Oh yeah, Clinton "eeked out" a win, huh? Must be fun using prejudicial language to try to prove your point. Simply put, Obama can't win the general election--he's a loser, folks. Get over it.

Where are:

JakeD
scrivener
svreader
Thinker
Rat-the

Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States: Barack Obama.

Senator Obama, go make us proud.

Did Larry King just get retired? Poor guy lost track of things pretty quickly after coming on CNN tonight, and then was cut from the program.

"Plasma... the CNN map has 98% of Monroe reporting... where are you getting your numbers from?" --Boutan

From about 30 minutes ago...Monroe is in now.

Boutan,

Those Monroe numbers just came in, and with no huge surprises. The last half of Monroe helped Obama close the gap by another couple thousand votes.

It's gonna be close. Obama needs about 17,000 votes, and the current 65-35 margin in Lake County should just deliver enough if it holds.

Clinton has to be quaking in her shoes right now.

Plasma... the CNN map has 98% of Monroe reporting... where are you getting your numbers from?

tom does that mean that all of Gary has reported???

dsimon,

You're right that the difference at this point is largely spin, but spin is what matters most at the moment. Elected delegates will not ultimately decide this race, and spin is what will swing fence-sitting superdelegates.

BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!

Hillary has canceled all her Wednesday morning appearances on the news shows!

Obama in 08!

The "winner" in Indiana is academic in terms of the only number that matters: delegates. The difference between a 50-50 split and 52-48 is maybe a four delegate swing. The rest is just spin. It's too bad that many people avoid doing the math.

Lake County: 316 out of 561 reporting
May 6th, 2008
The first totals from Lake County,
316 precincts out of 561 reporting.

Almost all of Gary and Merrillville and portion of Munster primarily make up these numbers, plus Lake Station, East Chicago:

Lake county
Democratic candidates
President of the
United States
Barack Obama 46,759
Hillary Clinton 25,100

Governor
Jim Schellinger 27,515
Jill Long Thompson 32,461

This website is getting the Lake County results way before the national media. What's going on. http://www.nwi.com/blogs/election/

Get online and get your money on Obama people... he's paying 7:1 at betfair.com to win Indiana...

The Mayor knows his stuff. This is coming home.

From the Music Man -

Gary, Indiana!
What a wonderful name,
Named for Elbert Gary of judiciary fame.
Gary, Indiana, as a Shakespeare would say,
Trips along softly on the tongue this way--
Gary, Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary, Indiana,
Let me say it once again.
Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana,
That's the town that "knew me when."
If you'd like to have a logical explanation
How I happened on this elegant syncopation,
I will say without a moment of hesitation
There is just one place
That can light my face.
Gary, Indiana,
Gary Indiana,
Not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome, but--
Gary, Indiana,
Gary, Indiana,
Gary Indiana,
My home sweet home.

Monroe still has 32% unreported. Marion and Hamilton counties (surrounding Indy), which broke heavily for Obama, also have a few precincts left. Union county apparently fell into a black hole, but if you believe Inonit's prediction (No idea if that's wise or not) Clinton picks up only 400 there.

Thus, by my count, Obama only needs to pick up 18,500 or so from the rest of Lake to pull off the comeback. Caveat Emptor! Your Mileage May Vary!

Does anyone else think this split screen with John King drawing on the map without narration is absolutely hysterical, like a political flight safety video?

High turnout in Gary, 11,000 absentee ballota and with 92% of vote counted HRCs lead is now less than 20,000. Hmmmmm. Me thinks Obama pulls this one out in the end. I think I hear the Fat Lady singing Hillary.

What the hell is going on in Lake County? The mayor of Hammond is on CNN saying that he knows the results of his city and several nearby and that they have all reported their results. He then went on to claim that Gary is the one that does not have an official count. However, according to CNN, the 28% they have reporting for Lake County is all from Gary...

Clearly, the outcome will be a narrow Clinton victory. Rationale? I can no longer imagine life without a devisive, destructive, back biting, eye gouging, knee capping Democratic primary fight. What would I do from now until August? What would SNL do? What would Olbermann do?

i can't get over hillary's speech - one of the most bizarre things i ever saw.

burma? still with the gas tax ploy? was bill crying? having an allergy attack? "wasn't chelsea great?" how odd.

The other wildcard is Union County in the southeastern part of the state, which still hasn't given any returns. Presumably this will go strongly for Clinton? If so, Clinton may gain an extra few thousand votes there.

i can't get over hillary's speech - one of the most bizarre things i ever saw.

burma? still with the gas tax ploy? was bill crying? having an allergy attack? "wasn't chelsea great?" how odd.

The other wildcard is Union County in the southeastern part of the state, which still hasn't given any returns. Presumably this will go strongly for Clinton? If so, Clinton may gain an extra few thousand votes there.

and so, Gary gets to choose the next President. Stunning.

Earlier in the day, a judge ordered the Lake County polls to remain open longer due to some "human error" at voting sites. I'm not sure precisely what this means, but this is the reason that the returns are coming in late. Polls stayed open longer.

And with a bit over a quarter of Lake County reporting, Obama's gap is now down to 21,000 votes.

If the 3-1 Obama margin in Gary holds, Clinton's exit speech will be scheduled for early tomorrow afternoon.

