What to expect when you’re expecting (Super Tuesday results)

February 5, 2008

Any minute now, the polls are going to close in Georgia, so it’s a good time to review what results observers can expect to see tonight and when. (All times EST)

7 p.m.: Polls close in Georgia, which is expected to be one of Barack Obama’s stronger states.

8 p.m.: Polls close in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Keep an eye on New Jersey and Connecticut, which are expected to be especially competitive on the Democratic side.

8:30 p.m.: Polls close in Arkansas, which should be one of Hillary Clinton’s stronger Southern states.

9:00 p.m.: Polls close in Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island. How big will Clinton’s margin of victory be in her home state?

10:00 p.m.: Polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Utah.

11:00 p.m.: Polls close in California, but keep in mind that millions of voters in the state participated via absentee ballot.

Midnight: Polls close in Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

12:30 a.m.: Polls close in Alaska.

There are some exit polls available, but as everyone should know by now, these are often unreliable, and may have very little predictive value. I’ve posted some numbers below the fold, so that readers who want to avoid them can do so.

From the first and second waves:

GA: C- 25.5, O – 75

CT: C – 45, O – 52.2

IL: C – 29.1, O – 69.6

AL: C – 37, O – 59.6

DE: C – 41.9, O – 55.6

MA: C – 47.3, O – 49.8

MO: C – 45.1, O – 49.8

TN: C – 51.6, O – 41.1

NY: C – 55.6, O – 42.2

NJ: C – 47, O – 52.2

AR: C – 71.2, O – 25.5

OK: C – 60.5, O – 30.4

AZ: C – 44.8, O – 50.5

Tim Tagaris reminds us: “These numbers often change dramatically from wave to wave. For example, the first exit poll #’s we got in Iowa showed Hillary in the lead. Over the course of the next few fiften/thirty minute intervals, they shrunk and eventually showed a healthy Obama lead. If these are the first waves (or even the second), they don’t mean all that much — especially hours from polls actually being closed in some of these locations.”

In other words, the numbers have “caveat emptor” written all over them. I pass the data along as an FYI.

MSNBC has declared GA for obama. he got 43% of the white vote.

  • This is worse than waiting for Christmas to arrive, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything. 🙂

  • I worked for four hours today in Santa Fe at one of the caucuses (really an election). My job was to hand out the paper ballots and from where I was sitting, I could often see the ballot as the voter was putting it in the box.

    It was crazy. Little ol’ ladies and men were voting for Obama. Teenagers were voting for Clinton! I “think” more people were voting for Obama, but I wouldn’t swear to it. The weather here has been rather shitty all day, but the voting from noon on was very good. Since I just moved out here, I don’t know many more people were voting than four years ago, but the polls seemed busy. Of course, voting was only from noon to seven.

  • Um, Dale? Are you suggesting that elections would seem less like horse races if only we didn’t have that pesky voting thing?

  • Edwards is still on the ballot in my state, so I voted for him. Obama is deluded: does he really think the Republicans zealots in Washington are going to grasp a hand stretched across the aisle instead of spitting on it? And Clinton is the McCain of Democrats. So Edwards gets the nod. I just want him to get enough delegates to be able to make the nominee give him the AG post.

  • Angry, I think we’re going to have a new wave of goopers especially since they are diving over the cliff like lemmings. Those in office now know that their days are numbered beit by being beat by dems or by other goopers. And THANK GOD (or the spaghetti monster) for that! 🙂

  • meet the new goopers, same as the old goopers.

    MsJoanne, what makes you think the new crowd will be any less radicalized and extreme than the last bunch?

  • One can only hope that the new flavor of goopers can see how fucked up the country is and will make some kind of attempt to get our economy going, reverse the trend that this rogue regime has inflicted upon us, and will be given some kind of mandate by their own supporters. Bush had an agenda going in (PNAC) and he made sure that the very few profited.

    Maybe I have some kind of hope, like Obama, that there remain some people who actually give a shit about this country.

    Of course, if we continue to tank, moving to Canada looks awfully appealing to me.or

  • Obama is deluded: does he really think the Republicans zealots in Washington are going to grasp a hand stretched across the aisle instead of spitting on it?

    No, but I suspect he realizes that bringing in massive numbers of new and crossover voters will spill over down the ticket and lead to an influx of new Democratic majorities in both houses, and he won’t need the Republicans.

