Grand Finale Night Liveblog II: Montana and Obama's Speech

10:45 PM. To the less generous commenters: I don't really feel badly at all about our projection in South Dakota. There were versions of the model that had Obama winning by 10 or 11 points, and there were versions that had Clinton winning by 7 or 8 points. In the end, I went with a sort of compromise between the two, and caveated in the write-up that Clinton could outperform those numbers if you use a version of the model that gives more weight to the trends inherent in the race, rather than assuming that the demographics are stable from state to state. (It's also probably the case that your margin of error is going to be higher with this sort of thing when you look at a state that has one congressional district as opposed to 20).

At the same time, South Dakotans behaved in a somewhat unusual way, in that Obama's favorability scores (on questions like whether voters would be satisfied with him as the nominee) were as high as they were in many states that Obama *won*. This was a state in which voters got a positive message from both candidates, and the late deciders broke to Clinton because she spent more time on the ground there. It may be instructive about what Clinton might have been able to do had she a more positive message throughout her campaign. There's a pretty good argument that the beginning of the end for Clinton was way back in November with "now the fun part starts".

10:32 PM. re: the comments. Nope, no bragging vis-a-vis ARG. It looks like the South Dakota margin is going to come in at 10 points (it might close a tiny bit as most of the unreported vote is from Indian reservations), which almost exactly bisects their Clinton +26 and my Obama +5. This is the whole argument, I guess, for combining polling with demographic sanity checks, which is what we do for our general election numbers.

It does look like we'll beat ARG in Montana, though.

10:18 PM. More from Sean:

"I fervently agree that the extended campaign has made Obama a much better candidate. On the night of New Hampshire, he turned a shocked and depressed staff around immediately. On his conference call, he explicitly told them the loss would be a blessing in disguise. And after contesting 56 contests, there is no doubt Obama's ready for McCain. He's salivating for McCain.

This is a candidate who has been through the gauntlet and shook up the world.

I'll have to put some thoughts together as far as Brian Schweitzer as VP. Jon Tester just threw that out there with obvious impery live on MSNBC."

10:01 PM. I don't know if this means anything, but to the extent I've been able to watch two channels at once, CNN's coverage has actually been much more critical of Clinton than MSNBC's.

9:49 PM. The Obama website has yet to update it to include Montana, but this little graphic deserves more credit that it's gotten for building a sense of momentum throughout the ultimately decisive month of February:



9:30 PM. The largest remaining scheduled moments in the campaign between now and November are the conventions and the debates. Is there any doubt that Obama is going to deliver a better convention night speech? Is there any doubt that, the first time he and McCain appear on a stage together, the contrast in age, height, and tone is liable to be pretty striking? McCain needs to figure out some way to wage a sort of guerrilla warfare campaign. If everything sticks to the script, Obama is going to win.

9:17 PM. Sean is somewhat less equivocal on Clinton's speech than I am:

"'We have won enough swing states to get to 270 electoral votes.'

I am very much looking forward to the end of the relentlessly cynicism. She knows most Americans won't know enough to immediately call out the deception underlying those kinds of effortlessly and endlessly repeated comments. The Clintons and their surrogates have peppered the land with outright contempt for the intelligence of Americans when it comes to building arguments. Yeah, there's a 1-to-1 map with winning a state in a primary and winning it in the general. Sure. The disdain for facts, the Lanny Davisication of political spin is something I am looking forward to putting behind us. After 8 loooong years, my tolerance for that kind of drearily self-serving cynicism is nonexistent.

As far as the content of Clinton's speech, while I am emotionally closed to her for her behavior this campaign cycle, that speech was not aimed at me. There were some very nicely worded turns of phrases that surely connected with many of her supporters, particularly that each vote was like a small prayer (though I think she stole that from Newman's closing in The Verdict). I understand that her supporters need to hear some of those things. Even chant Den-ver, Den-ver one last time for good old comfort. She isn't deciding anything tonight, it got decided on her. That was always the way out.

2012 is not an option. It's something to talk about for people who have to speculate, but I think if she really believed it were an option should Obama lose, she needed to speak to the people like me, to begin to try to open to her. And she made no attempt in that regard, nor did I expect her to."

