Voting Begins in Grab for Delegates, and Edge: Beyond the Democratic family feud, what to watch for

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Voting Begins in 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.... 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....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....

The States

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....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/us/politics/05memo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin