Neck and Neck Democratic Race Remains Uncertain

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, to help unpack the numbers as they come in tonight, we are joined by Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, and Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of the Hotline, National Journal's political daily.

Good to have you both with us all night long.

Let's turn to some of the states you're going to be paying attention to, special attention to for a sense of how this Democratic race is unfolding.

And, Amy, in terms of poll closing times, 7 o'clock, Georgia, what are you looking for?

AMY WALTER, The National Journal: Well, we are looking really for the turnout among African-Americans, this state like South Carolina. In fact, they almost have the exact same population, African-American population. So we expect African-Americans to make up a majority of the vote or more. That should absolutely benefit Barack Obama, as it did in South Carolina.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we should be able to see that soon?

AMY WALTER: We should be able to see that very soon. If we get the exit polling that tells us what percent of the vote came from African-Americans, I think that can tell us just what kind of margin Barack Obama could expect.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Stu, generally across the South?

STUART ROTHENBERG, Rothenberg Political Report: Absolutely, across the South, you're looking at the minority vote, the African-American vote. This is a vote that should go to Obama, or it has in the past. And we'll see how well he does there. And it's also turnout. It's not just what percentage he gets, but it's how many African-Americans turn out.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, Stu, at 8 o'clock, we have polls closing, I think it is in nine states, including the big bellwether state of Missouri. This is a state that's gone the way of the whole country, what, in every election but one since the...

STUART ROTHENBERG: Right, it is a national bellwether in presidential politics. And you can be sure that the Democrat who does well here is going to make the case about electability in November. And that's why this is an important state.

It does not have a very large African-American population. About 11 percent of Missourians are African-American. When we think of Missouri, we tend to think of organized labor, blue-collar Democrats.

You would think that Senator Clinton should do quite well here, but we're looking to see exactly how the voters divide here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right. Still on the Democratic side, at 8 o'clock, Amy, Massachusetts' polls close.

AMY WALTER: Well, this is another place where Hillary Clinton early on was ahead in the polls and some of the same make-up in Massachusetts as Missouri: good, core Democratic voters, in terms of blue-collar background.

But what we've seen in the last few weeks here is the endorsements piling up from Massachusetts elected officials for Barack Obama. Deval Patrick, who's the governor, was the first to endorse him. And then, of course, we saw John Kerry and most recently Sen. Ted Kennedy. With that kind of force behind him, Barack Obama is hoping to get a win in Massachusetts.

And I think the important thing -- and Missouri and Massachusetts may show this -- is Barack Obama needing to expand his base. Georgia is not going to tell us much. Massachusetts, Missouri, can he expand beyond just winning strongly among African-Americans or independent voters?

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, Stu, 9 o'clock the polls close in New York. That's Hillary Clinton's state.

STUART ROTHENBERG: It is. And so I think we're all expecting her to do quite well. But you know what? The expectations game at the end of the day could end up hurting her.

About 16 percent of the population of New York is African-American. We have a huge variety of voters in the state. You have, in addition to Hispanics, a significant Hispanic population, and African-Americans.

You've got a bunch of Manhattan upscale liberals, the kind of voters, white voters who have been actually supporting Barack Obama in other places. You have working-class voters throughout the state, Buffalo, Erie County.

This is a mixture, but it's the kind of place where Senator Clinton is supposed to do just wonderfully. And if she doesn't, obviously, the Clinton folks will have to explain why after the fact.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And then, Amy, the state all of us are waiting for, 11 o'clock Eastern time the polls close in California.

AMY WALTER: We don't know when we'll have the final results there, but what we know is this. The state, again, another place where we're looking at the turnout among minority populations, this is a state that has significant -- where white voters are actually a minority, but where there are no majority African-American districts.

Of the districts in the state, 10 of them are majority Latino. None of them are majority African-American. That will be very good for Hillary Clinton, who's done very well among Latinos.

The other thing we're looking for, for the Obama campaign, how well does he do today among independent voters? Republicans have a closed primary. Democrats, if you have not stated your preference, you can vote in a Democratic primary. He's hoping for a late surge today to give him an up here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, and we'll be looking for that across the country. All right, that's a quick look at the Democrats.

Now back to you, Jim.

MARGARET WARNER: The key contest tonight is, in fact, for delegates: 1,681 are at stake for the Democrats, out of 2,025 needed for the nomination; Hillary Clinton began the day with 249, Barack Obama with 167.

For more, we turn to Ron Elving, senior Washington editor for National Public Radio.

And, Ron, welcome.

The Democrats have a more complicated system for divvying up delegates based on these states. It's called proportional representation. How does that work?

RON ELVING, NPR's senior Washington editor: You call it more complicated, is to put it mildly, Margaret. The Democrats have been obsessed with having the egalitarian roots of their party expressed in the way they distribute their delegates going all the way back to the 1968 convention and the disaster there.

So they, all through the 1970s, devised rules that distributed their delegates as broadly as possible to reflect the percentage of the vote that each candidate in a primary got in each state.

So, for example, at the reach that we have gotten to now in the Democratic Party, you have about 30 percent of the delegates being distributed according to the statewide vote, proportionately, percentage-wise.

And then you have roughly half of the votes for the Democrats in a particular state distributed according to the proportions, the percentages each candidate gets in each congressional district.

