Philadelphia officials are expecting a crush of voters between now and 8 p.m. ET -- a surge that would come on top of what is said to already be a record turnout for a primary.
There are basically two types of exit poll reports emerging. One is the horse race number (which is leaked) -- the other looks at the demographics of the voters, which is widely shared by major news entities.
Before you read any of them, read this post from Markos: Ignore Exit Polls.
There are two currently two versions of the horse race circulating. Josh Marshall has both, with the necessary caveats:
As you may have noticed Drudge has up what he says are 5 PM exit poll numbers showing Clinton 52%, Obama 48%. I suspect they are 'accurate' as far as early, un-weighted exits can be. But let me point out that my recollection is that pretty much all the early and unweighted exits we've seen this cycle have turned out to be wrong. And often very wrong. So this has to be taken with a real grain of salt. And that's assuming they're not made up entirely.
And to be clear, when I say take them with a grain of salt, I don't mean that in the garden variety, being responsible, 'we don't know for sure yet' kind of way. I really mean that these early unweighted numbers have routinely been way, way off.
Keep in mind, these numbers are very subject to change...against Obama.
Interviews with voters leaving the polls showed almost six in 10 were women and three in 10 were age 65 or over.
Some voters had a hard time making up their minds. One in five said they decided for whom to vote within the last week and about one in 10 said they made up their minds Tuesday, according to the preliminary results of exit polling for The Associated Press and television networks.
A quarter of voters had household family income of more than $100,000 last year and about as many reported having a postgraduate degree. Those groups tend to vote for Obama.
Obama is winning 92 percent of black voters, among his highest margin to date in that demographic. Meanwhile, Clinton is winning among voters 65 and over by a 23 point margin, 61 to 38 percent.
Huffington Post has a very extensive report of all the numbers rolling in.
Well, the pundits are finally saying what Joe and I have been saying for weeks. Hillary will win tomorrow's primary in Pennsylvania, just as she has been predicted to win it for the past 18 months. It's only a question of by how much. From Chuck Todd and company over at MSNBC:
So here’s the game on Tuesday -- it’s not if Clinton will win, but how big will her victory be. She'd like to net more than 200,000 in the popular vote, which she would only get with both a large turnout (approximately 2 million total) and a 10-point-plus victory.
As Joe reported earlier, Hillary's people have reportedly told Drudge that she expects to win by 11 points, and even Obama is saying that he expects Hillary to win. Which gets us back to something I've been saying for a while. Tomorrow's vote won't change a thing. Obama will still be ahead in the delegates, the popular vote, and number of states won. Hillary will win Pennsylvania, which we already knew would happen. Hillary will still be in a race she can't win, her people will still be crowing that Obama couldn't even win a big state like Pennsylvania, and Obama's people will rightfully respond that if they suck, then she must really suck, since she's still losing to him. At some point, Hillary is going to have to explain to the voters, and the SuperDelegates, under what possible scenario she wrenches the nomination away from Obama, short of an asteroid landing on his head. If she can't explain even one plausible scenario for victory, she should get out.
NOTE FROM JOHN: To put these polls in context, Joe added a link at the bottom of this post to a Bloomberg News article. The article explains that even if Hillary beats Obama by 25 percentage points in Pennsylvania, she still is unlikely to overtake him in either delegates or the popular vote nationwide:
``I am a big believer that she needs either one, the popular or the delegate count,'' in order to make a case for why she should be the nominee, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a Clinton backer, said in an interview....
To earn that split decision, though, Clinton would need a 25-point victory in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon -- a prospect that's not at all certain.
Keep these numbers in mind tomorrow night. Hillary needs a 25 point win in Pennsylvania, and even then, she's in trouble. __________
SurveyUSA, which has had a solid track record this year, finds a 6-point lead for Clinton, down from 14 last week:
The survey concluded that Clinton will finish with 50 percent, 6 percentage points ahead of Obama. The margin of sampling error is 3.8 percent.
Looking only at SurveyUSA numbers and ignoring the polls that have been released by 12 competing pollsters in Pennsylvania, Obama gained ground in a week when he was largely on defense and off-message. Last week, SurveyUSA had Clinton ahead by 14 points. Monday, in a poll conducted using the identical methodology, SurveyUSA found Clinton ahead by 6 points.
Of all the polls coming out today, SurveyUSA is the most surprising and shows the biggest movement for Obama.
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton leads Illinois Sen. Barack Obama 51 - 44 percent among Pennsylvania likely Democratic primary voters, compared to 50 - 44 percent last week, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
White voters back Sen. Clinton 57 - 38 percent, while blacks back Sen. Obama 84 - 10 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. A look at other subgroups shows:
* Women back Clinton 57 - 38 percent, while men are for Obama 53 - 42 percent; * White Catholics are for Clinton 66 - 29 percent; * Voters under 45 go with Obama 57 - 41, while older voters back Clinton 54 - 40 percent.
PPP Polling, which has also proven to be pretty accurate this year, has Obama leading Clinton by a 3 point margin:
Barack Obama 49 Hillary Clinton 46
For the fourth week in a row PPP is showing the margin between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Pennsylvania to be at three points or less.
With such a close race the final result tomorrow should hinge on turnout. If there is disproportionately high turnout in the Philadelphia metro area, where Obama has a 58-32 lead, he could pull out a victory. Clinton is dominating throughout pretty much the rest of the state.
Regardless of whether Clinton or Obama finally wins this primary, it is almost certain the margin will be so small as to have minimal effect on the delegate count.
There you have it.
Keep in mind, Hillary Clinton was always supposed to win Pennsylvania by a very wide margin. She had been way up in the polls -- and has the Rendell machine working very hard on her behalf. Bloomberg reports Clinton "Needs Record Margins" to even stay in the game:
To overtake Barack Obama in the nationwide popular vote, Hillary Clinton needs a bigger win in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary than she has had in any major contest so far. And that's just for starters.
Congressional Quarterly has just released an analysis predicting that Hillary will only win 3 delegates more than Obama in the Pennsylvania primary next week. We'll be watching carefully to see which reporters try to spin Hillary's victory next week - a 20-poin victory that the polls have predicted for 12 months now - as a "stunning upset" that "changes everything." We'll be memorializing those "journalists" by name on election day, next Tuesday. Current delegate tally Obama: 1,632 Clinton: 1,489
Pennsylvania may give Hillary a 3 delegate bump. That's a 0.2% increase in her number of delegates, meaning that rather than losing to Obama by 143 delegates, she'll be losing to Obama by 140. Yep, it's going to change EVERYTHING. Stay tuned.
And for the Hillary spinmeisters out there, here are the actual polls from PA over the past 18 months.
Note that up until just recently, Hillary had a nearly 20 point lead. If she wins by 20 points, then she meets expectations, she doesn't beat them. We already know that Hillary is going to win PA, that is the conventional wisdom and has been the conventional wisdom since the beginning of 2007. Meeting that conventional wisdom is certainly a "win" for Hillary, but winning a state you're supposed to win does not an "upset" make. The only "news" that may come from next Tuesday is whether Obama beats expectations by cutting into Hillary's 20 point lead that she held for a year. The other real "news" is how Hillary has squandered her lead in PA over the past three to four months. Look at those polls. It's a disaster for her. And more recently, not only has Obama been catching up to her, but her numbers are dropping. Again, hanging on by the skin of your teeth is not an upset.
