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While President Bush may be “the Decider” of American politics, Super Tuesday may have been the crucial decider in the race for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. As candidates traversed the country in a rapid attempt to get out the vote, Americans turned out in record numbers to support their candidates. Candidates that appeal to the youth, like Barack Obama, helped to make the 2008 primaries one of the most trafficked in recent history. Tsunami Tuesday, as some called it this year, featured the highest density of primaries in one day in the history of the political system in the United States.

The Straight Talk Steamroller

John McCain, favored by most as the future Republican nominee, scored big wins across the country. The surprise of the day, however, came as Mike Huckabee swept across the South with dozens of victories, blocking a viable candidacy from Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. In prior debates, and throughout the news media, Romney and McCain had attempted to transform the Republican race into a two candidate contest. Romney, however, may be squeezed out of a system of his own doing as Huckabee’s victories catapulted him back to the spotlight he basked in following the Iowa caucuses. Pundits like FOX News’ Sean Hannity believe that the McCain campaign transpired to throw Huckabee back into the limelight by throwing some of their delegates to him in crucial states. West Virginia, for example, was handed to Mitt Romney after the first round of caucusing. The second round, however, produced markedly different results. Huckabee, bolstered by the support of McCain’s voters, quickly became the victor. It’s tactics like these that seem to have blocked Mitt Romney from successfully winning the conservative votes he needed.

  Republican Frontrunner John McCain

  [Photo Credit: VictoryNH]

As McCain wins victory after victory across the country, conservatives keep attempting to block the Straight Talk Express on its route to the Republican presidential nomination. Dr. James Dobson, director of the conservative organization Focus on the Family, said in a statement yesterday that he would never support a McCain candidacy. Similar statements by conservative pundits like Ann Coulter (who said she’d actively campaign for Hillary Clinton in the general election if McCain was the Republican nominee) haven’t quite put a dent in the perceived viability of a McCain presidency. Commentator Sean Hannity remarked upon McCain’s reported party flip-flops in prior years, noting that he debated running with John Kerry in 2004. McCain is reminiscent of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, the Independent Democrat who has endorsed his run for President.

  Does Anyone Else?

  [Photo Credit: jaquina]

Romney’s withdrawal from the race the other day truly makes McCain the only viable candidate. The Huckabee campaign is still active, even if it may be fighting a race it cannot win. When asked why he was going to stay in the race the other day, Governor Huckabee made some comments typical of his candidacy thus far,

I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles.

Luckily, that’s what Huckabee will need to win the Republican nominations. McCain has a tough task ahead of him in uniting the Republican party, but he has months to do it.

Decision Time for Democrats

The Democrats, meanwhile, have no such candidate. Opinion polls are locked between the two candidates, and the primaries show similar results. When contrasted with John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, Barack Obama is the candidate who fares far better. Yet within the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton still maintains a large following. So, come the Democratic Convention, will Democrats choose the candidate who fares better nationally, or better within their own party?

Retribution for Republicans?

The Bush Presidency will leave the next president with a mess to clean up. Yet it seems as if most Americans aren’t taking out their anger on Republicans. McCain, it seems, is able to separate himself far enough from President Bush. Super Tuesday painted Obama as viable, Hillary as beatable, and McCain as the inevitable candidate. Still, Americans are indecisive. The coming weeks, and coming primaries, will help to narrow the field for the inevitable two person campaign coming for November.

Popularity: 58% [?]

Just a couple of hours ago, sources (here and here) began to report that Mitt Romney will withdraw from the Republican presidential race after his poor showing on Super Tuesday. The story was supposedly confirmed by GOP officials, including two of Romney’s advisors.

He is expected to make the announcement at the big Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. this afternoon. Assuming it is true, the move would leave just three candidates in the race: John McCain way out in front, Huckabee, and Ron Paul pulling up the rear. His withdrawal makes apparent that he feels McCain’s lead is too substantial to overcome at this point, and that he believes he will become the GOP nominee.

Gov. Romney had emerged as the conservative alternative to the moderately-perceived McCain, and was the popular candidate among prominent conservative sources like in talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al) and National Review magazine.

More to come.

UPDATE: Video of Romney speaking at CPAC can be seen here, LIVE.

UPDATE 2: Romney officially announced that he will drop out of the race in his CPAC speech. He cited that despite enormous differences with McCain, he agrees that Iraq is the transformative issue facing America and that if he continued fighting McCain it would only disable him in a general election and make the election of a Democrat more likely.

As he announced his withdrawal, loud jeers could be heard in the crowd deriding the decision to drop and John McCain who has come under much fire from conservatives.

McCain is to speak at 3 pm EST.

Popularity: 30% [?]

As politically incorrect, perhaps, as it may sound, the Democrats voting is mainly breaking down according to race and sex. I would not be a good blogger if I did not notice it and report it. The GOP on the other hand seems to be sparring over ideology. Here is what Super Tuesday has shown:

Democrats:

You know you’re a Obama supporter if you are: 1) black  2) young  3) wealthy and educated.

You know you’re a Clinton supporter if you are: 1) a woman  2) hispanic  3) old  4) lower-middle class.

National numbers and state exit polls demonstrate the validity of my general claims.

This is not to say that there are no ideological patterns among Democratic voters as more self-proclaimed “very liberal” voters tend to support Obama, while moderately “liberal” ones find themselves with Clinton. But at the same time Obama has received a consistent rush of independent (including moderates and conservatives) voters throughout the process. Additionally, Clinton was victorious by 10 points in the American fountainhead of liberalism, Massachusetts, despite the fact that Obama had the active support of both of its famous senators. Hence, while there are some philosophical trends, they are often contradicted. The fact remains that most of the candidates platforms are very similar (compare here and here), and thus, political ideology is marginalized in voters’ minds.

Another notable trend is that of racial “tension” or “divide” among the Democratic electorate. What I find from exit polling is that if there is a large minority voting block in any given state, white Dems will tend to vote in the other direction. For example, if there are a large number of hispanics (pro-Clinton) in a state, the whites will vote disproportionately for Obama, while if there are large amount of blacks (pro-Obama), the whites will vote for Clinton. This comes in addition to the fact that Hispanics and Blacks (who otherwise share many demographic characteristics) are voting in clearly opposite directions in part because cultural tensions are still apparent (additional evidence) between the two racial groups. Overall Clinton got about 60% of the hispanic vote, while Obama procured more than 80% of the black vote.

The two largest hispanic states on Super Tuesday were California and New Mexico, where hispanics were 30% and 35% of the electorate, respectively. Among those hispanics, Clinton won 67% and 62% of the vote, respectively. However, Obama tied her among white voters in CA (winning white men by 20 pts) and actually won the white vote in NM 55-43. Nationally Obama carried just over 40% of the total white vote last night.In Alabama and Georgia, the Super Tuesday states with the most black voters (51% of each electorate), Obama received 84% and 88% of the vote and won a commanding victory in the state. However, he lost the white vote significantly in both cases, with only 43% in GA and 25% in AL.

The irony of it all is that the party which lauds itself as a vehicle for racial and gender progress, is by no means above voting on such superficial factors.

Popularity: 43% [?]

After the single biggest day of voting in primary history here is how the race stands:

Total Democratic Delegate Count:

Clinton: 1012

Obama: 933

Total GOP Delegate Count:

McCain: 697

Romney: 244

Huckabee: 187

At the end of voting last night Obama won 13 states and Clinton won 8. Obama tended to win deep southern states with large black populations as well as Midwestern states, while Clinton won heavily populated states states, especially ones in the Northeast, as well as states with large hispanic populations. (Exit polls here will give you an indication of these trends.)

For the other side, McCain won 9, Romney won 7, and Huckabee won 5. Put simply, Romney won midwestern states, Huck won southern states, while McCain won the most states and the biggest states.

The Democratic nominee needs 2025 delegates to take the nomination, while the GOP nominee requires 1191. As you can see things are very close on the Democratic side after the big night with Clinton holding on to a 68 delegate lead by virtue of nothing more than 83 more super-delegates (Frank wrote an lucid post explaining the Democratic super-delegates here) she has than Obama. This race is anything but over as there are many more delegates to be had.

The Repulican race is not nearly as close. To the contrary, with Huckabee winning some southern states and Romney performing below what was needed of him, John McCain continues to pull way out in front in the race for the nomination.

In the next week look to big primaries including Washington and Louisiana on Saturday and Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday.

UPDATE: My sources for the above delegate projections are CBS, AP, Washington Post, and RealClearPolitics. Note that numbers are constantly changing and that projections differ according to source. For instance, NBC News has Obama out in front of the delegate count by a very small margin as of Wednesday night. Hence, we dont really know the exact counts at this point. All that we do know is that the Dem race is effectively tied at this point.

