Comments on WTF?

cause you'll stop watching

Because they've only begun to count the votes in the most populated counties in the state.

For Christ's sake, Erica...for as much as you talk shit, one might think that you'd know something about this game.

Because the votes from the rigged Diebold machines haven't been counted yet?

yeah, i love clinton, but the cities haven't been counted. hopefully it isn't a repeat of missouri...

because a region ran out of ballets that is perceived to be areas favoring Obama. The Obama campaign was able to get a judge to ok keeping the polls open later there.

Because, Erica, no votes have been counted in Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, or Cleveland--big cities, home to most of Ohio's African American voters.

Todd and Cook are right. The places that ran out of ballots are predominately urban Obama leading. Doesn't mean Hill won't win, just means CNN's being cautious.

Dan: Not true -- http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#OH

according to NYT, however, Cleveland is leaning to Clinton.

According to CNN, Obama is winning Cincinatti and Columbus, Clinton's winning Cleveland. So I repeat: Why are they not calling it for Clinton?

ECB -- They may have counted a few votes in Cleveland, but every media outlet is reporting that there have been massive delays there and it may be until tomorrow until they really get to it. In some areas they are still transporting ballots.

i think they don't want to call it for clinton and then have clinton lose. they didn't call missouri for clinton even though she was ahead by multiple percentage points most of the night and it was probably good, because obama ended up winning.
i DO think the media has already written the story, however, because they called new mexico for obama before the votes were all counted and it ended up going to clinton. they didn't seem to make much of a to-do over that, however.

@10 They're are explaining right now why its too close to call. I just heard Obama is expected to win Cleveland proper.

Irregardless its over for her, she is not going to win by the margins she needed and Obama will leave the night winning more delegates. She ran a good campaign and would have been a fine president, but unfortunately Obama is better.

Because it's a vast male misogynist conspiracy to keep the white woman down, obviously.

Does ECB know anything about how this works?
Large urban areas always report late, and those (presumably sexist) turncoats tend to favor Obama. Also, some precincts were held open late, so those will come in even later.

@11. Word. I've read the same things on some blogs in the last hour (ECB apparently hasn't).

Right now on NPR they are explaining why it is too close to call...

It's based on the statistical models they have, ECB. They have a margin of error on the exit polls in the uncounted districts; once they add the counted votes to the expected count in the uncounted districts, and once the probability of it deviating from the actual results goes below some threshold, they call it. You don't want to hear the gory details of the formulas.

No doubt you'd prefer to believe it's a big conspiracy to keep Clinton down, though, so ... just believe that.

Because Erica, god hates you. That's why.

@14, this whole white woman vs black man things makes me think of cripple fight.

Hillary is pretty certain to win Ohio, and most likely to win Texas' primary. That makes three out of the four (no word on Texas caucus yet?) and all of the three most populous states. Sorry to ruin the fun for Obama supporters, but it's not over yet.

Well, if the exit polls are correct, Ohio really isn't that close. Also, she had a huge lead in early voting. I suspect they just want to get a few votes from the cities, then they will call it for Clinton.

What's interesting is that it's now STILL 57% to 41%.

@20, no it is. Go play with a delegate calculator. Clinton could win all the remaining states by huge margins and still lose.

What #17 said. And they're going to want that probability of being wrong to be very small. Is 5% small enough? Probably not, because then they are botching the call once every 20 elections. And at the moment, maybe Obama still has a 5% chance of winning Ohio. So they'll wait until it's 1%, or 0.1%, or whatever. That they haven't called it doesn't imply that they both still have a 50-50 chance.

@21 - the exit polls in individual uncounted districts could be very heavily pro-Obama, leading to a small, but not small enough, probability of an upset.

Yeah, it's increasingly looking like a Clinton victory, but I suspect they have a preset threshold for calling it.

Obviously it's the patriarchal establishment practicing its anti-womyn agenda. They fear the power of the mother/vagina, and must keep her repressed, even if it means having a black man, with their freakishly large penises, in charge.

Giffy, I think we're all familiar with the difficulty of either candidate getting an absolute majority of the popular delegates. It's not likely to happen for either of them. However, that doesn't mean that the race is over, and if Barack can't pull the big, delegate rich states (both in the primaries and in the generals), it's no longer going to be easy for him to claim presumptive-nominee status. Which I think is great.

i dont know, it sure looks like she is going to win ohio, the gap is too huge, besides cleveland's suburbs are leaning her way.

obama is doing incredibly well in texas. he kicked butt in seattle, i mean austin, same thing. he also is going to kick butt in the big centers like houston. though clinton has got the latino vote in the valley from mcallen all the way to Laredo and San Antonio as well.

she should considering dropping out if texas is a close tie or she wins it by 2 percentage points.

senator obama cant seem to lock the big states. he is going to need some help against old man mccain.

aaaand they just called ohio

Dan is right. The bulk of the towns with large black populations are still being tallied. Strong, late support from them could boost his numbers like it did in Missouri and 41% can change to 49% in no time.

Seme, he cant win the big states but somehow gets similar amount total votes of the top 2 republicans combined in some of those big states.

@27, remember all the states are proportional so even if Obama doesn't 'win' the states he still will get delegates, and possibly more then Clinton. He has not lost a day since the campaign began in terms of total delegates.

Given his current lead it is likely that even if Clinton stays in to the end, he will go into the convention wit ha majority of pledged delegates putting huge pressure on the supers to support him.

Obama is the nominee and its time for Clinton to realize that fact.

Giffy, of course, though, delegates aren't really proportunate, which is why Obama can lose the 'popular' votes in states and still pull out more delegates. That he's won a lot of pledged delegates this way and through caucuses (where less voters are represented) is fine, I guess, but doesn't mean that he'll have a lot of support from supers going into the convention, especially if HRC begins/continues winning the popular vote in important states.

You might say that Obama is the nominee, but Ohio and perhaps Texas don't agree. Ain't over.