11:45 PM. At this point, the areas left to report look pretty evenly divided between Clinton and Obama-leaning regions, and pretty evenly divided across the state. Thus, I’d expect Obama’s present 58-42 margin to approximately hold.
11:22 PM. Getting back to Kentucky for a moment: if you take away Louisville, Obama lost the state by 47 points (71-24). If you take away Louisville and Fayette County (Lexington), he lost it by 51 points (73-22).
At least in terms of surface-level demographics, West Virginia looks something like Kentucky less Lexington and Louisville. But Obama actually backtracked about 10 points in those West Virginia type of regions from last week.
One thing that may be a factor is what I call the “lapsed Democrat” vote. Kentucky has about 1.6 million registered Democrats, but had just 713K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (45 percent of the registered Democrat base). By contrast, Oregon has about 800K registered Democrats, but had 943K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (118 percent of the registered Democrat base).
Although Kentucky nominally has a closed primary, what may have happened here is that you have a lot of voters who are registered as Democrats but routinely vote Republican for national office — sort of a relic of the old Solid South. And about 15-20 percent of supporters of each candidate said they’d vote for John McCain over their own candidate.
It’s a weird dynamic, but I guess we can at least draw the conclusion that if those lapsed Democrats are going to start voting Democratic again for national office, it won’t be for a Democrat like Barack Obama.
10:49 PM. Cribbing from PocketNines on the Oregon delegate math:
OR-1. 4-3 Obama, will stay that way. We’d predicted 4-3 Obama.
OR-2. 3-2 Obama, will stay that way. We’d predicted 3-2 Clinton.
OR-3. Very close between 5-4 Obama and 6-3 Obama. We’d predicted 6-3 Obama.
OR-4. 4-3 Obama, will stay that way. We’d predicted 4-3 Obama.
OR-5. 3-3 Obama split, will probably stay that way. We’d predicted 3-3 split.
At Large. 7-5 Obama, will stay that way. We’d predicted 7-5 Obama.
PLEO. Very close between 3-3 Obama and 4-2 Obama. We’d predicted 3-3 Obama.
It looks to me like OR-3 — the more urban of the two Portland districts — and the PLEOs are the only things in play. Obama should win somewhere between 29-31 delegates, Clinton 21-23. I’ll bet he’ll just get the margin he needs in OR-3 and just miss it on the PLEOs.
10:26 PM. It sort of takes the fun out when the vote comes in this fast.
10:14 PM. Oregonian voters were against Clinton’s gas tax plan by a margin of 63-26.
10:07 PM. The vote that’s come in so far is from Portland and Eugene. Obama is beating our projections by just a point or two in Portland, but the large margin in Eugene bodes well for him.
The 13-14 point exit polling margin is probably something of a ceiling floor for him. I don’t *think* they polled anyone who just dropped off their ballot today (typically about 30 percent of the electorate) and in Portland for instance he’s running at about 64-36 when the exit poll showed it at 60-40.
10:02 PM. He does get such a call, with exit polling extrapolating to a 13-14 point margin.
9:59 PM. Whether Obama gets an immediate call of Oregon is probably a pretty good over/under for whether he’ll beat pundit expectations.
9:51 PM. Things were getting slightly unwieldy in the other thread, so we’ll start a fresh one here.