Polls

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Source : Gallup.

1. John McCain is officially the presidential nominee of the Republican party.

2. Texas is deadlocked in the primary vote : Obama 50%, Clinton 48%

3. People have been waiting for hours to get their caucus vote counted

4. Many precincts in Texas didn't have enough ballots

10:23pm EST
5. Barack Obama got in Texas 44% of the white vote, 89% of the black vote and about 30% of the Latino vote.

10:27pm EST
6. Obama now leads only 1% with 17% of the precincts counted in Texas.

7. Erica O Grady is also reporting angry caucus goers who can't get in to vote.

10:30pm EST
8.David All just tweeted from ABCNews where he will be talking about the voting results.

9. Ohio is a dead heat as well. Clinton has won in a lot of rural areas but results are pouring in for Obama from the heavily populated urban areas.

10:47pm EST
10. Clinton now is leading in Texas by less than 1,00 votes. No word from the caucus.

Austin's NBC News affiliate has conducted a pre-debate poll of the electorate and this is what they've found :

The race for the Democratic nomination is too close to call. The large percentage of "undecided" voters give even more weight to the CNN debates Thursday evening. As Senators Clinton and Obama both tour Texas, they will be reaching out to the undecideds to close the gap.

If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Democrats:

• Clinton 46%
• Obama 45%
• Undecided 9%

Margin of error: +/- 4%

If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Republicans:

• Huckabee 30%
• McCain 52%
• Paul 9%
• Undecided 9%

Margin of error: +/- 4%

Voter interest is high for the March 4 primary and as Texas plays a role in deciding the nominee, the expected voter turnout is historic.

Do you plan to vote in the March 4 primary?
18-39
55% (Democrats)
45% (Republicans)

40-59
61% (D)
39% (R)

60+
49% (D)
51% (R)

They are going to conduct the poll again after the debate. What's really interesting is the reason why they chose the company conducting the poll, Constituents Dynamics:

I believe that Hillary Clinton won for 4 very important reasons :

1. The campaign was able to get as many registered Democrats to vote for her as possible.

2. Since most registered Democrats who came to vote were women, the "tear heard around the world" was successful in getting her the last minute sympathy vote from people who ...

3. would have otherwise voted for John Edwards.

I think it is clear that for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race she needs to beat John Edwards, not Barack Obama. Edwards ran a remarkable game in Iowa. Had he had as much money as Clinton, he probably would have beaten her by more than just 1%. I am not sure though that under the voting trends of Iowa, he would have been able to beat Barack Obama.

4. The Obama campaign has insisted in equating their "I am not a black candidate" campaign with a complete disregard for the colored blogosphere. Yesterday was the day that it showed how much that has cost them.

So let's look at the numbers, courtesy of MSNBC.com :

Ah, yes, America. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, stoic in the face of adversity, populated by rugged individualists who want nothing to do with big gubmint.

Or so goes the tale told by the American Enterprise Institute.

The reality, as The New York Times again reveals today, is that the nation wants universal health care, and doesn't mind raising taxes to pay for it. We are, in short, a nation of flag-burning commie hippies screaming for socialism.

More after the fold.

"Hillary Clinton can't win a national general election". This is conventional wisdom among people who know about these things. As is so often the case with the conventional wisdom, this assessment is based on a very rich and consistent amount of data, collected and analyzed over years.

It stands to reason, however, that she also has loyalists; even Lyndon LaRouche does, after all, and who knows how he would fare if he'd had the good sense to sleep with a President. These loyalists rather recently were giddy over polling results showing her able to just break over the 50% hurdle in a national election. I said at the time that this was an announcement bounce, in a very customary and well-known pattern.

And so it was. Polling data released earlier this week and month shows Hillary losing New Jersey, and barely holding New York and Connecticut. Read on.

Political pollsters need to justify their existence. Chief among them is Rassmusen Reports. The company has turned its efforts at handicapping the 2008 Presidential race.

For the Democrats :

Following Election 2006, the nation can look forward to our first female Speaker of the House. Another woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, is the initial frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. However, another freshman Senator, Barack Obama, is close on her heels.

The first release of the Rasmussen Reports 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll finds Clinton the choice of 29% while Obama has 22%. Former Vice President Al Gore is number three with 13% and the 2004 Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards is also in double digits at 10%. The Democrats' 2004 standard bearer, John Kerry, is the choice of just 4%.

Not only do I find it risible people are thinking seriously about Obama for president; but am actually relieved that only 4% wants Kerry back. John needs a looooong vacation away from the political spotlight. He ought to focus on becoming the next Chuck Schumer.

I insist that Obama is too green to be considered presidential material. I'd rather see the profile of a Gov. Schweitzer raised significantly in the next 2 years. And I'm still looking at both Gore and Edwards independently since I doubt Edwards would want to play second fiddle to anybody this time around.

The papi chulo of ethnic polling has this to say about today's elections :

"You can expect the majority of Hispanics to show up to vote in New Jersey, where they are more than 10 percent of the electorate," Miami-based [Sergio] Bendixen said.

The border states of Arizona and New Mexico may also see Hispanics influencing the ballots in a year when immigration became a hot political topic.

Arizona was in the center of the immigration debate, and Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf has taken a hardline stance on illegal border crossings in his race against Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.

In neighboring New Mexico, Hispanics could play a key role in deciding whether Republican Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record) loses her re-election bid to Democrat Patricia Madrid, the state's Hispanic attorney general.

"Graf could lose to a Democrat with his strong anti-immigrant speech, and in New Mexico, Patricia Madrid may very well take the congressional seat of Wilson," said political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.

SWING VOTE IN FLORIDA
Bendixen said Hispanic votes could also play a key role in the Florida governor's race to replace outgoing Republican Gov.

Thoughts about the vagaries of voting machines today put me in mind of the mandatory tests used once upon a time--not just in the South either-- to prequalify voter fitness by proving oneself to the government already in power, by passing whatever tests it sees fit to impose on you, without your consent to be governed by test results because you can't vote yet.

Talk about a high stakes Catch-22!
I feel a rant coming on --

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. . . Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

I can see we need an open thread for new members. Here it is but not before we enjoy this little moment.

That's the enormity of President Shrub's dismal approval ratings.

Enjoy your open thread. Say what you like. Don't forget to say hello to the spooks at the NSA.