Popularity: 26% [?]

To cap off an eventful night, sources have called California for Hillary Clinton and John McCain pretty early on. The state is not winner take all for either party, but it still has the most delegates for both. The state was really a big swing primary for both as polls had it as a tossup going into tonight. Hence, it is a really big swing in momentum for the Clinton and McCain campaigns. At this point in time California and Super Tuesday as a whole leads me to conclude that McCain is pulling way out in front for the GOP, while Clinton retains a slight edge for the Dems.

In hind sight I do not think that we should have been so surprised at Clinton or McCain winning. First of all, CA has a huge hispanic population (around 30% of Dem electorate), two-thirds of which voted for Clinton. This was more than enough to overcome white and black voters–the majority of both voted for Obama in CA. (Exit polls here). On the GOP side, Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger’s endorsement in the past week may very well have put McCain over the top in what was thought to be a close race.

Additionally, sources have just called Missouri for John McCain with more than 97% reporting. This primary is winner take all, and has the fourth most delegates of the night for the GOP. It was up until now a tossup between the Senator and Gov. Huckabee who has done extremely well in the south tonight. McCain beat Huckabee by just 1% there.

MO has yet to be called for the Dems. With 97% reporting, about one half percent separates the two candidates.

UPDATE: Missouri is called for Obama with 98% reporting. He is ahead by about .6% as of now.

Popularity: 24% [?]

We’d like to thank our readers and viewers for tuning into our live coverage this evening from 7:30 to 10:30. We worked rather hard to fill the three hours, but we hope our viewers enjoyed the coverage. Despite hiccups here and there, we think it was run pretty smoothly as well. We really enjoyed ourselves throughout this experience, and we look forward to doing this again. As soon as the next episode of New School Politics LIVE is scheduled, we’ll be sure to post about it on the blog. Again, we’ll include the live text blog archive after the jump. Please remember it’s live and may include objectionable content that slipped through our moderators. Thanks very much for watching! Please leave us comments and criticism, and we’ll try to incorporate everything into our next LIVE show.

Popularity: 45% [?]

As soon as polls closed sources called Georgia for Obama. The exit polls broke it down by race and gender: Obama won 83% of the black vote (53% of the GA Dem electorate). He lost white women 59%-39%, but did win white men 50%-45%. Obama can be expected to win a large portion of the southern primaries because of the fact that a large part of the southern Dem electorate is black (i.e. South Carolina).

The GOP race is too close to call at this point. Although exit polls have come in and they show it to be extremely close among all three candidates.

Popularity: 25% [?]

In the first results of Super Tuesday, the 18 delegates from the winner-take-all Wester Virginia Caucuses went to Mike Huckabee this recently on the second ballot of voting. The victory came about after McCain’s delegation, which only secured 15% of the votes on the first ballot, swung their support to the Arkansas Governor, who’s percentage jumped from 33% to 52% in the second round.

The series of events in West Virginia  reaffirm the suspicion that Huckabee is staying in the race in order to take conservative voters away from Mitt Romney which necessarily aids John McCain in his campaign for the nomination. One thing to watch for tonight is how conservatives in the south affect the primary results of states such as Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc., and if it factors in an overall loss for Mitt Romney on this Super Tuesday.

Of course, you should stay tuned for the New School’s live coverage tonight in order to find out.

Popularity: 24% [?]

This Tuesday the New School will be hosting its biggest event ever in order to report on the Super Tuesday primary results. All of the New School’s bloggers will be present to cover the election live. Additionally, for the first time ever, we will be streaming live video coverage through Mogulus onto the website featuring a panel discussion hosted by Zach, Efty, and Ryan, along with live news, prerecorded interviews, and more. The video coverage will include footage of McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaign events that the New School has attended in the past week.

Live text and video blogging will being at 7 PM EST and continue throughout the night.

Finally, we welcome and encourage viewer participation, so if you would like to enter any video or text posts be sure to send them to us!

Popularity: 43% [?]

Ryan, Efty, and Zach are currently attending a John McCain campaign rally in Fairfield, CT. We’re filming, along with doing interviews, all of which will be posted shortly and become a part of our New School LIVE video coverage on Tuesday.

-mobile post from iPhone

Popularity: 32% [?]