9:11 PM. Back to South Dakota for a moment: the exits have Barack Obama having won the "other" vote (a.k.a. Native Americans) by about 12 points. Relatively little of that vote has been tallied yet, so the margin is probably going to tighten by a couple of points.

9:03 PM. The exits imply a 14-point win for Obama in Montana. The strongly divergent results in two relatively similar states are a good reminder of how much time spent on the ground can matter.

9:00 PM. Networks call Montana for Obama. Ultimately, it's pretty fitting that the candidates split the last two states.

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Grand Finale Night Liveblog

*** Newer material will be posted in Thread #2

8:54 PM. Obviously, this is a speech that can be read in a lot of different ways. I've had separate friends e-mail me to say that it was the best speech she's ever delivered, and the worst thing she's ever done. But -- I don't know -- I think it's possible to read too much into this and that in the heat of the moment. From a party unity perspective, it might even be healthy for Clinton (and by proxy her supporters) to press their case one last time.

8:39 PM. If anyone's wondering why we've been getting mixed messages out of the Clinton campaign, just look at the candidate herself.

8:35 PM. From Sean:

"How much fun do you think that was for Olbermann to break into McCain's painfully pat speech to announce Obama is the presumptive nominee? On a scale of 1 to 10... an 82?

I second Nate's thought about McCain coming off far better in one-on-one interviews, especially chummy ones. In interviews (Jon Stewart springs to mind), McCain actually comes off as likeable. These speeches are grueling and they don't hold the attention. He makes Bob Dole look downright riveting. For some reason, he's chosen "condescension" as his orientation toward Obama. Five months of condescension, once the public is actually playing attention? Smirkingly self-aware chuckles at his own "clever" turns of painfully canned phrases like "that's not change we can believe in!" Yeah, that's not gonna work. Ask Ms. Xerox.

It's really hard to think of a worse match for the country's furious mood at its government in a major change election year than condescendingly cynical smirkery at someone who is offering big change. Of course, Harold Ford. Jr. found McCain's speech "powerful and compelling." That's a direct quote. (On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough loves Harold Ford, Jr. Loves him.)"

8:25 PM. CNN and MSNBC call South Dakota for Senator Clinton and ... nobody cares. American Research Group and Matt Drudge might have really done a favor to Obama tonight.

8:15 PM. I'm ripping this off from a commenter, but I was also struck by the extent to which every time McCain said "That's not change you can believe in!", I had a Pavlovian response of "That's change you can Xerox". We're going to notice little echoes like that throughout this campaign.

8:04 PM. The exit polls show only about a 2-point advantage for Clinton in South Dakota. (EDIT: This was wrong; the margin was ~8 points in the exits and I apparently forgot how to do math). On the very early returns that are coming in: I haven't really parsed the state on a county-by-county basis, but I'd guess that Obama's strongest areas will be in Sioux Falls (Minnehana County) and on the Indian Reservations. (Shannon County, which went more heavily for John Kerry than any other county in the country, looks to be the big one). We don't have data in from those areas yet.

8:01 PM. MSNBC and CNN call the nomination for Obama. We can finally say that it's over. His media people planned and staged this day masterfully and he's going to get some slobbering media narrative out of it.

7:41 PM. We'll be here until ... I don't know when. Two relatively worthless thoughts about McCain's speech before the narrative shifts back to the Democrats: (1) If Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan could keep people's attention with a stump speech for about 15 minutes, and Hillary Clinton for about 10 minutes, McCain's time frame is probably more like 5 minutes. I think he'll find that his strength is more in quick-hit, quick-reaction stuff rather than these sorts of set pieces. Fewer speeches, more interviews. (2) Clearly, McCain's primary campaign color appears to be a handsome shade of blue, but the green background got me to thinking: when was the last time a nominee from one of the two major parties used a color other than blue or red on their yard signs?

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Primary Night Thread II (Oregon)

11:45 PM. At this point, the areas left to report look pretty evenly divided between Clinton and Obama-leaning regions, and pretty evenly divided across the state. Thus, I'd expect Obama's present 58-42 margin to approximately hold.

11:22 PM. Getting back to Kentucky for a moment: if you take away Louisville, Obama lost the state by 47 points (71-24). If you take away Louisville and Fayette County (Lexington), he lost it by 51 points (73-22).

At least in terms of surface-level demographics, West Virginia looks something like Kentucky less Lexington and Louisville. But Obama actually backtracked about 10 points in those West Virginia type of regions from last week.

One thing that may be a factor is what I call the "lapsed Democrat" vote. Kentucky has about 1.6 million registered Democrats, but had just 713K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (45 percent of the registered Democrat base). By contrast, Oregon has about 800K registered Democrats, but had 943K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (118 percent of the registered Democrat base).

Although Kentucky nominally has a closed primary, what may have happened here is that you have a lot of voters who are registered as Democrats but routinely vote Republican for national office -- sort of a relic of the old Solid South. And about 15-20 percent of supporters of each candidate said they'd vote for John McCain over their own candidate.

It's a weird dynamic, but I guess we can at least draw the conclusion that if those lapsed Democrats are going to start voting Democratic again for national office, it won't be for a Democrat like Barack Obama.

10:49 PM. Cribbing from PocketNines on the Oregon delegate math:

OR-1. 4-3 Obama, will stay that way. We'd predicted 4-3 Obama.
OR-2. 3-2 Obama, will stay that way. We'd predicted 3-2 Clinton.
OR-3. Very close between 5-4 Obama and 6-3 Obama. We'd predicted 6-3 Obama.
OR-4. 4-3 Obama, will stay that way. We'd predicted 4-3 Obama.
OR-5. 3-3 Obama split, will probably stay that way. We'd predicted 3-3 split.
At Large. 7-5 Obama, will stay that way. We'd predicted 7-5 Obama.
PLEO. Very close between 3-3 Obama and 4-2 Obama. We'd predicted 3-3 Obama.

It looks to me like OR-3 -- the more urban of the two Portland districts -- and the PLEOs are the only things in play. Obama should win somewhere between 29-31 delegates, Clinton 21-23. I'll bet he'll just get the margin he needs in OR-3 and just miss it on the PLEOs.

10:26 PM. It sort of takes the fun out when the vote comes in this fast.

10:14 PM. Oregonian voters were against Clinton's gas tax plan by a margin of 63-26.

10:07 PM. The vote that's come in so far is from Portland and Eugene. Obama is beating our projections by just a point or two in Portland, but the large margin in Eugene bodes well for him.

The 13-14 point exit polling margin is probably something of a ceiling floor for him. I don't *think* they polled anyone who just dropped off their ballot today (typically about 30 percent of the electorate) and in Portland for instance he's running at about 64-36 when the exit poll showed it at 60-40.

10:02 PM. He does get such a call, with exit polling extrapolating to a 13-14 point margin.

9:59 PM. Whether Obama gets an immediate call of Oregon is probably a pretty good over/under for whether he'll beat pundit expectations.

9:51 PM. Things were getting slightly unwieldy in the other thread, so we'll start a fresh one here.

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Kentucky/Oregon Primary Night Thread

9:28 PM. It's an excellent speech on its own merits, but emotionally, I just think you get a much higher high if you wait the hour until Oregon comes in.

9:00 PM. The thing that I find intriguing about Sirota's Race Chasm theory is that it implies a certain amount of non-linearity in the way that people vote. It may not be simply a matter of adding and subtracting constituencies but rather there are various sorts of tipping points and network effects.

It's hard to believe that only 5 percent of the Democrats in Floyd County, Kentucky came out of the womb ready to vote for Barack Obama. But maybe the number is 20 percent, and the 20 percent talk to their neighbors in the 80 percent, and before long, they become part of that majority as well.

Toward that end, one thing that may be particuarly relevant in Appalachia is that it tends to have very low rates of mobility. People from outside the region don't tend to move there, and people from inside the region don't tend to leave. As such, any sort of network effects might tend to be magnified there.

8:38 PM. The operative question tonight is not so much whether Clinton can get close enough to have a path to the nomination, but whether she can get close enough that she thinks she has a path to the nomination.

Her tone in her victory speech tonight was different than in West Virginia -- and seemed to suggest that she might think she does have such a path. Howard Fineman seems to think she might think so.

She certainly came pretty close to her best-case scenario tonight in terms of her popular vote gain in Kentucky -- not so much because of the margin (which everyone except my model seemed to get about right) but because of the relatively high turnout. Conversely, the magnitude of Obama's margin in Oregon might be fairly important in terms of disabusing her of that notion.

