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April 22, 2008

Calculating the PA vote: Live action hot hot hot!

No, I don’t plan to bother with it. Clinton will win with a margin between 4 and 13 percent. Tomorrow, Obama will announce a number of new superdelegates endorsing him. And the circus will continue. Thankfully, there’ll be no more six week blitzes to endure while Clinton’s arguments and delegate numbers keep falling flat.

I’ve scoured the media and blogosphere to try to pick up clues. The general consensus: no exit polls will be very accurate till 8 pm EST, but 5 pm EST is when some details might prove noteworthy. But I’d recommend tracking Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com, who will be liveblogging the exit poll data. And Al Giordano and his commentors do a lot of good Net-scouring too.

Among some interesting tidbits so far, mostly w/o links:

Early exit poll leaks from many sources now say 4%-5% for Clinton. And one says Obama could pull an upset win, though I’m very skeptical of that. Still, as he’s pulling in 92% of the Black vote, that’s about 5 pts higher than any pollster projected, so this bit of news (some of the newest in this post) is very good for Obama supporters. He continues to be the Dem nominee, despite all the la-la circus talk of the past two months.

Joe Trippi earlier said body language from both camps suggests Clinton will win handily. Big turnouts in Philly, Pittsburgh and Penn State favor Obama already, but one source reports that Team Obama’s disappointed in the Philly suburbs turnout. No confirmation from a second source on any of this.

Between AP and CBS, it’s being reported that 20%-23% of PA voters made up their minds in the final week with half indicating the campaign ads influenced their choice.

AP also reports about 10% changed their registration status since New Year’s Day to be able to vote in the Democratic primary. Half of those doing so were formerly Republicans. That means approximately 5% could be GOP folks open to Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos appeals to skew the vote to favor Clinton more.

On the other hand, CNN reports those crossovers around 14%, so that GOP crossover could be as high as 7%. But as they indicate 60% of those crossovers are voting Obama, that only raises the potential Operation Chaos effect to 5.6% of the final vote. Still, if Obama was polling around 6%, that could raise the Clinton vote to about a 12% win.

Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com indicates the polls no longer show a clear trend of how the undecideds will break, as different polls show different trends in the final week.

Early exit polling says Clinton by 4%-5% but past primary nights would make one a bit skeptical of that. Plus those came from the National Review, Drudge As Philly results come in fairly early, don’t be surprised by a large early Obama margin. That should drop as the night progresses.

Kos explains why exit polls should be largely ignored at any hour.

Best live action sources I’ve found for serious junkies include (besides the top links to Mark Blumenthal and Al Giordano):

PA votes ‘08 Blog from the Philly Inquirer

BooMan Tribune

Election Journal, with a focus on voting irregularities.

Election Inspection

And of course, Atrios in Philly will have a few observations to add. He announced he voted for Obama while saying he could have gone the other way up till a few weeks ago.

The official State of Pennsylvania site. This will be the same source the networks depend on. But in a little under an hour, the serious exit polls from the networks will come in, and that should be fairly close to the final results.

And at 8 pm, Clinton will be celebrating in Philly. Obama will be rallying in Evansville, Indiana with John Mellencamp.

One Response to “Calculating the PA vote: Live action hot hot hot!”

  1. All Spin Zone » Live Blogging: Pennsylvania Primary Says:

    […] Recommendation for a pre-results primer - Kevin at American Street lines everything up… 8PM, EST: CNN’s coverage is all over the place already. There are so many talking heads on the screen that it’s almost impossible to keep track of who’s pimping who. Donna Brazile is very prominent in the background - I guess CNN is trying to show the depth of their bench right out of the chute. Campbell Brown is not as hot as Rachel Maddow. Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 | Reddit reddit_url=’http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/04/22/live-blogging-pennsylvania-primary/’ reddit_title=’Live Blogging: Pennsylvania Primary’ | […]