Hillary Wins Close Race in Texas, Rhode Island and Ohio, Obama Wins Vermont

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 3:11 PM on March 4, 2008.

RI (98% reporting) Clinton 58, Obama 40

TX PRIMARY (99% reporting) Clinton 51, Obama 48

TEXAS CAUCUS (5% reporting) Obama 52, Clinton 48

OH (92% reporting) Clinton 54, Obama 44

VT (93% reporting) Obama 60, Clinton 38

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Updates from Open Left:

Texas margin stagnant: I've noticed that Clinton's lead in Texas has been stuck at in the 50,000s for a loooong time. Obama doesn't seem to be making up any ground, but he isn't losing any ground, either. Also, this will be the ultimate test of the caucus vs. primary difference between the two candidates.

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Maybe Clinton can win the Texas primary: Austin and Dallas have reported a majority of their precincts now, and yet Clinton's lead continues to slowly eek forward. Maybe she can win the primary popular vote after all.

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Most cities yet to report: CNN has some great maps of Ohio and Texas that show which counties have yet to report. Generally speaking, the major cities are the places with the most outstanding votes. Cayuhuga (Cleveland) and Hamilton (Cincinnati) have 0% reporting. Dallas (where Obama lead by 30%) is at 4% reporting, Houston (where Obama leads by 24%) is at 1% reporting, and Austin (where Obama leads by 30%) is at 9% reporting. Obama also holds large leads in the counties directly surrounding those cities, and those counties have also reported few votes so far. Clinton is up by 9% in San Antonio, which is at 3% reporting.

Overall, I think Clinton looks set to win Ohio, while Obama looks set to win Texas.

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RI (98% reporting) Clinton 58, Obama 40

TX PRIMARY (66% reporting) Clinton 50, Obama 48

TEXAS CAUCUS (5% reporting) Obama 56, Clinton 44

OH (82% reporting) Clinton 56, Obama 42

VT (83% reporting) Obama 60, Clinton 38

Bush to endorse McCain at the White House. Read about it here.

-AH via CNN

8:09 PST

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Open Left:

Update V--Ohio Delegate Thoughts: Clinton is putting up a pretty big margin in some of these early returns. However, in many of congressional districts where she is putting up the margin, a 20% victory is actually not quite enough to earn the key 3-1 delegate splits. Rather, she needed 62.51% of the two-candidate vote or more in order to pull that off. The delegate math in Ohio seems to be helping Obama, despite Clinton's overall popular advantage.

Update IV--Clinton Wins Rhode Island: CBS, CNN and NBC all call Rhode Island for Clinton. It has been a long time since she won a primary, but she has finally done it again. I imagine Ohio can't be too far behind. Texas still looks like the biggest contest of the night.

Update III--McCain Clinches Republican Nomination: Not much suspense, but John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination. Howard Dean's statement:

"John McCain is out of touch with the issues facing Americans each day. Instead of offering solutions to the high cost of health care, help for the middle class or ideas to create jobs, McCain offers 100 years in Iraq and more of the same Bush budgets that have heaped debt onto our children and damaged our economy. Instead of ending the influence of lobbyists in Washington, he's hired them to run his campaign. The closer voters look at the real McCain record, the more they will realize he cannot be trusted to deliver the change America wants."

Go Howard!

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Update II--Texas and Rhode Island Exit Polls: Exit polls for Texas and Rhode Island are now available. Quick math for Rhode Island shows Clinton 51.6%--47.5% Obama. In Texas, quick math shows Clinton 50.0%--48.6% Obama. Importantly, that actually means Obama looks to be slightly favored in Texas, given his 88,000 margin among earlier voters.

Update--Clinton closing gap in Texas: Clinton is continually closing the gap in Texas. Still, with nearly one million votes counted, Obama leads by 88,000.

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MSNBC:

A Huckabee senior aide tells NBC/National Journal that Huckabee tonight will congratulate McCain and will be in touch with the McCain campaign tomorrow from Little Rock to coordinate a concession.

"The handwriting is on the wall," the aide said, indicating that was the plan whether or not McCain officially reaches 1,191 delegates tonight.

The aide said that Huckabee wants to have contact with McCain tomorrow in Little Rock before deciding what next to do.

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Open Left: Obama jumps out to huge lead in Texas: It would appear that Obama dominated early voting in Texas. With over 750,000 850,000 votes already in, Obama holds a huge advantage of 17% 13%, or about 130,000 votes 110,000. Functionally, it means that Clinton must win on Election Day by 4-5% just to tie Obama in Texas. This is a huge boost for Obama's chances to win the night on delegates, and possibly even to knock Clinton out of the campaign.

-AH 5:50 PST

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VT (34% reporting): Obama 59, Clinton 39

OH (0% reporting): Clinton 56, Obama 42

TX (1% reporting): Obama 56, Clinton 43

-AH 5:24 PST

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The Ohio polls have closed and the networks say it's too close to call. Based on exit polls, Chris Bowers at Open Left predicts a narrow 51% to 47% victory for Hillary, not enough for her to make a significant delegate gain.

-AH 4:43 PST

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With 0% reporting, Obama has won Vermont by what must be substantial margin.

-AH 4:00 PST

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Reporters returning on Tuesday to the site of long lines and hours-long voting delays in the 2004 and 2006 elections in Ohio found short lines and no major voting problems as the state's 2008 primary voting began on March 4th.

While voting appeared to get off to a slow start, possibly due to heavy rains in Columbus and sleet in Cleveland, the weather appeared to be easing up by midday. In Columbus, a survey of precincts found early turnout was lowest in the African-American inner city and somewhat higher in the surrounding suburbs.

At a dozen African-American majority precincts on the east side of Columbus, no more than 12 percent of the voters already cast ballots by Election Day, according to surveys by a half-dozen reporters for FreePress.org, a Columbus-based website. By 4 P.M., turn-out at those precincts was between 25 percent and 30 percent.

Typically, the lines at precincts were short, with the longest taking 15 minutes to vote. Compared to 2004 and 2006, there were twice as many voting machines and voters also were able to vote on a paper ballot if requested. A handful of voters were requesting paper ballots. Those problems paled in comparison to snafus in prior elections.

A similarly slow start of inner-city voting also was reported in Cleveland, according to staffers for People for the American Way stationed in that city. There were no reports of major incidents there, said PFAW's Michelle Jawando, who is PFAW's national campaign director for election protection.

There was some confusion by poll workers in that city using paper ballots for the first time, Jawando said, where they tore off paper strips on both ends of the ballots by mistake; only one strip was to be given to votes as a receipt for voting. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said those ballots would all be counted.

In Columbus, the handful of problems reported involved people showing up at precincts where they were not on voter lists, often because they recently moved. There were also people who did not receive absentee ballots, leaving them to vote by provisional ballots.

As of midday, there were no reports of either campaign challenging each other's voters. However, the Clinton campaign issued two press releases saying Obama volunteers were harassing poll workers in Ohio and were meddling with caucus rules in Texas. (Those reports come after several Texas web sites reported the Clinton campaign was poised to aggressively assert itself at the Texas caucuses).

In Texas, the other large state holding a primary on Tuesday, PFAW said there was confusion among voters about how to participate in the Democratic Party's dual primary and caucus system. In that state, people vote in primaries during the day, awarding two-thirds of the delegates, and then at 7 PM, when the polls close, party caucuses are held allocating the remaining one-third of the delegates.

PFAW also said there were reports of poll workers and others challenging voters credentials, suggesting that some voters might be non-citizens.

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Tagged as: ohio, obama, clinton, election 2008, texas, vermont, rhode island