8:19 PM. Floyd County, Kentucky: Clinton 11,215 votes, Obama 653.

8:08 PM. When they're finished counting Kentucky's votes, Obama will hold a lead in the + Florida popular vote count of about 180,000 votes. Obama is liable to get anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000 of those votes back in Oregon. Erring slightly to the lower side of that estimate, he'll probably exit the evening about 250,000 votes ahead in the +Florida count.

I have absolutely no idea how to project the results in Puerto Rico. A 25-point win for Clinton on turnout of 1 million would get her those 250,000 votes. A 13-point win (the margin in the only public poll of Puerto Rico) for Clinton on turnout of 600,000 would net her 78,000 votes. Either of these results are plausible. An Obama victory or a very close result also is plausible.

The narrative issue that Clinton faces, I think, is that her argument loses moral force if it all boils down to what turnout in Puerto Rico is liable to be.

7:45 PM. To follow up on my previous thought. If you Google the phrase: "as _____ goes, so goes the nation", here are the states that come up most often.

1. Maine        2,870
2. Utah         1,100
3. Ohio           965
4. California     692
5. Iowa           352
6. Florida        221
7. Missouri       216
8. Texas          154
9. West Virginia  110
10. Michigan      103

Maine was the subject of the original phrase, whereas Utah was the subject of a Mitt Romney joke. Nobody in the history of modern society has apparently used the phrases "As Oklahoma goes, so goes the nation", or, "As Alabama goes, so goes the nation". Until now.

7:28 PM. Clinton: "It has often been said: As Kentucky Goes, So Goes the Nation".

Actually, if you Google that phrase, it comes up just 16 times.

7:15 PM. To answer SPorcupine's question: you can infer those numbers from the exit polls, and 15 percent of Clinton supporters who stated a preference said that they'd vote for McCain in November.

6:42 PM. Chuck Todd clearly reads David Sirota. For what it's worth, I'm not completely convinced by the Race Chasm theory, but I think it makes for an interesting discussion.

FWIW, Obama has opened up a lead of a couple of points in Jefferson County (Louisville) and turnout there is enormous. Although, there's something funny going on with the reporting right now and I'm taking everything with a slight grain of salt at this point.

6:32 PM. It sure looks to me like Obama is not going to achieve viability in KY-5. He's losing some counties like 91-7.

6:16 PM. It's one thing for a campaign surrogate to spin information, but Terry McAuliffe just flat out made something up on Hardball, claiming that there was a general election poll in Kentucky that showed Hillary Clinton ahead of John McCain. If such a poll exists, there is no evidence of it anywhere on the Internet. I also heard him make the same claim about a week ago, so it wasn't any kind of misspeak.

6:02 PM. Kentucky called by all networks for Clinton. Exit polls suggest a big win, about 64-29. The exit poll also suggests that only about 9 percent of the electorate was black. Based on typical patterns in other states, you'd expect black turnout to equal about 150 percent of the state's African-American population, or 12 percent. So it could be that Obama's lackluster campaign in Kentucky meant that he didn't turn out his base. Or it could mean that the exit poll was a little off and Obama might slightly outperform those numbers.

5:53 PM. I don't want to call this a "liveblog" because it will be updated fairly sporadically, but if I have any thoughts worth sharing, they will go here.

Don't be fooled by the early results in Kentucky: almost everything is from Louisville. We had projected Louisville at 42/54/4 (Clinton/Obama/Other) and it's actually coming in at 48/49/3. So, Clinton is overperforming our estimates in this district by 11 points, which would imply about a 30-point win overall.

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Election Night Thread

12:10 AM. Hillary Clinton is going to win Indiana. A big chunk of Clinton-leaning votes just came in from Lake County, which now has 98% of precincts reporting.

Instaupdate: MSNBC, indeed, calls it for Clinton, which looks like a pretty safe assumption.

11:54 PM. You think the Obama-Clinton margin is close? The margin in Indiana's gubernatorial primary is now within about 600 votes. Also: apparently all of the Gary vote has been counted, except for absentee ballots. I don't think Obama is going to do well enough in Hammond to make up the difference. He might need to pull in some votes from the remaining Marion County precincts if he's going to have a shot at pulling this out. Of course, there is also the provisional ballots issue.

