I got a cheesesteak and some chips, so another quick thing while I eat, and then back to trying to figure out some fun work things that I need to have done for tomorrow.

Anyway, I thought I would give some final thoughts on Super Tuesday before the polls actually close. (Except for Americans in Indonesia for whom the results are already in – 75% Obama, 25% Clinton.)

Of course, I gave most of my thought’s in this weekend’s podcast, but I thought it would be good to do it in writing. And then I realized I already had… in an email to someone earlier today. So rather than writing it again, here is what I wrote about 12 hours ago:

Subject: Re: SPF20080130: Edwards Out….
Date: 2008 Feb 5 09:44 UTC
To: (Name withheld)

… (other stuff) …

As for Super Tuesday (today!!!) I’m standing by what I said in this weekend’s podcast. Obama has been surging, but I don’t think he has had enough time to pull out enough clean wins that he will actually be ahead in delegates once today’s results are counted. (Especially since some of the states, most importantly California, have been voting by mail for weeks.) If he had another week, I think he would win in a lot more states and pull ahead in delegates. But while he has had a big surge, I’m not sure he’ll quite get there. The latest polls as of right now don’t show that. Hillary is still ahead in too many places, and comes into it with a delegate lead (when superdelegates are included). Of course, polls lag reality by a few days. So maybe with a last spurt of momentum over the weekend he could get there. We shall see. I can’t say I wouldn’t be pleased if that happened.

But I think more likely Obama will still be behind in delegates, but he will have closed the gap considerably in percentage terms, and the big question will be just how close he got and how it gets spun by the people reporting the event. Will it be: A) So close, nice try, but no cigar, Hillary wins! Woo! Obama’s done! or B) Obama closes the gap, his momentum is huge, Hillary may be ahead on delegates, but Obama’s momentum is unstoppable or C) Wow, we have a complete dead heat in the delegate count! For all intents and purposes it is a brand new race, now lets watch Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State on Saturday and see what happens then… and then Maine on Sunday… and Maryland and Virginia next Tuesday…

A, B and C above are all different ways to spin the exact same delegate count coming out of today. But which way of talking about it becomes what people pay attention to will make all the difference in terms of what comes next.

Having said all that, I think what happens in California will be a big part of determining that. In pure delegate terms, it is almost certainly going to essentially be a tie. One of them will get a little more than the other, but it will be close. But whoever “wins” will get all sorts of attention from it. Especially if it is Obama. If Hillary wins, she was expected to. If Obama wins, it will all be about the come from behind victory, etc. The latest polls are all over the place on this one. If you average them together you basically get a dead heat. So who the hell knows.

As of right now on the states with polls it looks like:

Obama: Illinois, Georgia, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah

Toss Ups: Alabama, Connecticut, Arizona, Missouri, California, Massachusetts

Clinton: Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma

(And then there are about 5 states with no polls at all, who the hell knows in those… but they are also smaller and matter less.)

I base the categories on it being a toss up if both candidates have some polls from the last week showing them ahead. If all the polls in the last week are for one candidate, I’m putting the state down for them, even if the trend is against them and the most recent poll shows them barely ahead (this is the case in New Jersey for instance).

In any case… with so many toss up states… and even the possibility for an upset or two in the “safe” states… it will be a very interesting night… I’m going to be trying to get out of my last meeting for the day so I can be home and in front of election coverage by the time the first state results start coming in at 00:00 UTC (4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern). And I will be pissed as hell if I can’t manage to be home by an hour later when a whole BUNCH of states start coming in.

Because things are proportional though, even if we get state “winners” early… it may be a bit later until we get good delegate counts. And if some of these states are close… especially California… it may be a long night.

And I’ll be enjoying every second of it. :-)

And for those of you who work with me who may read this, my last meeting turned out to be a duplicate of one tomorrow, so I’m just going to go to that one instead, so I won’t miss anything significant and I’ll make up any lost productivity on Wednesday and Thursday. :-)

OK, I’m also done eating now, so back to what I need to get done before I can leave… :-)

One more quick note, and then I have to run to work.

I shot a quick email off to Ivan, but didn’t bother posting yesterday (as I was still editing and putting together the podcast) when I heard about Maria Shriver’s surprise Obama endorsement. I think it might just be the thing that puts Obama over the edge in California. In recent polls he has been neck and neck. That will get him a bunch of additional in-state free press.

Delegates in CA will pretty much split close to evenly no matter how things go there, but whoever actually pulls out the “win” will get a lot of attention from it. (As mentioned in this week’s podcast.)

Which, by the way, for those of you who read the blog but don’t listen to the podcast, you’ve missed some of our best weeks ever these last few weeks. Well, at least we’ve been having lots of fun. :-) You should all tune in damn it. :-)

As expected, Romney gets the delegates from Maine. If you look at the charts, this means that as of today the delegate race is very very close. Romney and McCain are neck and neck.

But then you look at the Super Tuesday Polls and you realize that Romney is way behind in most of those states. Romney does seem to have some positive momentum in a few states. But it looks to be too little too late. If there were lots of proportional states like on the Democratic side, one might say that he was close in a lot of states and it might be very competitive still after Tuesday. But most of these states are winner takes all.

Given that, this may well be effectively over on the Republican side after Tuesday.

Absent a Mittmiracle. :-)

CNN finally adjusted the delegate counts to reflect Edwards being out of the race. He loses a bunch of delegates, but not all of them. Superdelegates obviously are free agents so now are uncommitted again. What happens to the other delegates varies by state. In many cases, the primaries and caucuses are just the first stage in the process, and if the process isn’t finished yet, then we end up with uncommitted delegates or delegates to other candidates eventually. In cases where the process is done, in most cases Edwards keeps his delegates. Of course, even then, the delegates are actual people and they may or may not end up voting for Edwards at the convention. This could be affected of course by if Edwards ever endorses. This is also affected by the fact that officially Edwards just “suspended” his campaign rather than ending it. If that status changes, the status of even more delegates changes.

In the mean time, despite all the talk about Edwards leaving potentially helping one candidate or the other, in the short term delegate race in percentage terms it helps Clinton more, as it widens the gap with Obama. Of course, in number of delegate terms, it stays the same. But I’d give the advantage to Hillary here. As a percent of delegates allocated, she is now almost as high as she has ever been.

Oh yeah, and on the Republican side, Guiliani’s two delegates go away. But since he had only 2… Ron Paul has three times that amount… it is just barely even noticeable on the charts.

Pretty boring dem debate. Very civil for the most part. No big sparks. Lots of stuff anybody who has been paying attention has heard dozens of times before. Big kumbaya question at the end. Wolf Blitzer sucks.

End result, I don’t think this will move the needle much at all. The question remains can Obamas momentum in closing the gap with Hillary get far enough in just a few days to keep it very close or even take a lead on Tuesday? Or will he fall short, with Clinton maintaining enough of the strong lead she has now to take a decisive lead.

Today had the potential of having a major effect on the trends in the next few days. Instead everybody played it safe and I think this ends up being a non-event.

I’ll be watching the polls closely from now until Tuesday though!