A little more from the CNN entrance polls.
Among African-Americans: Clinton 16%, Obama 79%
Among Hispanics: Clinton 64%, Obama 24%
Another big story out of today’s showing on the Democratic side is the very disappointing showing for John Edwards. With 73% reporting, he was 4%.
It’s important to note that a significant factor here is the viability threshold as they had in Iowa. A look at the entrance polls shows the first choice number for him was probably a shade over 10%.
This may be the big story out of the Nevada on the Democratic side. A huge amount of the coverage of this race over the last week or so fed off the Culinary Union endorsement of Obama and the expectation that Obama would thus clean up in those controversial casino strip at-large caucus sites. Well, didn’t happen. Hillary carried at least 6 of the 9 at large caucuses.
CNN: McCain camp looking for a judge to keep polls open late in South Carolina.
Late Update: McCain’s South Carolina spokesperson walks this story back in an interview with TPM Election Central. Bottom line: lawyers for the campaign are still considering their options, and CNN’s source “did not have all the necessary information.”
MSNBC says 58% of SC GOP primary voters ID’d themselves as evangelicals.
I don’t have a good answer to this. I don’t expect Bill Clinton, who’s not a shrinking violet, to be neutral in his own wife’s nomination campaign. But I have to admit that the intensity of Bill Clinton’s attacks on Barack Obama really makes me uncomfortable. I know there are a lot of Democratic party insiders, mostly older than I am, who don’t like it either. But I wonder if there’s not some generational aspect to it for people my age. I was in my early 20s in 1992. And really throughout the 90s you couldn’t be a bigger Clinton guy than I was. So it’s hard to see that history (and it’s quite some history) leveraged to muscle this campaign.
I do find myself wondering what sort of crack Chris Matthews is smoking during the station breaks. He was just describing Hillary’s win in Nevada, saying she beat expectations that Obama was going to take it. Olbermann then helpfully pointed out that Hillary was actually ahead in all the polls.
A number of readers have flagged reports that Barack Obama actually won more delegates than Hillary (13 to 12) not withstanding the fact that Clinton won more state delegates and — according to the exit polls — a plurality of people who showed up to caucus. State delegates, national convention delegates, it gets kind of complicated. We’re trying to see if we can confirm this. Hillary just had some brief remarks in which she seemed to concede that it wasn’t clear who won more national convention delegates. We’ll bring you more when we can get confirmation one way or another.
Late Update: Greg Sargent was on the Obama conference call where they made their argument.
Is McCain actually going to pull this out? The early exit polls seem to show him with a narrow lead over Huck. Deeply disappointing.
Late Update: Hope is not lost. Huckmentum could still take the day.