Barack Obama is a phenomenon...he is through to the final

[General Duke]

 

Obama sates

 

1. Georgia .

2. Minnesota.

3. MISSOURI.

4. Kansas

5. Alaska

6. Utah

7. Alabama

8. Idaho

9. North Dakota

10. Colorado

11.Connecticut

12. Deleware

13. Illinois

 

This is middle America, rural, white, black and its a sign that this race will go on

 

We do not have the votes of NM.

[General Duke]

In terms of delegates its close, news networks are reporting that Clinton might be ahead by 10-15.

 

Even in california, Ney York, NJ while hillary wins the delegates will be split.

 

Obama has narrowed the lead.

 

He took Ill, GA, MO, MN all very important races.

[General Duke]

Now on to the final states, DC, OHIO, WI,TEXAS up next...

[General Duke]

Obama

(Delegates allocated proportionally)

Alabama (52 delegates)

Delaware (15 delegates)

Georgia (87 delegates)

Illinois (153 delegates)

Kansas (32 delegates)

Minnesota (72 delegates)

North Dakota (13 delegates)

[General Duke]

Obama wins majority of states

[Xoogsade]

Obama all the way. What month is the presidential vote anyway? Nov?I never voted but might this time if Obama wins the Democratic ticket. The old lady is just as bad as McCain.

[General Duke]

^^^Its in November I guess.

However we still have a long way to go.

The next couple of weeks are crucial. He has momentum, he has money and now less states to compete in.

[Xoogsade]

^Obama has better chances of becoming a president if he wins now. Many republicans according to some polls suggested they are open to voting him in instead of McCain. However, if Mrs.Clinton wins, All republicans are dead certain to vote against her. American voters will be split 50/50 which isn't good for democrats.

[General Duke]

^^^I think this is a genuine shott at the top job. Obama is not Jesse Jackson or those before him, he is the real deal.

 

If you can win in Iwoa, Kansas and Alaska and your name is Barack Obama, then you have somthing special to offer.

[Xoogsade]

^ Indeed saxib, The clintons tried deceptively to depict him as black candidate for blacks and they failed miserably.

 

Minnesota is white majority state and voted for him just as many redneck states voted for Obama.

[General Duke]

^^^Indeed and thats quite remarkable, an unknown, young black man can go against the Clinton machine and the whole prejuidicial media and still survive.

[Xoogsade]

^ Aryan Nation Idaho voted 98% for Obama LOL. That is strange.

[NASSIR]

Winning more states is largely symbolic but more delegates count big in going forward with the race or who gets the democratic nomination.

 

Key states are Arizona Massachusetts, New York, Missouri, New Mexico, and California.

 

Although Obama lost California and New York, two key states, he stills gets his share of delegates.

[Dhagax-Tuur]

I think, it will be close, but Habartu will pocket it at the end.

[NASSIR]

As 24 States Vote, a Grab for Delegates, and an Edge

 

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: February 5, 2008

 

Forty-three presidential nominating contests in 24 states. Channel upon channel of the commentators talking about exit polls. The biggest prize of the night — California — being decided well after most viewers have headed for bed. A total of 3,156 delegates allocated under arcane rules on what could be the most significant night of the 2008 campaign to date.

 

This is a guide of things to look for on Tuesday night— key states, trends, interesting demographic developments, campaign-ending or campaign-extending developments — starting from when the first polls close (Georgia at 7 p.m.) to when the voting is completed in California at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

 

The Big Picture

 

There are two ways to approach the results. The first is old-fashioned: which candidates rack up the most states. But this is about more than popular vote totals; the point of these contests is to allocate delegates to the national conventions.

 

Thus, the big question is how much attention to pay to the results map on television — lighted up with, say, states that have swung to Senator John McCain’s column — and how much attention to pay to the delegate counter. The answer is pay attention to both, though put somewhat more focus on states for the Republicans and put somewhat more on delegates for the Democrats. The delegate count might matter more officially, but the state results could count more politically, and that will be the central tension of the night.

 

Democrats allocate most of their delegates proportionately; candidates are awarded a cut of the delegate pie based on their percentage of the vote. It is possible to lose a state and still get a majority of the delegates, and it is likely that the losing candidate will still get a substantial share of the delegates.

 

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will no doubt start claiming state victories as soon they can — with the goal of trying to get on television and grab the front-runner spotlight — but those results will probably remain largely symbolic. Assuming the race remains close, what matters going forward is who gets the most pledged delegates.

