Super Tuesday

About four and a half years ago, Memphis was knocked off the grid for a few days in the wake of Hurricane Elvis, and barely anyone in the mainstream media noticed.

However, having a tornado cause polling places to close early—that merits rapid media attention.

Authorities confirmed a tornado touchdown near Arlington, said Jeremy Heidt, spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

The Hickory Ridge Mall sustained “severe damage,” including a collapsed roof and walls, according to Staples, who said firefighters were still evacuating the building as of 6:40 p.m.

Added MFD division chief Daryl Payton: “We had to evacuate a large number of civilians, but fortunately there were some injuries but no medical transports. It was just a major time trying to evacuate people because people were afraid to leave the building.”

Thankfully, I haven’t seen wingnuts speculating on the Clinton campaign conjuring the tornadic weather to drive down Obama’s expected stronger support in the inner city portions of Memphis.

OK, one more thought about Super Tuesday –

I really, really wish I had a means to listen to the Rush Limbaugh show in my office. I would have loved to hear his reaction today to McCain’s wins of last night.

He can’t be a happy camper, what with Thompson having dropped out, and Romney being so soundly spanked by “too-spendy” (from the right’s POV) Huckabee and “too moderate” (from the right’s POV) McCain.

A couple more thoughts while they’re percolating in my brain:

On putting a fork in the Romney and Huckabee campaigns

According to the tally at CNN, Romney has 268 delegates to date, while Huckabee has 169.  The number of delegates required to win at convention is 1,191.  I believe there are still 1,035 delegates up for grabs.  Do a little math, and you see that unless either Romney or Huckabee  start sweeping the remaining states, they’re on the verge of being eliminated unless other deal(s) are made.

CNN shows McCain at 615 delegates.  He needs 56% of the remaining delegates…and it’s worth noting that several of the remaining states are not winner-take-all.

On the Impact of Early Voting

I noticed something interesting in the California results (with 92% of precincts reporting):

• Dems — Clinton 52%, Obama 42%, Edwards 4%
• GOP — McCain 42%, Romney 34%, Huckabee 12%, Giuliani 5%, Paul 4%, Thompson 2%

California is one of the states that has early voting, and there were expectations that the fact that folks could cast ballots before some of the recent drop-outs dropped out, and before some of the recent changes in perceived momentum occurred could mess with the accuracy of pre-primary polls.

When I went to bed last night, Edwards and Giuliani were showing double-digit results in the early returns, and Thompson had a total in the high single-digits, admittedly with admittedly a relatively small portion of the vote in.

While I haven’t heard that the apparent early strength of dropped-out candidates may have been a manifestation of the early votes… I do wonder about that.

So, a thought — perhaps a supporter of “preference voting” or “instant run-off voting” ought to investigate that phenomenon, and use it as a basis to argue that the fast pace and tumultuousness of the primary campaign this cycle provides strong evidence that early voting needs to be linked to preference or instant-runoff voting.

On the Compressed, Early Timeline of the Primary Campaign

The experience of the past six weeks has me more convinced than ever that the Presidential primary game needs to be reformed.

While I don’t mind a couple of non-representitive small states serving the role of weeding out nonviable candidates, I do worry that the whirlwind campaign means that money could be playing too big a role (e.g. what if Edwards or Dodd had had more money to get their messages out; or what if Obama and McCain hadn’t had their recent fundraising successes?), and that Joe Average voter isn’t getting a great opportunity to make informed choices.

I stand even more strongly behind my idea of a rotating system of regional primaries, to allow more time for voters to learn about the candidates, to permit candidates to have a bit of geographic focus when campaigning (hopefully reducing expense and wasteful travel), and in order to make everyone’s primary vote potentially relevant (by having about half the delegates decided in the final wave).

So, Super Duper Tuesday is almost upon us.  As you might expect, the media and the blogosphere is awash in polls.

Electoral-vote.com has a nice wrap-up, showing:

Dems

• Alabama: Hillary +3
• Arizona: Hillary +15
• California: Hillary +11
• Colorado: Obama +2
• Connecticut: Hillary +3
• Georgia: Obama +16
• Illinois: Obama +24
• Massachusetts: Hillary+15
• Minnesota: Hillary +7
• Missouri: Hillary +4
• New Jersey: Hillary +12
• New York: Hillary +22
• Oklahoma: Hillary +25
• Tennessee: Hillary +33

GOP

• Alabama: McCain + 19
• Arizona: McCain +20
• California: McCain +9
• Colorado: Romney +19
• Connecticut: McCain +19
• Georgia: McCain +1
• Illinois: McCain +11
• Massachusetts: Romney +27
• Minnesota: McCain +24
• Missouri: McCain +4
• New Jersey: McCain +19
• New York: McCain +31
• Oklahoma: McCain +18
• Tennessee: McCain +15

Of course, given the uniqueness of this primary season, I wonder about the accuracy of many of these polls.  However, I’m inclined to believe that McCain will be close to being the presumptive nominee for the GOP, thanks to the winner-take-all nature of the Republican primaries.

Over on the Dems’ side…it could remain interesting, given the proportional delegate allocation used (plus the superdelegates, plus Hillary’s desire to get her delegates from “boycotted” Michigan and Florida seated…)

The Courant is reporting the results of the first poll I’ve seen since primary season started of how Nutmegger voters are leaning for our Super Tuesday primary.

Among Dems:

• Hillary: 41%
• Obama: 27%
• Undecided: 21%
• Edwards: 9%
• Gravel: 0%
• Kucinich: 0%

Among the GOP:

• McCain: 39%
• Undecided: 17%
• Giuliani: 16%
• Romney: 11%
• Huckabee: 8%
• Thompson: 6%
• Ron Paul: 2%

So, among Dems there doesn’t seem to be much change from the last poll I saw for CT. Over on the GOP side, however, it seems that momentum has clearly shifted from CT being a runaway state for Giuliani to being a runaway state for McCain.

While Real Clear Politics seems to be the preferred source of summary polling data for online pundits, I’ll take this opportunity to note that Electoral-Vote.com seems to be dusting off its site, and is providing a map to summarize the latest polls.