Tue, February 05, 2008 - 8:29 PM

CNN: Clinton Wins Tennessee

With 77 percent of precincts reporting, CNN projects Clinton will win the Democratic primary in Tennessee.

Here are the results so far:
Clinton: 59% 281,987 votes
Obama: 35% 167,746 votes
Edwards: 5% 25,860 votes

The state elections division is displaying results here.

--Neil Simon

Want to prognosticate like a pundit?

Impress fellow partygoers at your Super Tuesday party?

Here are the unofficial and incomplete results from the Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee primaries. Refresh the sites to get the latest results.

As for wildly guessing what will happen and using a dry-erase board to tally delegates, you’re on your own.

-- Amy Dominello

Matt Drudge’s site lists exit polls for Democratic contests with a warning that they’re early numbers and not actual votes. OK, we’re grownups. We can take it if they’re wrong. We’ve been there before.Here goes.

OBAMA: Alabama: Obama 60, Clinton 37
Arizona: Obama 51, Clinton 45
Connecticut: Obama 53, Clinton 45
Delaware: Obama 56, Clinton 42
Massachusetts: Obama 50, Clinton 48
Missouri: Obama 50, Clinton 46
New Jersey: Obama 53, Clinton 47

CLINTON: Arkansas: Clinton 72, Obama 26
California: Clinton 50, Obama 47
New York: Clinton 56, Obama 43
Tennessee: Clinton 52, Obama 41

CNN just projected New Jersey for Obama.

-- Marsha Mercer

And taking a look at the race in Alabama for us is David Lanoue, chair of the political science department at the University of Alabama:

On the Democrats: State polls have shown Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are neck-and-neck. All indications are the state should go for Obama, Lanoue said.

And while Obama has been steadily improving his showing in nation-wide polls, he hasn’t seen an uptick in Alabama.

“The polls haven’t tracked that way,” he said. “It will be interesting.”
On the Republicans: John McCain is looking fairly good, but Mike Huckabee is close and Mitt Romney has gained in recent polls.

Young people: There’s a lot more energy, but whether that translates into votes is a different story, Lanoue said.

-- Amy Dominello

The New York Times is encouraging voters to take their cameras to polls and then share their photos of the primaries, caucuses and general election.

The resulting collection of user-submitted photos can be searched by keyword, location, ballot type, waiting lines at the polls and other parameters.

Take a look at the galleries of photos from Georgia and Tennessee.

-- Mark Young

Charles Bullock, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, sure had his finger on the pulse tonight.

Bullock predicted Barack Obama would take Georgia.

And, as he prognosticated, the Republican side would be a “squeaker.”

John McCain had been leading in polls in the state, but Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee closed in as Super Tuesday approached, Bullock said.

Romney was campaigning Monday in Atlanta; Huckabee spent Sunday in Macon. McCain, on the other hand, had not been in the state recently, Bullock said.

And a word of advice to those political experts on television: Don’t use Georgia as an indication for what will happen across the country.

“Georgia is out of step with the rest of the country,” Bullock said.

-- Amy Dominello

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a message for all those crowing over Obama’s win in Georgia: She wasn’t even really trying.

This just arrived from Clinton’s campaign:

Unlike the Obama campaign, the Clinton campaign never dedicated significant resources to Georgia.

Sen. Obama spent over $500,000 dollars on ads on television and radio; we never went up on TV.

The Obama campaign has 9 offices in Georgia. The Clinton campaign only has 2.

Sen. Obama has had staff and significant campaign operation across the state for 8 months. Sen. Clinton only deployed staff to the state in the last couple of weeks.

Polls have consistently showed Sen. Obama with wide lead over Sen Clinton. That lead has only widened over time.

Hmm. But maybe they tried just a little bit. Hillary Clinton was there just last week for the state Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner.

-- Amy Dominello

Twenty-four states held nominating contests this Super Tuesday, but somebody should have reminded Virginia it wasn’t one of them.

The Associated Press reported the Virginia Board of Elections received about 400 calls before noon from voters looking to vote in the primary but confused about why their polling places were closed.

The Board of Elections told the AP it received two or three times as many calls as on a regular day.

Virginians get their turn at the ballot box next Tuesday, Feb. 12, the same day Maryland and the District of Columbia voters head to the polls.

--Neil Simon

Minutes after the polls closed in Georgia, the Associated Press and several cable news operations said Barack Obama has triumphed in Georgia.

