Yeah, another positive poll for the clintons. Hurrah, hurrah. Now if only these polls counted, the clintons will have won and be marching to the nomination. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Interesting, they have Clinton winning by 4 points amongst independents.

Here’s an interesting post below that flies in the face of some polling assumptions. A lot of these seem like Obama voters to me. So Survey and Insider Advantage, what voter population are they interviewing. This sample below matches the Belo poll saying “already voted” are 56-44 Obama.
http://www.wfaa.com/s/dws/img/standing/wfaa/poll/data/0302/summary0302.pdf
******************************

http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5251
“New” Democrats Flood the Primary
by: Justice
Mon Mar 03, 2008 at 01:17 PM CST

(I have some additional analysis of the voter file, looking deeper into the data but from 2002 forward, which I’ll try to post today. Both are an interesting read and express why no one in Travis County has a real sense of what is going on with their elections. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)

Here are some interesting statistics from Dusty Knight, Chief Deputy to Nelda Spears, Tax Collector, about early voting in the Democratic Primary:

96,801 early voted as Democrats in Travis County

47,531 were first time voters in a primary.

The “first time voters” means it was the first time to vote in a PRIMARY. Of the 47,531 first time primary voters, 34,622 had voted in a previous general or city election, leaving 12,909 (13% of the total)who have never voted at all before).

49,270 had a voting history in Primary elections:.

37,924 had only voted in Democratic Primary in the past.
4,768 had only voted in Republican Primary in the past.
6,578 had voted in either Democratic or Republican Primary in the past.

We’ve got a Democratic Primary in this Strongly Blue County that (so far) shows that

So:
13% have never voted before at all
36% are what we might call “independent” (i.e., General Election-only voters)
12% are former Republican voters (11,346 of the total)

That’s means that 61% of the people voting in the Democratic Primary are not traditional Democratic voters.

“First time” (in a Primary) voters by age:
over 60 5,819
50 - 60 7,174
40 - 50 7,974
30 - 40 11,777
20 - 30 12,662
18 - 20 2,084

A word of advice for Obama faithful: Don't venture outside the toobz. Corporate cable is nothing but Hillary on SNL, Rezko, phony NAFTA hits on Obama, etc. Right wing radio is nothing but Obama's a Muslim terra lovin' pussy.

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

I agree with MikeMo. TPM is notorious for parsing every number in polls and every statement by the candidates to the nth degree. Yet, you write about a poll that heavily touts without even mentioning that the guy responsible for the poll is a maximum donor to her campaign? It makes no sense.

Hillary says: "[McCain]will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

Hillary's primary leadership/management experience is her campaign, and it's a mess.

Hillary says: "[McCain]will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

Hillary's primary leadership/management experience is her campaign, and it's a mess. Obama's courageous speech against the Iraq war in 2002 shows a capacity for sound judgment that is exactly what we need in a president. Hillary's calculated, self-serving vote for the war confirms a pattern of bad judgment that is frightening.

Negative attacks work, but only when the timing is right. Clearly Obama has enjoyed a nice run. It was time for the press and the public to bring him down a notch.

Hillary Clinton has endorsed John McCain.

OK. with all the polls having Hillary way ahead in Ohio and Texas, tomorrow is her second Super Tuesday. She better lock up the nomination tomorrow. Right!. After all she has all the Big Mo and the Polls in her favor. Anything less than a pair of landslide victories for Hillary tomorrow, in Texas and Ohio, after her big failure to deliver the promised Knock Out punch on her first Super Tuesday, and she will look like someone who just can not close the deal.

She should have no excuses left.

The best news I heard tonight is that Obama has purchased all the air time available in TX AND OH for his 2 minute message.

He has put up an airtime roadblock, even if Hillary wanted to or had the money to she could not purchase airtime to show an ad.

Go Barack,...use that money, strategically.

Hillary needs to get off the national stage.

I do not beleive these polls for one minute. It is a total farce.

This poll, which I believe is an outlier, says nothing predictive about the caucus. Even if Clinton gets a small victory in the primary vote, which I think not, the caucuses will belong to Obama and will even out the delegate count. What would be helpful is to have a primary victory in addition for Obama to squelch the "comeback kid" crapola. The delegate count is not going to change much either way after tomorrow and Clinton will still have no path to the nomination.

From www.jedreport.com
the state of the delegate race:
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/03/where-things-st.html
"1,627 should be a familiar number to you by now. It's the number of pledged delegates a Democratic presidential candidate needs in order to secure a clear majority of the delegates chosen by Democratic primary and caucus voters.

Once a candidate hits 1,627 pledged delegates, the only way he or she can lose the nomination is if superdelegates decide to overturn the judgment of voters.

Here's where we stand according to MSNBC's estimate: Barack Obama has 1,194 pledged delegates and Hillary Clinton has 1,037.

On Tuesday, there are four primaries -- Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont. In total, 370 delegates will be awarded. As you probably know, the only one of those whose outcome is not in doubt is Vermont, where Obama will certainly win. Clinton is favored in Rhode Island, but it's closer there. Still, the big prizes are Ohio and Texas.