    By the way, you do realize that given the delegate allocation systems of most states, Edwards would need to get 15% of the overall vote to get a single delegate? I say this as a longtime Edwards backer who’s praying he gets to be AG — but you likely just threw your vote away.

  • that there remain some people who actually give a shit about this country.

    We call them Democrats. 🙂

  • zeiteist (8) “MsJoanne, what makes you think the new crowd will be any less radicalized and extreme than the last bunch?”

    Perhaps, in part, because Shumer and Emanuel are recruiting rather centrist candidates, because so many Republicans don’t like the concept of ethics, so they retire, and because huge numbers of new voters will vote for a congressman/woman who matches their presidential choice.

  • Danp, I was referring specifically to the new Republicans that Ms. Joanne was hypothesizing would replace some of the old Republicans (or, as she called them, goopers)

  • If we’re lucky enough to get the radicals out of the next round of goopers we might have a chance. Hope is all we can do as we wont get all dems (if only there was a god!)

  • Just to remind people — or inform them if the only GOP they’ve ever known was the Gingrichized/Limbaughized/Roveized one — the Republicans, at one time, had a substantial number of ‘moderates,’ sometimes as much as half the party. They weren’t exactly great liberals — they were maybe slightly to the right or left of the Clintons — but they weren’t the howling idiots that are all that remain in he party (with a couple of minor exceptions like Olympia Snowe). Names like Javits, Case, Scranton, even Hugh Scott and, on some issues, Everett Dirksen stand out, but there were a lot of them. They’d be pariahs in their own party today, or would cross party lines like Jim Jeffords did because they would have been disgusted at today’s yahoos. For a good example from today, see Lincoln Chafee and his father.

    Maybe this is what MsJoanne is hoping for. It would be nice, but unlikely.

    But Obama has shown in the legislature (see Hilzoy’s wonderful endorsement) that he can even get today’s Republicans — and Illinois has had some of the worst — crossing over and shaking that hand instead of spittting on it — and he did it without — like a Clinton — moving from his own position.

  • MsJoanne – I don’t think you realize that there will always be those radicals on both sides of the equation. That 30-some percent that still supports Bush? They’re not going anywhere – there may be a fight within the GOP for its “heart and soul,” but the goal will be to come out with a party that is still clearly not-Democratic.

    You also have to realize that those who are the typical McCain supporters are thinking the same thing you are – that McCain gives them the best chance to woo the conservative Democrats away and force the radicals to mend their ways or get out of the Democratic party.

    As it stands, I think we stand a better chance of hanging on to core Democratic values, especially with the economy looking like it could be circling the drain. And please – don’t think I’m hoping for a recession-depression just to get a Democrat in the WH, but I think that we are better positioned on almost all the issues heading into November.

  • Prup, I appreciate your optimism, but maybe that sort of aisle-crossing works in Springfield, but Obama wants to go to Capitol City, where all the statesman in the Republican party fled long ago, the tenured zealots are leaving now, and what’s left are the Gingrinchers. For them, it’s Party before Country, and they can’t wait to gum up the works, and that’s just in the Congress. Think of all the mid-level bureacratic hires that can’t be easily purged. The entire government is filled with sleepers waiting to put an IED on every avenue of Democratic progess.

  • I’m not saying we should give up principles, but there were once moderates on both sides of the aisles. Before the PNAC neocons and the religious right took hold of the GOP. Dems always compromised for the good. Old school goopers did too at one time. But not no more. Those are the new school goopers I am hoping for. I don’t want any goopers, but that’s not realistic, so I hope the fiscally conservatives, the real conservatives return…with a good kick in the ass to the neonutbags and the righteous jerkoffs.

  • the problem with bringing back those good ol days of moderate Repubs is that when the Robinsonians, Gingrichites and Norquisters took over, they purged everyone else. my home of Iowa is a great example: Mary Louise Smith, a moderate Republican, was an institution here – former state chair, former national committee member. by the 90s, she had been voted off the state central committee and had to get press credentials to get on the floor of the Republican National Convention. the delegation was entirely rabid Iowa Right to Lifers. many of my friends who were moderate Republicans left the party already (one was precinct chair for Biden this year!) there are no moderates left to run or take seats from the hardcores. only younger, equally rabid hardcores.

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