According to the Associated Press:

Barack Obama won the Georgia primary Tuesday night, the leading edge of a coast-to-coast struggle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for delegates in the grueling Democratic presidential campaign. Arizona Sen. John McCain challenged his remaining rivals for control of the Republican race.

It was Obama's second straight Southern triumph, and like an earlier victory in South Carolina, was built on a wave of black votes.

The Associated Press made its call based on surveys of voters as they left the polls.

-- Amy Dominello



Click here for the full story.

How much do conservatives hate John McCain?

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said if McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, he won’t vote in November.

“I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are,” Dobson said in a Dobson letter on the conservative “Laura Ingraham Show” Web site and elsewere.

“I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience,” Dobson wrote.

The letter, read on Ingraham’s radio show, the expresses disappointment in the Republican Party for seeming “poised to select a nominee” who voted for stem cell research and against a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

If left with the choice of Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or McCain, Dobson said he would not vote at all, for the first time in his life.

--Neil Simon

Looks like Democrats from Florida and Michigan may yet be wearing funny hats and waving signs in Denver.

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean all but told Wolf Blitzer on CNN just now that at Florida and Michigan Democrats will be seated.the party’s national convention in Denver in August. The states were stripped of their convention delegates for jumping ahead of the Democrats’ calendar for primaries and caucuses.

Dean was still cagey and refused to predict all will be well. But he did say the two states will ask for reinstatement, and it will be up to the credentials committee and the convention itself. “At the end of the day we want a unified party, including Florida and Michigan,” Dean said.

He also said it was not in the party’s best interest to have a divided convention, as Democrats did in 1968, 1972 and 1980.

That “resulted in losses each time,” he said.
-- Marsha Mercer

What’s worse: going to the store to find the milk you want is sold out or buying milk only to go home and see it’s spoiled?

That’s basically the scenario Tennessee Republicans faced in their presidential primary after Fred Thompson ended his campaign Jan. 21, five days after early primary voting began.

“I voted early and I voted for Fred Thompson, our native son. Then a week later he decided to drop out of the race,” Republican Rep. David Davis said. “I wish I had known what he was going to do.”

“It happened, and we move forward,” said Davis, who still encourages people to take part in early voting when it is offered.

Nearly 321,000 of Tennessee’s 3.3 million registered voters cast early or absentee ballots between Jan. 16 and Jan. 31, according to the state elections division Web site.

Davis said, of those who waited to vote until today, he’s hearing the race is between John McCain and Mike Huckabee in the eastern part of the state. In the west, the Republican contest is shaping up to be more like the rest of the country – McCain versus Mitt Romney.

--Neil Simon

If Sen. John McCain locks up the GOP nomination tonight, as some pundits predict, two Carolina politicians will look pretty smart.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., have both been strong supporters of McCain on the trail this year. Graham was inseparable from McCain in South Carolina last month, and Burr stumped for McCain in Iowa and is traveling with McCain today.

Burr, a young conservative spending hawk, could be poised for a promotion should McCain win. There has been speculation in Washington – and it’s only speculation at this point – that Burr could end up as the number two man on a McCain-topped ticket. His is one of many names that has been bandied about, including Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

--Sean Mussenden

Did you cast a ballot in Georgia today?

Take this poll from our Media General partners, WJBF in Augusta.

-- Amy Dominello

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., was out checking on turnout in his hometown of Chattanooga this morning, even though he’s not on the ballot, and he had already voted in today’s presidential primary.

“I voted for Fred (Thompson) two weeks ago,” Wamp said. “He was my horse, and since my horse decided not to cross the finish line, I didn’t jump to another horse.” Wamp voted before Thompson ended his candidacy

Wamp says he saw “pockets of intensity” this morning for candidates he doesn’t support – Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton.

“Tennessee is probably going to go for Clinton,” he predicted. “It’s kind of a jump ball for Republicans. We have an intensity problem.”

A lot of people voted early, Wamp said. He guessed Thompson, the Tennessee favorite son who dropped out of the presidential race two weeks ago, would still end up with 15 percent of the state’s GOP vote. The rest of the Republican candidates may split relatively evenly, Wamp said.

“I don’t think any Republican is going to run away with Tennessee,” he said. Wamp’s congressional district runs from Chattanooga in the south to Oak Ridge in the north, an area he said Mike Huckabee is likely to win.

--Neil H. Simon