That means Clinton should win, because the early exit polls always show an Obama lead, such as back on Feb 5 in NJ, MA, AZ, CA and MO.

Those are the greatest exit poll numbers I've ever seen.

Look at those blowouts! That candidate is clearly going to have an outstanding night!

Heh, I thought you took my quote and deleted my comment and then I discovered this was a different thread.

MSNBC is doing exits now.

If Obama's advantage in early voting in TX is factored in, this should be a big night.

MSNBC exit info:

81% opposed to NAFTA in Ohio.

60/24 in Ohio against.

Covering all the bases

In RI Obama and Clinton are leading.
In Ohio Obama and Clinton are leading.
In Texas they are tied.
In Vermont.... 2 to 1 victory.

Sounds like a pretty safe exit poll.

Lot of independents voting

-Self-described independents were about one in five voters in Ohio's Democratic primary, one in four in Texas, a third in Rhode Island and four in 10 in Vermont.

-In the GOP race in Ohio, independents were about one in seven voters, in Texas one in five.

They aren't corrected for demographics. That comes later.

If Obama wins OH, he wins TX by a lot more than 2 points.

what percent of the delegates are awarded by the primary v. the caucus in texas?

I'd love for those numbers to be true, but they seem a bit favorable for Obama.

If this is true, the Democratic race is over.  I'm very much concerned about Obama's ability to respond to increased scrutiny and missteps on things like NAFTA.

But we've seen early exit polls wrong before.

Pennsylvania: Kerry 59, Bush 41

Just to keep things in perspective here.

Early exit polls are just polls without the credibility. Or ARG polls.

Even if these numbers are off a bit and Clinton wins, the numbers would have to be WAY off for Clinton to have the blowout that the polls predicted.

  Well, those are weird exit polls.  I don't believe them.  I know, going out on a limb...

The exit polls were spot on in Wisconsin, Virginia and MD...i dont know who will win, but it seems as if neither candidate will have a decisive victory in either texas, ohio or rhode island for that matter.

Totally useless.  The "early" exit polling predictions bombed on Super Tuesday.  Moreover, it doesn't take into account early voting, which has been significant.

Vermont polls close in 30 minutes.  Will the networks call it immediately?  If not, then it's probably closer than Obama would like.

So no matter who wins, everybody gets drunk tonight.

(Nah, not quite)

Unlikely to be the final numbers (even corrected with the second wave -- Rhode Island looks especially terrible for Hillary -- but argues against the sort of blowout that would've changed the delegate math much. If this hold (at all) the main victory Hillary would get would be a very good 48-72 hour news cycle and not anything concrete. Which would be great for her fans, they could gloat and have a last hurrah, but not so great for her prospects long term.

That said, I'll take another look at Ohio in an hour and wait another 2-3 hours for Texas. These aren't indicative of anything except that Hillary will likely not win by 15% or so.

You are badly misreading the article - Alter is saying she could win 16 states and STILL not catch up to him in pledged delegates - no that Hilary can't "win" or that Obama can, without the help of super delegates.

So, wasted outrage, on this.

From Marc Ambinder

The Clinton campaign, having received leaked exit polls showing slim leads in both Texas and Ohio, is already challenging, in the press, the aggressiveness of Obama's caucus operation but is generally happy with early reports that turnout in Texas is high.

Obama campaign just released a press release saying they expect to net a total of 12 delegates tonight.

The only thing we can probably safely conclude from this is that Obama will almost certainly win Vermont.

But as far as predicting the other states when you account for the unreliability of early exits (they are notoriously worse than actual polling surveys that are weighted and tinkered with taken the day before for example) and the amount of early votes in each state, you can conclude almost nothing.

I hope Ohio and Rhode Island are that close but I seriously doubt it.

Obviously two point leads for one candidate or the other are meaningless.  These exits do suggest that things should be close, and that Obama should win Vermont comfortably.  Beyond that, we don't know anything.

We can agree at least that the exit polls do not mirror the Hillary blowout that was expected. Perhaps the exit polls are really wrong though.

Yeah, agreed that these don't mean much...

Would take those kinds of numbers in an instant, though. =)

Also, does anyone know if these exit pollsters factor in early voting somehow?

Since she likely had a ten point plus lead in early voting. In Texas it is unclear but Obama may have had a slight edge in early voting (Though Survey USA had a slight edge to Hillary and they have proven them the best pollsters this primary season, though not necessarily for taht particualr variable [i,e--early voting which would be a subsample]).

Clinton will win the primary in TX by vote, but probably lose in delegates due to apportionment and the fact that heavy Clinton areas (Latino areas) have fewer delegates than heavy Obama areas.

Look at the turnout 60% women.

Turnout among women looks to be up in both states in these preliminary results -- they account for about six in 10 voters in Ohio, and not quite as many in Texas, compared with 52 percent in Ohio and 53 percent in Texas in 2004.

we know nothing. am i right nervous bloggers?

the only thing i can say is that the scenario in which Clinton wins TX by over 5 and OH by over 10 seems less likely than it did a few days ago.

anyone disagree?

Should be the tenth election day in a row where Obama took more delegates.

right now is because it is all we have. These results are next to meaningless, but I am just dying for some real returns. Election Day results for me are worse than waiting for Christmas when I was 5. In eight minutes....come on Vermont.

The night starts with good news. I bet the networks call Vermont in 9 minutes and seven seconds :-).

So these are not normalized to the actual results.  But in the other elections the "early exits" would say one thing and then throughout the night the exits morph on CNN.com until they reflect the accurate results in the end.  (This happened in 2004 as well).  I think that say you have a precinct where in the exits Obama wins 55-45, but then they get the actual results from the precinct and it's a 50-50 tie, they figure that they oversampled Obama voters in the exits, so they adjust the exits for that precinct to underweight the Obama voters by 50/55ths and they overcount the Clinton voters by 50/45ths, which then can change the makeup of the race if the exits said that men voted for Obama and women for Clinton, and that the gender makeup was 50/50, they may change it so that the gender makeup was actually 47% men to 53% women.  

Am I right?

I'm waiting for the results. . . .

The early exist look about right for Obama in Vermont.

Heck, my husband just headed out to vote for Obama and the polls close in 5 minutes. So it's not over yet!