well, you’re dealing with a different mentality in massachusetts; progressive liberals who aren’t going to give Obama an opportunity because in their minds, ‘the country is not ready for a black president’. It’s a different kind of racism that will hold Obama back with their tiny mite mentalities.
They’re not accepting of the concept of “Yes. We. Can”.
CNN just flipped MO to an Obama lead Which is a tie in delegates but it’ll snatch another victory for Clinton where she’d have trumpeted how she won despite the endorsement of McCaskill.
Woot! Looks like I might have finally voted for a winner… the old trick of having St. Louis and KC wait to see how many votes they need to provide works again 
If this holds (and CA goes Clinton) it will be something like 13-9 or 14-8 Obama on the state-by-state tally. Much better than it looked even 5 days ago! And the Feb 12 states are much better for him demographically.
I’d genuinely like to know how the media/pundits can call a race when only 14% of votes have been counted. Is it just because they want to be first? Is there a valid mathematical reason that anything over 10% is enough to extrapolate the final results?
It’s a combination of exit polls and which precincts have reported (and the percentages in those precincts). That’s why MSNBC and AP screwed up MO (possibly). They didn’t figure in that even though there was only 5% of the vote left to report it was all in areas where Obama was ahead at least 2-to-1.
It’s still mostly exit polling and knowing where the precincts that have reported are. Sometimes a large gap is fairly obvious as well. If only 15% is in but there’s a gap of like 20,000 votes and you know about what the ratio of the voters were due to exit polling, you can decide whether or not there can mathematically be a lead change.
If 14% blows your mind, you should have seen Politico calling an Obama win in Utah with 1% of the vote in and Clinton up by 10% 
Granted, he did win, but still…
Does anyone have the splits of how the early voting went? I mean Edwards still pulled in 100k+. Would it be too much to ask for the networks to bring this up at all?
So what’s the bottom line tonight for the Dems?
Obama gets more states. Hillary gets more popular vote. No one seems to know who gets more delegates. Some sources have it Obama net +50 others have it Hillary net +50…I guess that’s the deciding factor.
Here’s a bar-graph representation of the delegate counts.
Right, I’m talking about the final count. The estimates from various sources are varying wildly.
Thanks for the responses to my question. I’m so dubious about exit polls after getting burned by 2004 results that implied Kerry was winning. Anyway, it just seems like they should at least wait for 50% of the vote to be counted. I know that’s hopelessly naive of me.
Does that bar graph take into account any state that had primaries today? How many delegates were up for grabs today?
MSNBC has Obama winning more net delegates. I’d call that a victory.
ETA: excluding superdelegates, of course.
Well, I’d say it’s pretty much a stalemate. Obama is probably in better shape if he can spin it as still coming out with the momentum even with losses NY (well, you’d expect a Clinton win) and CA (especially with all the early voting.) I think the schedule tips in Obama’s favor by allowing him to play to his strengths: smaller states, fewer states, and the ability to spend more time in rallies and the like. In the rest of the month should be HI, WA, NE, WI, LA, VA, MD, ME, and DC. If it goes all the way to March, there’s WY, TX, MS, OH, VT, and RI. That’s 15 states over 2 months instead of 21 in a few weeks at best. I really think that will help Obama. Personally, I think the superdelegates can be ignored until much later; after all, they want to back a winner.
Some fellow on MSNBC predicted a virtual delegate split after tonight between Obama/Clinton with 841/837 with +/-10 either way. Certainly not enough to call anyone the nominee.
That didn’t count superdelegates, though. Just the ones won by the states.
I would really like to know, too. They can call California for Senator Clinton with less than 18% of the vote tallied?
The one surprise was Huckabee. It doesn’t look like money can buy Romney’s nomination.
That is odd re: California but the margin of victory for Clinton looks massive. That in and of itself could be the begining of the end of Obama’s campaign.
No way. Not if he wins more delegates today.
Yeah, a CA win like that is going to be hard for Obama to beat her. 
-XT