In the very small states with just one seat in Congress, they break it down into legislative districts, but they're trying to get it as close down to the earth as they possibly can.

MARGARET WARNER: So fair to say this actually makes it hard to rack up a big delegate advantage tonight for one of these Democrats?

RON ELVING: When you're talking about just two people dividing the vote as closely as we expect this vote to be divided tonight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it makes it very difficult for either of them to achieve a significant advantage in delegates across the board for all 22 Democratic events tonight.

MARGARET WARNER: So, in other words, you could have a congressional district that one or the other would win, say, 55 percent-45 percent, but if that district has an even number of delegates, what, they're going to split the number?

RON ELVING: They're going to split it right down the middle, even though one has a 10-point advantage in your example.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, who do these rules favor or advantage, given these two particular candidates?

RON ELVING: Well, I wouldn't say that they advantage a particular candidate in this case because we don't know which one is really the top dog or the underdog. But in general, they would favor the underdog, because it would make it much more difficult for the leading candidate, the dominant candidate, to reach a critical mass of delegates and sew up the nomination.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, explain how what happened in Nevada -- first of all, could it happen again, where you had Hillary Clinton win the state, Barack Obama got one more delegate? Can that happen again? And how?

RON ELVING: It could happen. It's not terribly likely, particularly not in a larger state like California.

But what can happen is that because of that even-numbered split in most of the districts, but a majority going to one candidate in the districts that have odd numbers of delegates, it's possible for the distribution of one candidate's vote to be so advantageous that he picks up a disproportionate payoff in delegates for what he's getting in terms of the popular vote.

That's what happened in Nevada, where Barack came out one vote ahead, even though he was 5 percentage points behind in the popular vote.

MARGARET WARNER: So how soon in the evening will we actually have a sense not just of who won which states, but who's actually in the delegate lead for the night?

RON ELVING: We could have an early sense of which way the trend seems to be going, but to have a final result, given that I expect the two to be fairly close, we'll probably need to be up pretty late, certainly until we see what happens in California.

MARGARET WARNER: And, finally, briefly, of course, we haven't talked about super-delegates. These are some 20 percent of the number at the convention.

RON ELVING: And these are people who are entitled to be delegates by virtue of offices they already hold, elected offices, members of Congress and so on, or offices in the party, the Democratic National Committee, the state chairs, people of that nature, about 20 percent of the Democratic total.

And they're a kind of anchor to windward for the party to counterbalance, if you will, the winds of change among the people who are voting in these primaries.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Ron Elving, thank you. And we'll be back to you.

Jim?

Mark, what are your expectations on the Democratic side tonight?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: My expectations, Jim, is that it's going to be a late night. And there are certain things I'm looking at that I think are important.

One is, does the gender gap that Hillary Clinton has established with women overwhelmingly supporting her in early tests hold on tonight? I mean, I saw one measurement in Massachusetts there was actually a 62-point gender gap. Obama was carrying men by 20 percentage points; Hillary Clinton was carrying women by 42 percentage points. Can Obama make a dent there?

And, obviously, the Latino vote, which -- not for the first time, but certainly the most crucial time -- becomes an important and even decisive voting bloc. California, there are 5 million eligible Hispanic voters, one out of four of all Hispanic voters eligible in the country or -- more than one of the four, in that state.

And, obviously, that's true, as well, New Jersey, Illinois, in New Mexico, Colorado, other states with important Hispanics. So I think there's an awful lot of moving parts in tonight's election.

JIM LEHRER: Moving parts in your mind, David, that lead you to expect a resolution for the nomination, for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, when we're said and done tonight?

DAVID BROOKS, columnist, New York Times: No, but that wasn't what I would have said a month ago. I would say, a month ago, this looked to be Hillary Clinton's firewall, because she had huge leads, 20-point national leads, huge leads in California, New Jersey, state after state, gigantic leads.

There's been this dramatic shift in the past couple of weeks toward Obama. And now I'd say more of the barometric pressure is on her. She's really got to do pretty well tonight, because after tonight the landscape begins to look much better for Obama because things are spread out, he's got more money, he does have the momentum.

And so, to me, the early states I'm looking at are New Jersey and Connecticut, which are right around where Hillary Clinton lives, and yet they've got a lot of Obama-type voters, the highly educated voters. And so if he can do well in those two early states, then he could -- you know, that looks pretty good for him.

JIM LEHRER: You think...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I would add to that. I agree with David, particularly on Connecticut. Connecticut has a maverick history. It's a state in 2000 that John McCain carried over George W. Bush. Of course, the Bush family had been paramount political importance in the state.

It's a state that Jerry Brown carried against Bill Clinton in 1992, when he was on his way, where Gary Hart came back and thumped Walter Mondale 2-1 in that state. So they've shown a willingness in the past to depart from what has been the established consensus.

The other two states I think that we have to look at quite early are Georgia and Alabama. Georgia, because obviously a large African-American population in the electorate on the Democratic side, Jim, but that's the state that, again, with a political history where Walter Mondale staged his comeback against Jesse Jackson in 1984, and carried Georgia, and carried Alabama in that same election, with the support of Richard Arrington, the African-American mayor of Birmingham.

So those are two states -- if Obama is going to roar, I think that the roar...

JIM LEHRER: It'll start there?

MARK SHIELDS: ... it will begin in Georgia and Alabama.