Obama has led many of the recent polls in Texas and is closing the gap in Ohio. Because of the way delegates are distributed in Texas, Obama will probably do no worse there than breaking even. In Ohio, I suspect Clinton will eke out a small victory (mostly because I have a horrible track record at predicting things like that!).

Anyway, all in all, I wouldn't be surprised to see Hillary Clinton end up with 190 of the 370 delegates awarded on Tuesday, compared to 180 for Obama.

If that happens, after Tuesday she'll be at 1,227 pledged delegates and Obama will be at 1,374.

At that point, we'll be more than 80% of the way through the process with just 624 delegates left to be awarded.

To hit the magic number, Clinton will have to win 400 of the 624 delegates -- 64%.

Obama will have to win 253 of the 624 delegates -- 41%.

(The numbers add up to 105% because John Edwards has 26 pledged delegates and it is possible neither Obama nor Clinton would hit 1,627.)

The bottom line is that even if Clinton does about as well as she can expect to, it will still be almost impossible for her to acquire enough pledged delegates to hit the magic number.

There's just virtually no chance she could win anywhere near 64% of the remaining delegates after Ohio and Texas. She'll point to Pennsylvania, which is is a big prize worth 158 delegates, but Obama will counter with Oregon, Mississippi, and North Carolina which combined have 200 delegates and will almost certainly deliver larger delegate margins to him than Pennsylvania ever could to Hillary.

Under an absolute best case scenario for Hillary Clinton, she might scrape by with a net loss of about 4 delegates from those states.

At that point, with just 266 pledged delegates left to be selected, Obama would need win just 72 of them to hit the magic number. Hillary Clinton meanwhile would need 223 of them -- 84%.

Barring an unforeseen epic collapse by Barack Obama on Tuesday, there's just about no chance Hillary Clinton will hit the 1,627 number.

Yet she's still running hard, and attacking even harder.

The question is: why? Her situation is nearly hopeless -- unless she thinks she can pull off a superdelegate engineered victory."

When Hillary loses the nomination she may be angling for second on the McCain ticket. Here she is endorsing McCain over Obama, today!

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/03/disloyal-democr.html

Am I the only one thinking that Hillary's contingency plan is go negative now so that Obama is too bloodied to win in November, leaving the field open for another Hillary run in 2012? She'd be in her mid-60s. Get closer to 70 and you are a harder sell.

Everybody who supports Obama here, stop posting and start calling Texas voters!

The video at Ben Smith's site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou4JnWQsxKw
is all you need to know. I have been saying I would vote for her if she was the nominee until I saw this clip from today.

If you are a Hillary supporter, how do you respond to this? If Obama said something such as this, I would withdraw my support. A fellow Democrat. She is worse than short eyes.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has made me nauseous. She ought to be ashamed of herself. She went negative, down in the mud, and it seems, at the moment, to have worked. But I still have hope! And I have to say that as an Obama supporter, I am proud of the way my candidate has handled himself through the Clinton campaign kitchen sink barrage. He has not stooped down to her level. He has handled himself gracefully, in a manner that should make all Democrats proud. I hope that voters in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont see that too.

So, Hillary thinks McCain is a better choice than Obama. While that's consistent with the scorched-earth campaign she's been running, I'm nonetheless stunned that she'd say such a thing. I suppose that one really can't be too cynical when it comes to what she's willing to do in order to win: namely, anything.

The prospect of Hillary as the democratic nominee makes me physically sick. I started this race simply preferring Obama, but with no ill will toward either Clinton. Now, I'd say that my feelings about Hillary are roughly on par with my feelings about Joe "Eeyore" Lieberman: callow, pandering, nausea-inducing faux-democrats both.

My hope is that the polls fail to reflect the large amount of new voters, the people who have, in an "under the radar" manner, made Obama's current lead possible. Of course, HRC can't beat him legitimately; she'll never carry the remaining states with the numbers required to do it. But that may not matter - she's willing to destroy any semblance of cohesion in service of her ambition. (What a spot-on Lady MacBeth she'd make.)

I stand by my prediction: Obama will win TX, and Clinton will take OH, probably with a 5-8 point margin. PA is a big question mark, but I suspect they'll go with HRC if she wins OH. The remaining states will go Obama, and by a large margin. The fact that she'll still be behind in delegates, races won, and total votes cast for her will be irrelevant; she'll continue to cling, leech-like, to even the faintest hope that she might win, or at least demolish any other democrat's chance at winning in the GE. She truly doesn't give the smallest of shits about this country or its future; only her future. It would be funny, if the joke wasn't on everyone who believes that "fighting" is the worst possible way to move forward.

Sorry for the whining (and I am whining; HRC folks have done their fair share, and now it's my turn. Guess I'm "finding my voice.") I'm going home. I'm going to drink a beer, go to sleep, and hope like hell that tomorrow is the day that Hillary is sent packing.

You're supposed to scorch the REPUBLICANS fields, not your own. Why is this not the headline on TPM right now?

Obama should concede now.

