I think it's about time we do it: it's time to count Michigan and Florida.

Now, I personally had been opposed to counting both of these states before since the primary was still going full force and who the nominee would be was still reasonably in doubt.  However, at this point Obama is so sure to be the nominee that even including Michgan and Florida would make no appreciable difference.

Add on top of this the fact that Clinton appears to be making statements that she'll drop out after the Puerto Rico caucus if Michigan and Florida is counted and, assuming she keeps her word, there is no reason to give her an excuse to keep fighting due to Florida and Michigan still being left out if including them makes no difference.

It also makes moot the point of "what number is needed for a majority."

1:08 AM EDT: MSNBC calls Clinton "apparent winner" in Indiana.

12:05 AM EDT: A note on outstanding Indiana counties: Hamilton is 99% reporting.  Obama might be able to pick up another 100 votes there.  Hancock is at 97%, where Clinton could pick up another 50 to 100 votes.  Marion is 98% in, where Obama could pick up another 1000 to 1500 votes possibly.  Monroe is only 67% in, where Obama could pick up another 2000 votes.

Then of course there is Lake County, which is at only 28% but coming in big for Obama, and Union County which, based on it's surrounding counties, should give Clinton about 1500 to 2000 votes.

Of course, this is all kind of guess work, but without Lake County, Obama could probably pick up about between 1000 to 2000 votes.  That's not much, but it may end up being the difference.

Since we won't have another results thread until next week, I thought I would appease the masses by having a graph filled post filled with statistics about where the race stands.

Just a few notes to start:

Delegate and popular vote counts are from The Green Papers, while my superdelegate list is from the awesome 2008 Democratic Convention Watch website.

OK, it's still 6 months until November, but I thought I would start the work on creating the spreadsheets to keep track of results in the November election.

So far that's all I have - the spreadsheets.  I haven't created the graphs yet (and boy will there be a lot!).  However, if you wish, people can preview how the data will be organized for (hopefully) maximum readability and editing by the people who I hope will eventually volunteer for this grand project (I'm not taking them yet, but probably do start looking out for calls in September and/or October!)

Wed 8:05 AM: What I said last night basically holds true this morning:  The win is by 10%, the margin is just over 200,000, and the delegate margin is +10 for Clinton based on preliminary estimates.

Based on my own metrics below, Clinton perhaps got what she needed to hold off a wave of superdelegates, but got nowhere near the number of delegates she needs.  Not only did she not catch up much in pledged delegates (still down by about 150), but that's how many more superdelegates she needs than Obama, and she currently only sets at like +24 in that regard.  She not only needs to stem the superdelegate tide, but reverse it.  She might have been able to do the former, but I highly doubt she did enough to do the latter.

10:35 PM: Well, I'm not sure if we're going to get much more news tonight.  75% are reporting, and we're looking at about 10% win, about a 200,000 vote margin, and between +15 and +20 delegate count, so I'll probably turn in.

9:46 PM: Total Democratic Primary popular vote total (including MI and FL) passes 30 million

Last night was a significant victory for Hillary Clinton, at least as far as morale and momentum goes in the Democratic primary race.  And Clinton may have taken the first step in nickle and diming away at Obama's delegate lead.  It's looking likely that Clinton will come away with a net gain of 10 to 15 delegate for the night, depending on how the Texas caucuses end up shaping up.

With the current caucus results (about 1/3 of the results in), Obama is sitting at a 7 delegate lead right now, which would give him a net +3 in Texas, which would pretty much counter Clinton's +2 advantage in the Rhode Island/Vermont exchange.  That means whatever delegate lead Clinton gets from Ohio - right now sitting at 14 10 - should be close the final delegate margin of the night.

8:30 AM ET: Despite what some bean counters were saying last night, this is turning into a huge night for Clinton.  First off, her delegate gain so far sits at 25 delegates, with 75 delegates to go.  If Obama is going to make that up, he's going to have to do it in the Texas caucuses as, despite what some people were saying, Clinton did win the primary delegate count 65-61.

The Green Papers projections give Clinton 8 more delegates in Ohio than she currently has, with CD10 and CD11 (both, Cleveland, which Obama only won by 7%) still out, and Obama will probably only net something like 1 delegate from those 2 districts.  And based on CNN results thus far, Obama isn't doing as well in the Texas caucuses as he had hoped.

And Obama better hope my caucus projections are wrong, because I actually have Clinton winning that as well, 35-32.  Though half of that is guessing at this point (basically guessing on how many delegates each district gets and applying the current results)

This deal with the McCain lobbyist scandal made me start to wonder: is something like this one reason why a party does and should have superdelegates at nominating convention?

While McCain hasn't formally won enough delegates to win the Republican nomination, he's pretty certain to get there.  And while this story appears big on it's face, I still have doubts about it's ability to actually bring McCain's campaign down.

But what if it does?

As usual, I'll post the link to the spreadsheet in a response to my tip jar.