 

The Republicans’ delegate selection rules are different. In 8 of the 21 Republican contests, the winner gets the delegates — no dividing up the spoils. What that means is that it is going to be easy for a candidate to build up a big delegate lead on Tuesday night and, combined with winning some big states, credibly declare himself the party’s presumptive nominee. That is precisely what Mr. McCain is looking to do.

 

Keep in mind that the winner of the states is probably going to become known well before the delegate counts are finished, and that is going to color the way the results are reported on television and in newspapers. The outcome in California, a major factor in either way of judging the night, is not going to be known until the wee hours.

 

“Don’t be rushed into making an early judgment without California,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic political analyst. “You have to resist the pre-California spin unless someone is winning like 16 of the 22 states.”

 

The States

 

For Republicans, two states could end up determining whether the race goes on from here: California and Massachusetts, and this has nothing to do with delegates. Mitt Romney headed out to California on a last-minute trip on Monday, drawn by polls suggesting the race was narrowing, despite Mr. McCain’s collection of high-profile endorsements like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. If Mr. Romney pulls out a win in the nation’s largest state, no matter what happens anyplace else, he is unlikely to leave the stage soon.

 

By contrast, Mr. McCain — in a poke-in-the-eye moment — campaigned in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney’s home state. Should Mr. McCain win in Massachusetts and hold on to California, that would probably be the lights-out moment at the Romney headquarters. No wonder that Mr. McCain sneaked a last-minute trip to California onto his schedule for Tuesday morning.

 

For Democrats, watch California, Massachusetts, New York, Missouri, Arizona and New Mexico. If Mr. Obama wins California, that is a real momentum blocker for Mrs. Clinton: There are few states in the country that are more identified with the Clinton presidency than this one. But Mr. Obama has suffered one of those external political problems that often madden campaigns: a last-minute California poll that showed him closing in on Mrs. Clinton — in the process, raising expectations that he will win. No wonder Mr. Obama’s advisers are suddenly talking about the big surge of early voting in California before Mr. Obama began to break through there.

 

If Mr. Obama wins Massachusetts, that will be testimony to the power of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and a real sting for Mrs. Clinton, who once thought she had a comfortable lead there. If Mr. Obama comes close in New York, or in neighboring New Jersey, watch for a tough round of questions about Mrs. Clinton’s electability.

 

Finally, think of Missouri, Arizona and New Mexico as the swing states in this contest: Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are pretty evenly matched there. Missouri is a swing state in the general election, and might be one in this one as well.

 

The Voting Groups

 

Mr. Obama has been trying — with the use of surrogates like Oprah Winfrey — to cut into the advantage Mrs. Clinton enjoys among women.

 

The vote should also offer a test of whether Mr. Obama has succeeded in cementing what has appeared to be an exodus of African-American voters from the Clinton camp to Mr. Obama’s, as began happening in South Carolina two weeks ago. Georgia, with an electorate with a heavy African-American representation, and New York should offer a good and relatively early measure of that.

 

And whether or not Mr. Obama wins Alabama, that would be a good state to look and see if he can win Southern white voters.

 

And the final big question for Democrats: Will Mrs. Clinton maintain the edge among Latino voters that she showed in Florida and Nevada? New York and California should offer an interesting test, as well as of whether blacks and Latinos, uneasy political allies in many circumstances, break for different candidates.

 

The extent to which Republicans are coalescing around Mr. McCain, of Arizona, will be measured by how well he does in contests open only to members of his party, depriving him of the support of independents, who helped him so much in New Hampshire, where they could vote in party primaries. Again, California is the place to watch. To judge his potential strength as a general election nominee, watch to see if conservatives put aside their qualms about him and vote for him.

 

Among Mr. McCain’s Republican rivals, one key is evangelical voters. Mr. Romney is not going to be very happy should they continue to rally behind the campaign of Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist minister.

 

The Issues

 

With the economy having emerged in the last few months as the dominant issue, and with the race moving to a national stage, one development to watch is whether Republican voters will continue to focus as much on a subject that has divided their party, illegal immigration. The answer could be of particular importance to Mr. McCain, who was unable to compete in Iowa in part because many Republicans there saw him as too soft on the issue.

 

On the Democratic side, Mr. Obama has again started criticizing Mrs. Clinton for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. After her apparent success earlier in this campaign in putting the war vote behind her among Democratic voters, it would be problematic for her now to be forced back on the defensive.

 

Source: Nytimes