He's not won a single big state. And by hanging on in the race, grabbing the smaller states, he's just delaying things.

All of a sudden the media is starting to scrutinize Sen. Obama more---from the SNL skits, to a Rezko story on ABC news, to the right wing starting to go after Sen. Obama. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out tomorrow in TX and OH. I highly doubt that Rush Limbaugh's followers will vote for a Clinton.

There is an interesting article arguing that despite the media hype, Sen. Clinton will be more electable in a general election than Sen. Obama. You can find it at:

http://thepragmaticdemocrat.blogspot.com/

*taps microphone*

Will this work?

IT'S OVER THE OHIO BLOGS. REPUBLICANS ARE VOTING FOR HILLARY TO PERPETUATE HER EATING OUR OWN. SEE FOR YOURSELF: http://www.cleveland.com/forums/open/

I'm going to predict 3 wins tomorrow, for Obama:

Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

I'm also going to predict a very near win in Ohio....near enough that the delegate count after tomorrow night will be with Obama, even after Ohio.

So go to bed, don't worry anymore. Peace, and good night,

Lis
Obama 2008

POLL-Obama has small lead in Texas, close in Ohio
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

HOUSTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) - Barack Obama holds a slight lead on Hillary Clinton in Texas and has almost pulled even in Ohio before contests that could decide their U.S. Democratic presidential battle, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Houston Chronicle poll released on Friday.

The contests on Tuesday are crucial for Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady fighting to halt Obama's streak of 11 consecutive victories in their battle for the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Obama, an Illinois senator, has a 6-point edge on Clinton in Texas, 48 percent to 42 percent. He trails Clinton 44 percent to 42 percent in Ohio -- well within the poll's margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

In the Republican race, front-runner John McCain holds commanding leads over his last major rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. McCain, an Arizona senator, has built an unassailable advantage in delegates who will pick the nominee at the Republican Party convention in September.

The poll, conducted by Zogby International, found McCain with big double-digit margins over Huckabee in Texas and Ohio.

Among Democrats, Obama has a big edge with voters in both states who made their decision within the last month. Clinton led comfortably in both states among voters who decided more than a month ago.

Other opinion polls show tightening races in both states, where Clinton enjoyed big leads just a few weeks ago.

"All the momentum is clearly with Obama," pollster John Zogby said. "The clearest indicator is the line of demarcation between those who decided early and those who are deciding late. The question is whether she can stem the tide."

In Ohio, 9 percent of Democrats said they were still uncertain of their vote. In Texas, 7 percent of Democrats were not yet sure, leaving plenty of room for late swings.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN29641157

I'm sorry, but there's no way a candidate who nearly half of the country has a negative impression of is in any way electable for the Dems. Hillary might be a good president, but we have to be realistic. It's not like there is this broad base of people left to pick from who are only just hearing about her--everyone knows who she is, and everyone has made up their minds about her already. And the wingnuts hate her like they hate no one else (for the audacity of being a Clinton AND female) and her very presence will mobilize people to vote against her who might otherwise not vote with McCain on the ballot. It's not fair, but it has to be dealt with. And then--whether fair or not--she has alienated some of the base in the primary, particularly African-American voters.

Hillary hasn't been able to convince half of Dems to vote for her--and, yes, you can say that for Obama, but he's the outsider, the unknown, she was the establishment candidate, the presumptive nominee, who based her campaign around inevitability. Something like 40% of Michigan Dems showed up at that primary just to vote "uncommitted" against her.

If she survives tomorrow, he needs to stomp her guts out. Starting with the Big Lie that she has "35 years of experience." She has no noteworthy achievements on her political resume. None.

In his short tenure in the Senate, Obama has accomplished more than Hillary in all of her 35 years.

I'm supporting the candidate with almost unlimited potential versus the tired old mule that hasn't done jack in 35 years. I can't imagine why anyone would do otherwise.

.....you did annie because I juss saw the same exact post on Digby's blog in the Kurtz comment post.

I think Clinton is going to win fairly comfortably today and it makes me both sad and mad. Sad that the old style of politics is going to win, sad that may well be going to elect another member of the Clinton family to turn this country Republican again (as they did before).

And I'm angry at the media for being such sheep and allowing the Clinton campaign to play them like a violin. The truth is that (to borrow Ann Richard's line), Hillary Clinton started her political life on third base and thought she hit a triple. She pushed aside a congresswoman to run for Senate because she had the clout of her husband. And now she says because she hit a triple she should get a free pass to go home. This is so much like how GWB got elected - had he not been his father's son, there's no way he gets the presidency. Someone with such a limited political history as Hillary would in no way get elected were she not Bill's wife.

I wish the media would do real stories instead of this horse race garbage. By all means go after Obama's record - but how about Clinton's - where are her tax returns, why has there been no follow-up investigation of Clinton's foundation reaping $31 million after he pushed a deal with a Kazahk dictator (this should be a HUGE story compared to the garbage about Canada), why not a real comparison of their effectiveness in the US Senate? The press are fatuous idiots - let's see some real reporting.