11:38 PM. With some new voting in with Lake County, Clinton's margin has been reduced, but we're still showing her squeaking out an win by 0.9 points. It appears that most of the Gary vote has been counted, and that most of the outstanding vote is from Hammond, which is 15% black. I don't quite think Obama will pick enough votes in Hammond to win the state -- in fact, I'd guess they'll split more like 50:50, or maybe 55:45 Obama -- but we'll see. Obama also stands to gain a few points in Marion County and Monroe County (home to IU) which has yet to count its absentee ballots.

11:20 PM. Another milestone of sorts: if you COMBINE the results from Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina, it now appears that Obama will have gained in the popular vote between those three states. I am not sure about the delegate count.

11:10 PM. If we look at the outstanding vote OUTSIDE of Lake County, the model shows 3,771 votes for Obama and 3,000 exactly for Clinton. Most of that comes from the couple of precincts in Marion County that have yet to report. So Obama has just a tiny bit of wiggle room outside of Lake Co, but we all know where this is going to be decided.

Intrade shows Obama at 86% to win the Democratic nomination and 15% to win Indiana. For my money, those numbers should be more like 92% and 30%.

11:00 PM. Because of the provisional ballots issue, it's a strong possibility that neither candidate will be able to declare victory in Indiana until days from now. (Well, except that Clinton already did declare victory).

10:55 PM. Hendricks and Porter counties are now fully reported, adding slightly to Clinton's margin. However, those votes were expected to lean Clinton, so our model is still projecting a 1.0 point margin.

10:46 PM. The first votes have been reported from Lake County: Obama leads 27,991 to 9,470 with 28 percent of precincts reporting. It is not safe to make a straight extrapolation from these numbers because some precincts in Lake county are predominantly black and very Obama-leaning, while others will be Clinton-leaning. My model -- which does not make its projections that way, now show Clinton winning Indiana by 1.0 percent or about 12,000 votes, but obviously, we're at the point where absolutely anything can happen. Insta-update: Keith Olbermann says that the vote that just came in was in fact from Obama-leaning Gary, and that about half of Gary's vote remains to come in.

10:43 PM. Discussion question: name one state that an Obama-Clinton joint ticket might carry against John McCain, but that neither candidate might carry individually. For me, the first state that comes to mind is Indiana.

10:18 PM. Obama's popular vote margin in North Carolina is now 219,022, bettering Clinton's in Pennsylvania.

One positive for Clinton, though: she won Southeast Indiana by about 2:1 against Obama. That's what her margins are liable to look like in West Virginia and Kentucky.

10:03 PM. Russert says that there are about 229,000 outstanding votes in Indiana. I had figured on a slightly smaller number, around 195,000. So, that's a little bit more breathing room for Obama. On the other hand -- looking at the counties that surround Lake County (home to perhaps 160,000 of those votes) -- Obama did not particularly outperform his projections. I am guessing that his pulling this out is -- I don't know -- about a 12-to-1 longshot.



9:49 PM. Clinton's margin in Pennsylvania: 214,224 votes. Obama's margin in North Carolina with 13 percent of the vote yet to be counted: 204,419 votes. The remaining vote in North Carolina looks to me to be pretty representative of the state as a whole, so he will likely finish with a win in the 230,000 vote range.

9:45 PM. Tippecanoe is in, and Obama did not pick up quite as many votes there as he was probably hoping for. His path is now steeper, as we show Clinton's winning margin ticking up to 2.3 points.

9:40 PM. Isn't there something ironic about a candidate who's only remaining path to the nomination to insist that all votes are counted in Florida and Michigan giving a victory speech before all votes are counted in Indiana -- and three of the four major networks say the race is too close to call?

9:28 PM. Clinton's numbers ticking upward a bit on stronger-than-expected results in Clark and Gibson Counties. We now show her winning Indiana by 2.1 points and about 27,500 votes. Obama needs to hope that the outstanding precincts in Marion County contain a lot of ballots, and hope for both a big turnout and a substantial margin (+15-20 points) in Lake County. It's a bit of a longshot parlay, but if the network's models look anything look anything like mine, the CBS call of Indiana remains premature.