9:24 AM ET: OK, so Obama wins Hawaii easily, which is what most people expected.  Since the Hawaii Dem Party has their numbers broken down by CD, I calculated that Obama would in 14 of Hawaii's 20 delegates, with at-large delegates breaking 3-1 for Obama, PLEOs breaking 2-1 for Obama, CD1 delegates going 4-2 and CD2 delegates going 5-2.  This makes Obama +21 for the night so far with 5 delegates left in Wisconsin, with estimations that those will go 3-2 for Clinton, so we're looking at an overall +20 night for Obama.

His pledged delegate lead now stands at +161 and his total delegate lead stands at +85.3.  With Hawaii's results, Obama now has broken 10 million votes, even without Florida and Michigan, and, at least on my spreadsheet, takes a majority the non-FL/MI vote (thought it's only by about 15,000, so there is some margin of error there)

There has been great chatter about the Clinton campaign talking about how they're going to try to grab the nomination away from Obama via the superdelegates, I'm sure feeding an additional round of "superdelegates are evil!" waves around here.

However, Obama fans should, instead of rejecting superdelegates, embrace them since they are the very ones who can prevent Clinton from causing a hung convention.

Some themes going into tonight:  Will Obama win 8 in a row or will Clinton be able to pull off an upset?  Will the fires in Virginia impact the vote at all?  Will Obama be able to take the overall delegate lead tonight (He already has according to CBS, but I don't think he has according to anyone else).  

Oh, and I have a plethora of graphs tonight for you. Once again I'll post the link to the spreadsheet in a response to my tip jar,

Next Day report: All but 20 (18 from MD and 2 from VA) of the delegates from last night have been handed out now.  Add this to the 27 in Colorado and 1 in New Mexico, and we still have 48 delegates left in states that have voted, with most eventually going to Obama (probably around a 31-17 split).

As it stands now, Obama now has 1,114 to 983 (+131) lead in pledged delegates and a 1,247 to 1,209 (+38) lead in total delegates.  Those leads should be about 145 and 52 respectively after adding those 48 delegates.

Oh, and Obama now leads in the national popular vote, even including Florida and Michigan.

Not as big as Super Tuesday, but we do have 4 contests today with 161 pledged delegates up for grabs. I'll post a link to the results spreadsheet in a response to my mojo jar so that you guys don't kill it as quickly (though it held up pretty well on Tuesday).

Just take me to the graphs!

Next day Update: Huckabee wins Louisiana. McCain comes from behind in Washington. (Boo!).

Almost Final Washington Results: Obama 67.5%, Clinton 21.2%.  From Louisiana: Obama 57.4%, Clinton 35.6%.  I still have 26 delegates outstanding for last night, but as of now Obama can stake a claim to a net 51 delegate lead from last night alone.

11:25 PM: Obama has now been awarded with over 50% of the delegates being awarded today, with 85 so far.  Currently Clinton has 38, giving Obama a 47 delegate lead right now.

With the democratic delegate race as close as it is, lesser followed primaries and caucuses may ending figuring much larger into the picture than they normally do this time around.

Update [2008-2-5 21:40:20 by FleetAdmiralJ]: - 2nd diary now up.  You can go ahead and unrecommend this diary

Yes, it's time for the Super Tuesday Results Diary!  Charts are below the fold.  Images should update as I update the spreadsheet (removed link from  here since I think we're killing it. If you really want it, I'll post a link in a comment in response to my first comment), though you'll still need to reload the diary to reload the images.

9:15 AM: Vote and Delegates totals updated to the best I could fine.

1:21 AM: Welp, I think I'm going to bed.  I'll update the totals sometime tomorrow if someone else who has access to the spreadsheet doesn't do it before me.

12:42 AM: Obama wins Alaska

12:39 am: Obama wins Missouri

12:00 AM: Alaska Caucuses close

12:11 AM: Clinton wins California

11:13 PM: Clinton wins Arizona

My first diary on this was on Wednesday.

24 Democratic primaries and caucuses take place on Feb. 5: 22 state primaries and 1 other primary (American Samoa).

Here is my pathetic and completely pulled-out-of-my-rear (well, not completely) view of how Super Tuesday is shaping up as of today:

I am testing some editgrid features in preparation for a Super Tuesday Results thread.  If you want to give suggestions, feel free to do so, but otherwise this is basically a junk diary that you can skip over.

Testing Testing Testing

The graphs should auto-update as I change values

24 Democratic primaries and caucuses take place on Feb. 5: 22 state primaries and 2 other primaries (American Samoa and Democrats Abroad).

Here is my pathetic and completely pulled-out-of-my-rear (well, not completely) view of how Super Tuesday is shaping up as of today:

Please, just stop it.  The "snub" story is about the most irrelevant thing ever in political history.  Unfortunately, supporters of each candidate are doing their best to use this story to their advantage.

Clinton supporters have posted a series of diaries talking about the "snub" coming off of the media's seeming obsession with it last night.

Obama supporters are trying to use the fact that this is a story to try to prove that the Clinton campaign itself is petty by somehow arguing that the Clinton campaign is the one driving the story (besides 0 evidence supporting such a claim that I've seen anywhere.  A couple people have said MSNBC reported they got emails from the Clinton campaign, but even that I haven't seen any report off other than from a couple of anti-Clinton comments).