Make your predictions, defy expectations, stick your finger in the eyes of the pollsters in our Super Tuesday thread at TPMCafe.

From the AP:

New Jersey’s governor is having problems voting in the state’s presidential primary.

Jon S. Corzine was scheduled to cast his ballot at 6:15 a.m at the Hoboken Fire Department Engine Company No. 2. But the two machines aren’t working and it’s not clear why.

Late Update: The guv has voted.

The Politico‘s Roger Simon identifies “the heart of the collapse of Edwards’ campaign” as “his inability to sell himself as an authentic champion of the poor — and I am not just talking about his expensive haircuts.”

Yeah, because that’s what American voters have always been looking for: an authentic champion of the poor. Come on.

There’s one guarantee I can make right now about tonight’s results. They are going take make either Zogby or SurveyUSA look like complete fools. Which one I’m not completely sure, but definitely one of them.

Consider this spread. Zogby has his final California number as Obama 49%, Clinton 36%. SurveyUSA has Obama 42%, Clinton 52%.

I think that may be the starkest spread; but down the line Zogby has immense momentum behind Obama and a series of results that would bring him in with something between a solid and a smashing win. Meanwhile, SurveyUSA has close to the exact opposite. Comparing these numbers to other polling organizations they’re both somewhat outliers, though Zogby’s results are closer to the average of other polls than SurveyUSA.

Rove goes to work for Fox News.

From TPM Reader EC at 9:25 AM …

The new optical scanners in my voting precinct (in West Hartford, CT) were not working this morning either. We were instructed to leave our ballots and told that they would be scanned later. I miss the old lever machines! The turnout looked substantial, however, at 7:20 a.m.

GE checks in from Manhattan …

Josh, you can tell EC that lever machines aren’t any great prize either… one of the 2 machines for my election district in Hell’s Kitchen went down while I was in line. Things were still moving pretty fast, but the line was up to about 25-30 when I left, which is highly unusual for our precinct. Lots of energy out there this morning.

Ever since we launched the news section over on the right side of the page, I’ve been a lot more sympathetic to headline writers and their plight. When I see doozies now at other sites, my reaction is less holier than thou and more there but for the grace of god go I.

Still, this one currently up on the NYT front page is pretty funny:

One point to keep in mind as we watch the results tonight. A lot will depend on whether the race has now shaped up with both Clinton and Obama and roughly-matched and known contenders, or whether, because of her history and name recognition, Clinton is the de facto incumbent vs. Obama the challenger. It could make a very, very big difference because a number of the polls we’re seeing have high undecideds. And it is a very reliable rule of thumb that undecideds break for the challenger.

The thinking behind that rule of thumb is that the undecided voter knows the incumbent. And if they haven’t decided to vote for them by election day they’re very unlikely to do so. In other words, the late undecided voter in most cases is a voter who’s decided to vote against the incumbent but hasn’t quite gotten their head around the idea yet.

It’s a pretty reliable rule. But is she the incumbent? The one example I can think of that points against that is New Hampshire. My recollection is that Obama’s final numbers were pretty close to what the polls predicted. The ‘surprise’ was that the undecided broke overwhelmingly for Clinton, thus giving her her margin of victory. South Carolina seemed to point in the opposite direction.

As the primaries reach their climax and the general election looms, one third party attack group is going all the way to the Supreme Court in its quest to unleash Hillary: The Movie (or Obama: The Movie, if it comes to that) without the nuisance of campaign finance restrictions.

TPM Reader KB checks in …

Josh, people are scratching their heads about Limbaugh preferring to lose in November than win with McCain. And even if he comes around publicly (as I suspect he will eventually), privately he and guys like Richard Viguerie understand that over the long term the real battle is about the “post-mortem.” Winning the post-mortem is the key to their continued power going forward past 2008. Think about it: if McCain wins then there will be a real sense that these former power bastions such as talk radio are becoming less relevant to a new wired citizenry, etc. For Rush and Viguerie and Land and the Family Research Council, this is big business and they don’t want to give up even some of their power, perceived or otherwise. On the other hand, if the primary voters choose McCain (with the aid of the hated lib media) and McCain goes on to lose in November, then they can argue that they were right all along – this outcome allows them to win the post-mortem against voices such as David Brooks and Ryan Sager who seek to break the mold once and for all. This is high stakes for all of these people. I’m not surprised by Rush on this at all.

I’m not sure I agree with every jot and tittle here. But he’s quite right about the stakes. If McCain can win with Rush and Coulter and the rest of them openly and volubly against them, it will mean that they’re paper tigers. And their juice in GOP circles will be greatly diminished. Not that people won’t still listen to Rush’s show and he won’t make money selling racist songs on his subscription only website, but GOP pols will feel much freer to ignore him. The fact that he’s on track to win the nomination is bad enough. They can only recover if he loses the general. Then they’ll argue that it was because he bucked the Movement conservatives.

Meanwhile, there’s another angle to this — one that David Keene of CPAC was refreshingly candid about in the article about conservatives and McCain in the Times about why a lot of the insider activists are sidling up to McCain so rapidly …

Meanwhile, conservatives are growing increasingly “resigned” to the idea of a McCain nomination, said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, adding that among Washington activists, many of whom, like him, double as lobbyists, self-interest may also be a factor.

“There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House,” Mr. Keene said. “This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”

Like I said, refreshing candor. And I don’t mean that facetiously. But Keene’s right. A lot of these DC conservative power-brokers make their very substantial livings as lobbyists. And trying to sink McCain does not pay.