9:10 PM. Unless there's something funny going on with the early balloting, this margin in North Carolina should stick at about 14-15 points for Obama.

8:52 PM. I'm now showing Clinton winning Indiana by 1.8 percent, or about 23,000 votes. And one thing to remember about Indiana is the provisional ballot issue -- people who were rejected at the polls because they did not meet the state's ID requirements could still cast provisional ballots and prove their identity later. It's possible that we'll still have a hanging chads type of situation.

8:33 PM. I've had my head so buried in the numbers that I've barely paid attention to Obama's speech. For a speech that at once seeks to speak to voters and superdelegates, he's struck a pretty effective balance.

8:28 PM. CBS has apparently called Indiana for Hillary Clinton. Others haven't. I think that call is *way* premature. I now project a Clinton win by 2.3 points, and if Obama blows out his numbers in Lake County -- that could still very easily tip the state.

8:13 PM. Obama's margin will come down a bit in North Carolina, mostly likely to somewhere in the 12-15 percent range. But double digits looks safe based on the county-by-county returns. And turnout is overperforming expectations in North Carolina too, so he could fairly easily clear 200,000 popular votes.

8:04 PM. OK -- St. Joseph now did just come in, with the margin a couple of percentage points ahead of our projection for Obama.

8:01 PM. My projection for Indiana is continuing to tick down a bit as Obama's margins are coming in better than expected in Marion County. I now show a Clinton win by 2.9 points. But there are no returns in yet from several of the strongest Obama counties: Lake, Monroe, St. Joseph, Tippecanoe. This could turn out to be pretty interesting, and while Clinton remains the favorite, we may be here awhile before the networks are ready to make a call.

7:42 PM. Current projection: Clinton wins Indiana by 3.6 points. But most of the outstanding returns are in Northern Indiana, where Obama has been outperforming my model. He has a chance here -- not a particularly good chance, but a chance.

But the reason why David Alexrod looks so happy right now is because the fact that Indiana hasn't been called yet has given more currency (rightly, in my opinion) to a discussion about the Limbaugh vote. If the storyline from tonight is: "Obama wins decisively in North Carolina; Operation Chaos puts Clinton over the top in Indiana" -- that's one of Obama's better-case scenarios.

7:03 PM. It looks to me like turnout in Indiana is going to be around 1.1 to 1.2 million, blowing away almost everyone's expectations. Turnout in Marion County (Indianapolis) actually is coming in ahead of my projections, but that's also true for almost every region in the state.

6:48 PM. I've tried to rig up a model to project state results as the county returns come in, sort of like the networks use to make their calls. The Indiana margin is still looking to me like 3-6 points for Clinton, depending on exactly what assumptions you make.

6:36 PM. Buy Obama stock at Intrade, which is trading up, but only by a couple of points. His objective tonight was to avoid a disaster, and he's done that.

6:33 PM. CNN exit polls say African-American turnout in North Carolina was 33% of the electorate. Pollsters 1, Poblano 0.

But it does look like I might have gotten the right result for the wrong reasons. Obama won the black vote overwhelmingly -- 91-6 -- and avoided getting completely killed with the white vote (59-36).

6:30 PM. MSNBC and CNN immediately call North Carolina for Obama; the exit polls appeared to have Obama ahead there by about 14 points. My impression had been that it took about a 15-point margin for the networks to call a race out of the gate, so this would be consistent with that impression.

6:16 PM. Obama is overperforming our projections in Northern Indiana, and Clinton in the Southern part of Indiana. Which could mean that our projections stunk, that the Bubba Gap is widening, that there are some home-state effects for Obama in Northern Indiana, or any of the above.

Right now, it looks to me like we'll eventually be looking at a Clinton win by about 6 points. If turnout is light in Gary and Indianapolis -- could be double-digits. If turnout is heavy -- Obama could squeak by with a win.

6:04 PM. Among people that voted for Hillary Clinton, 7% said they would NOT be satisfied if Clinton wins the nomination. I'll take Operation Chaos for 200, Alex?

5:37 PM. I don't want to call this a "liveblog", because I've got several competing distractions tonight and I'm not certain how often it will be updated. But early results for Clinton in Indiana look good for her, coming in a few points ahead of our benchmarks.

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