time to gear up for these contests in areas where she has some natural advantages (retirees in Florida and union members in Michigan).

(Cons)--For Clinton, if the contests are caucuses, it means going toe to toe with Obama in caucuses. But for Obama, it means that her campaign would have time to prepare. Also, as with the national party discussion, this doesn't necessarily solve the delegate division problem, which opens the door to the possibility of a convention battle.

What does all of this tell us then? Money and pride are standing in the way of all three parties coming together and hammering out a solution. That's not like politics at all. The state parties and Clinton know that they can take this as far as they want to knowing that the national party in no way wants this decision to go to the convention for fear of the ramifications in the general election. Of course that could cast Clinton in a selfish light; putting her personal good ahead of the good of the party. On the other hand, the national party and Obama (How's that for a team after Clinton appeared to be the establishment candidate before the contests started?) know that if Clinton prevailed in such a scenario, she could be at the head of a dysfunctional family known as the Democratic party; not an enviable position to be in for a general election. The compromise on this, if there is one, is going to prove somewhat elusive. As the Democratic party is apt to do, fairness will be included in this somehow. And that means making the sacrifices as near equal as possible for all parties concerned.

On to Wyoming! To Mississippi! To Pennsylvania!

Perhaps I should add a "WOOOOOO!!!!" at the end of the byline and finish off the "Dean scream" speech analogy. I'll pass.

Now that Texas and Ohio (Fine, Rhode Island too.) have sent the Democratic nomination race back into undecided territory, the focus shifts to the next round of states. [Didn't I lament the tendency to do this in my Nevada caucuses post-post-mortem?] Let's have a look at the particulars for Wyoming, Mississippi and Pennsylvania (A tip of the cap to thegreenpapers.com is warranted here. The information is from them.):

	Delegates	Event Type	Open/Closed?
Wyoming	18	Caucus	Closed
Mississippi	40	Primary	Open
Pennsylvania	187	Primary	Closed

Given the table, what are the first impressions of these contests? Well, as I said in the post earlier this morning, at first glance Wyoming and Mississippi appear to be in a group that can be considered Obama's bread and butter. Wyoming is a caucus and as we saw last night in Texas, Obama's power in those types of contests cannot be questioned. [Incidentally, Wyoming's is the last caucus of the 2008 cycle with the exception of Puerto Rico which brings up the rear on June 7. In other words, that well is drying up for Obama.] He has won all the caucuses but Nevada, but he got more delegates out of the Silver state than Clinton. Real Clear Politics doesn't have any polls up yet for either Wyoming or Mississippi and I wouldn't wait around on those. There are seven delegates that are directly awarded in the first step of the caucuses on Saturday, five more at the state convention in May and six superdelegates at stake in Wyoming.

Mississippi's contest is like many of the other contests across the deep South: the electorate is heavily African American tilting the state in Obama's direction. He won those states by an average of twenty-five percentage points (AL +14, GA +36, LA +22, SC +29--source: NYT Election Guide). The focus for the Obama camp will be on turning out the vote in the state's 2nd congressional district where most of the African Americans are and thus the largest piece of the delegate pie (7 delegates. The other four districts have five delegates each.). Applying the 25 point margin to Mississippi would give Obama a roughly nine delegate advantage coming out of the state which would get back a third of the net delegates he lost to Clinton during yesterday's contests (according to the AP delegate count). So while 40 delegates (minus seven superdelegates) seems like a drop in the bucket and can bolster the delegate advantage he holds currently.

The one quirk in Mississippi is that the contest is an open one. Now that the GOP race is over, could some Republicans cross over and vote for a candidate they feel would not stack up well against McCain? And could it amount to a difference in the outcome? Outcome, as in statewide percentage breakdown, slightly. Outcome in terms delegates netted, certainly. And the delegate count matters because things are so close.

But that leads to Pennsylvania. The six week charge to the Keystone state after Mississippi would be an intense one (One that party insiders may like to avoid. Could superdelegates intercede? Obama and the DNC may hope so, for different reasons.). [I find it interesting that Pennsylvania insists on being called a commonwealth, yet the commonwealth's nickname is the Keystone state.] That time span between contests becomes as important, if not more so, than the contest itself. I can't imagine a scenario where the tensions between the two campaigns doesn't turn extremely negative. It won't be a McCain-Huckabee affair. And that negativity could affect Pennsylvania in ways that no one could even begin to predict (Well, someone could try, I suppose.).

What I believe we'll begin to see though is that the candidates will begin to micro-target some of the congressional districts where the most delegates are at stake. The distribution of delegates within those nineteen districts ranges from three to nine. Over a six week stretch, you'll begin to see more attention paid to those delegate-rich districts. Another thing that has not been mentioned is that this stretch allows for a return to retail politics; negative retail politics, but retail politics nonetheless. Six weeks is a long time. And with only seven contests remaining after Pennsylvania (plus Guam and Puerto Rico), it isn't far-fetched to imagine an awful lot of focus on the commonwealth.

The rules in these three states are not unlike what we've seen in earlier primaries and caucuses, but the timing of them on the calendar leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

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.]

Texas Revisited

I was just alerted to a new layer in the Texas primary/caucus situation (Thanks to Dan Reed for the heads up on the column in the Houston Chronicle.) that may have some interesting ramifications for the Democratic race in the Lone Star state tomorrow and beyond. Sure the news out of Texas and the Clinton campaign has been that a challenge to the results of the primary/caucus could be imminent if they didn't appear be on the up and up (A Clinton win in the popular vote but an Obama edge in delegates won, for example).

Normally, I'd draw parallels between the Texas situation and the challenges brought by the Clinton camp over the casino caucuses in the lead up to the January Nevada caucuses. Texas, though, is different. [I know, a groundbreaking statement there.] Texas, like so many other states across the South and a few other districts across the country, must submit to a preclearance from the Justice Department under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now, I'm assuming that the state Senate districts that have been the basis for dividing up the delegates available from the state, have been cleared by the Justice Department. While there may not have been close elections in presidential primaries, there undoubtedly have been close contests those state Senate seats and thus the potential for a challenge to the way those districts have been drawn. [No, competitive elections are not necessarily the root of these challenges, but they could trigger one--at least from the candidates' perspective.]

The primary then is not the problem. The caucus is. And that is where the questions arise here. Is the Texas caucus subject to these voting rights act challenges? Some party (individual/group not political party) could bring suit but it would be against the Texas Democratic party and and not the state itself. And that is where the Texas situation falls back into the same area that the Nevada challenge fell. Caucuses are party functions used to decide delegate allocation for the purposes of selecting the parties' nominees. The courts have a history of yielding to the parties (as they did in Nevada earlier this cycle) on these types 0f decisions, citing that the decision is one of party business. A Clinton challenge, if it comes to that, would have to result from an irregularity in the primary results and not the caucus.

From the looks of it DOJ will be in the Houston area monitoring polling places during the primary tomorrow. Sadly for Clinton though, those areas contain many of the African Americans that will be supporting Obama and thus not fertile ground for a challenge.