Super Tuesday

The media still isn't reporting exactly how many delegates each candidate won on the day, which seems like a mix between uncertainty over some of the outcomes and just not being on the ball. With that in mind, I'm unable to from a full picture of what went on, but I'll go ahead with what seem like reasonable projections of how that will all shake out.

First, my own experience -- I showed up at my polling place around 2:30pm, in the midst of something of a rush (several cars pulled in right before me and another immediately following). It was the longest wait I've ever had to vote, but not all that bad. Just over 300 ballots had been turned in before mine, though I can't speak as to the breakdown between Republicans and Democrats (though based on unopened packages of ballots I saw, along with the stack of ballots they were handing out, I'd guess it wasn't a large split, maybe 160-140). The lady started to hand me a ballot for the Dems before I said I was a Republican. At least three people seemed to have problems voting in just the time I was there. One person had her old address on her driver's license, and was asked to show two items with the new address; she only had one and said she had to leave for work, and left without voting (I believe she could have cast a provisional ballot, but the poll workers were more interested in getting something else with her current address before she left). Another woman wasn't on the rolls, but said that it had always been her polling place and was directed to another woman for assistance (not sure what happened there, but I'm guessing a provisional ballot, unless they discovered that her polling place had changed). I didn't catch what happened with another woman, but it seemed like she was a Democrat who had wanted to vote in the Republican primary. It was my first time voting at this new location, which is a Baptist church on the same street as the Baptist church that was my last polling place. Oh, and, yes, I did vote for Fred Thompson.

As to the results, I said the other day that Romney would perform "surprisingly well" in Arizona, and the buzz was certainly about that early in the evening, but that was partially because of bad exit polling that showed him tied with McCain. Last I checked, with over 90% of the vote counted, McCain led him 47% to 34%. McCain trounced Romney in delegates, as expected, but the biggest surprise was Huckabee, who spent a good portion of the night leading Romney in projected delegates. While Romney supporters are free to rejoice that McCain did not do as well as he might have, it really doesn't help them that the beneficiary was Huckabee.

As for the Democrats, Obama won more states, which will probably generate more headlines, but Clinton won the more important ones. I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but I ran them earlier, and with about 1680 delegates at stake, the states Clinton won had just over 1000, while the ones Obama won had just over 640, with New Mexico too close to call. With just under of third of those delegates not yet projected to either candidate, Clinton has only a slight lead in delegates won, but I expect that to grow some (though not to a 1000-640 advanatage). As I said would be the case, it looks like Clinton has won the day, but by such a narrow margin that this race could drag out for some time. Oh, and don't fall the "analysis" that came out before Tuesday, saying that, given delegate projections based on polls, Clinton would have to win 70% of the delegates after Super Tuesday to clinch the nomination; it ignores the "super delegates" (Dem officeholders and assorted others) in counting her delegates, but not in counting the number of delegates she'd need for a majority.