Gallup’s final tracking poll is now out and it shows a 5 point spread: Clinton 47%, Obama 42%.
Looking over the last week or so Obama converged with Hillary twice, but each time seemed to bump up against a ceiling.
A view from the email bag …
So, Obama makes a dramatic, massive surge in these national tracking polls, then the surge seems to level off for a few days and you instantly proclaim a “ceiling?” Obama is the candidate bringing in massive numbers of new voters and crossovers but he has the ceiling? He always closes in on her mile wide inch thick support whenever the actual date of the election looms, but HE has the ceiling?
What the F are you smoking?
Meanwhile the 100% name recognition candidate who has literally a popularity ceiling (I won’t waste time explaining why HRC obviously has both a Dem Party ceiling and a national ceiling that start her off needing to claw desperately to eke out a 50+1 win) doesn’t get a “ceiling” comment?
Just endorse! We Obama supporters will respect you more for the openness. We won’t blame you, Josh, we will still love you. We will just know that with you we were always working with a bad set of facts on this one.
“What does it say about Barack Obama that it takes two of you to beat him?”
“See, that’s just a bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in 1984 and 1988.”“We don’t need to be raising the false hopes of this country about what can be delivered.”
As I told the emailer, at least he’s not following the crowd. The majority of emailers divining our secret agenda now say it’s a secret pro-Obama agenda. So it’s nice to have some balance.
As we’ve done for each of the other primary and caucus night’s we’re going to be bringing you live results starting at 7 PM this evening from primaries and caucuses around the USA, which is about three hours from now. So in today’s episode of TPMtv we bring you a final status check, what the polls say, when they close, when to expect the results and, well, and so much more …
What would a brokered convention look like? Even crazier and more chaotic than you can imagine. Ed Kilgore gives us the details.
John Geraghty at NRO has pretty reliably supplied early exit polls in this cycle’s primaries. He now says he’s got early exits out of Massachusetts. In the first two waves, he says it’s coming in dead heat on the Dem side and Romney up by 20 points.
Mitt descends to the 8th level of self-parody …
“Senator McCain has proven that he will say anything to win this election,” Romney told reporters. “He has taken on a very aggressive, bold strategy of misrepresentation, and it works in politics to a degree.” Romney then listed several issues on which, he says, McCain has flip-flopped, including the Bush tax cuts: McCain once opposed them but has more recently voiced his support for the policy. It was a departure for Romney, who just a couple of days ago would have likely declined to be drawn into a tit-for-tat about an opponent’s strategy.
McCain’s fibbing and flipping on the Bush tax cuts is pretty hilarious. But I guess Mitt ain’t the guy to make the case.
We’re seeing the first GOP exits polls from states around the country. And John McCain isn’t doing all that well. To be clear, he’s still dominating. And with the GOP’s overwhelmingly winner-take-all rules, he’ll win lots and lots of delegates. But Mitt Romney is doing respectably in a lot of states. And Mike Huckabee appears to be in the lead in a four of them. Meanwhile, it’s a tight race in Arizona between McCain and Romney, with the home state senator leading by only 5 points.
Just to be clear. The big headlines here look the same. McCain’s winning big states across the country. Romney’s only winning in four states. But these results do show that McCain’s winning this without really closing the deal. At least not yet.
These are the second wave exits. Not certain whether or not they’re weighted. Assume they’re not.
GA: C- 25.5, O – 75
CT: C – 45, O – 52.2
IL: C – 29.1, O – 69.6
AL: C – 37, O – 59.6
DE: C – 41.9, O – 55.6
MA: C – 47.3, O – 49.8
MO: C – 45.1, O – 49.8
TN: C – 51.6, O – 41.1
NY: C – 55.6, O – 42.2
NJ: C – 47, O – 52.2
AR: C – 71.2, O – 25.5
OK: C – 60.5, O – 30.4
AZ: C – 44.8, O – 50.5
These below are first wave …
NM: C – 45.6, O – 51.8
UT: C – 39.9, O – 60.1
CA: C – 49.6, O – 46.3