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Big night tonight -- while Arizona will be an easy victory for Mitt Romney, Michigan is neck-and-neck. If Romney wins Michigan handily, it'll mark the start of the end of this primary campaign. If he wins narrowly, he can claim a moral victory. But if he loses, the race will continue in chaos at least through Super Tuesday.
Results: CNN (AZ, MI) | Google (AZ, MI)
Most polls will close in Michigan at 8 p.m. ET, but there's a sliver of the state that will close an hour later. Arizona also has stagged poll-closing times, some at 9 p.m. ET, others an hour later.
No drama in Arizona tonight, but Michigan will be HOT.
Things to look out for:
- Early exit polls suggest that Santorum could get a boost of 3.5 points from Democratic crossover voters. Will that be within the margin of victory? Now we can assume some of those numbers are genuine. So the final results would likely have to be in the territory of within 2 percentage points to credit Operation Hilarity.
- How will Romney do among "strong conservatives"? That's been his achilles heel, and will continue to be a problem area in future contests unless he can start gaining with that crowd.
- How weak exactly is Romney? Even if he wins Michigan, can he at least break the 40 percent mark, or is he still so hated among Republicans that he can't muster a bare majority of them?
- Can Michigan count ballots faster than Maine or Nevada? One thing it has going for it -- government workers will be counting the vote, not Republicans. We already found out how incompetent the latter is.
- Can Michigan Republicans attract anything beyond their core constituency of older white dudes?
This is going to be a fun night.
5:01 PM PT (David Nir): Though polls close throughout the vast majority of Michigan at 8pm ET, a tiny sliver in the Upper Peninsula is in the Central time zone, so polls there don't close until 9pm ET. For that reason, full exit polls won't be available until all MI polls close.
5:14 PM PT (David Nir): The very first trickle of votes in Michigan is coming in.
5:18 PM PT: Raise your hand if you're listening to Newt Gingrich's speech? You are? Can you please explain to me what the hell it's about? Something about trees.
5:20 PM PT:
If Newt tells a story about a tree falling, and nobody knows what the heck he's talking about, does it make a sound?
— @philipaklein via TweetDeck
5:21 PM PT (Jed Lewison): Sorry, Newt, CNN's focus group dial meter flatlined:
Maybe if he'd just reassured everybody that the trees were the right height...
5:24 PM PT: CNN broke away from Gingrich's speech, suggesting they'd get back to it. But after a long commercial break, they said "fuck it" and ignored it. Thanks for that, CNN!
5:27 PM PT:
Robots making calls disparaging Mit Romney? That's awful. That's like... fratricide.
— @HunterDK via TweetDeck
5:28 PM PT (David Nir): With 3% now reporting, Santorum is up 42-38 over Romney.
5:31 PM PT:
5:31 PM PT (Kaili Joy Gray): Liveblogging continues here.