I'd just like to add that IN is pretty good at gerrymandering (is Kokomo the appendix of CD-4?). But PA-12, PA-15, and particularly PA-18 are truly marvels of gerrymandering.

Anybody else think something seems a little fishy about Lake County's vote reporting?

MarkinAustin,

I have no idea which votes have been counted yet in Bloomington. If all that has been counted so far is the university, then those numbers may be skewed, but I doubt that is the case. As more numbers come in (the count is up to almost 70% of precincts in Monroe County now), the percentages for Obama are holding fairly consistent at about 2-1, so Obama probably has another couple thousand votes there.

Lake County is still the big fish in the pond, though. The votes in Monroe could provide the edge, but it will take a landslide in Gary to make up the 38,000 deficit that Obama currently faces.

Yeah, but that 28% is all from Gary...

Brilliant!

Not only do I think Lake will swing Obama to victory, but I agree with Chris Matthews that this could have possibly been a political maneuver to intentionally delay votes.

Imagine the momentum Obama's campaign would gain if he announced a "last-minute" victory in Indiana in the wake of Hillary's "on to the White House" speech.

Not to imagine a complete kill shot to the Clinton campaign.

Well played.

Obama needs to win about 61-39 to take the lead. However, if Lake County narrows Clinton's margin to less than 15,000 it will be a reported in the media as 50-50 and that will not be enough to keep stem the flow of superdelegates to Obama. It looks like this might finally be over... it's kind of sad.

Wow, with 28% of Lake reporting, Obama is currently taking 75%!!!

The early Lake returns are in. Could be a BHO sweep tonight.

Here comes Lake Co...Obama has her 3:1 right now.

I wouldn't vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton if you waterboarded me.

crt12,

Supposing that Obama picks up nearly 100 delegates in today's contests, which seems reasonably close to what the count will be given his strong NC win, he will still need about 180-190 delegates to reach the magic number of 2025.

There are about 230 undecided superdelegates left. A few of those (Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, etc.) will not come out with a preference until absolutely necessary, which presumably means sometime after June 3. The rest would decidedly need to break for Obama. I'm guessing a lot will over the coming week given how these two contests today are panning out, and you'll see an avalanche of superdelegates for Obama if the late Indiana returns tip the state in his favor.

Still, though, unless Obama wins Indiana outright, I doubt enough superdelegates will break toward him to put him over the top quite yet. It will be two more weeks in Oregon where that happens, I'll bet.

Of course, this is all supposing that the magic number is 2025, which Clinton's campaign disputes. If the magic number goes up because Florida and Michigan are somehow included, then this race could still be far from over.

blert, do you know if the student boxes in Bloomington have been counted? Do you know if the Monroe votes other than U. IN boxes vote like the student boxes?

It would not surprise me. Austin voted 61% BHO and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill went about 70% for BHO. So other, bigger U. towns reflect their U. vote.

Do you know?

As an Obama supporter, it would be sweet for Obama to win by a whisker in Indiana, but he has already defeated Hillary Clinton tonight. She needed to change the game and keep her momentum going to have a chance. She didn't do it. She has run out of time and run out of states. Even getting the Florida and Michigan delegations seated would leave her over 100 delegates behind. The Superdelegate break down is almost even now. It is time to get behind Barack Obama, our nominee, and fight to win back the White House.

Some of the unreported precincts from Monroe county are starting to come in. The 48 of 71 precincts now reporting have gone 66-34 for Obama. If that trend continues, Obama should pick up about 2,000 votes there.

MarkInAustin:

Actually, BHO can end up with more delegates even if he doesn't win the popular vote based on his strength in CD-1 (NW IN) and CD-7 (Indy). With a 50-50 split, BHO is probably +2 delegates (from the 4-2 splits in CDs 1 and 7).

Looks like McC will be on The Daily Show (again) tomorrow to get some more free publicity.

Axelrod just announced that Limbaugh was responsible for Clinton's win in Indiana, talk about taking the high road...
guess he must be high, falling for the urban legend, operation chaos, fools will believe anything.

JD, I guess the summer motor fuel tax holiday was not a sale tonight.

Lake County is by far the most important, but Monroe County, which is going nearly 2-1 for Obama is also slow with returns. Only a bit over 50% of precincts in Monroe are reporting at this point. This could be an extremely close race.

Obama could pick up another 3000 votes over Clinton in Monroe, and then he needs a strong turnout in Gary. If 40,000 more people in Lake County go for Obama instead of Clinton, Obama will most likely win the state. That's a tall task, but after winning by 60,000 votes in Indianapolis, Obama could still pull out the upset...and the knockout punch.

Obama is cheating in Indiana, check out the video on realclearpolitics.com.
We thought he was not part of the old school political machine, so he says, he is just another cog in the wheel.

MarkInAustin - The delegate count is so close anyhow that its immaterial at this point. Hillary just wants bragging rights, which I think she bragged about too soon!

The Lake County results thing is a debacle. "Holding the vote" is completely inappropriate and reeks of old school machine politics.

Having said that, does anyone know if, given delegate projections for tonight, Obama could clinch if every undecided superdelegate were suddenly to move to him?

Union County - my model predicts that only about 1,300 votes will be cast there. Hillary took the surrounding counties about 2-1, so this is only a 400-vote swing or so.

Reasonable, if you're right, I think there's a good chance of a stunner here.

mnteng, you and "optimyst" are solid numbers folk - so do BHO's wins in the IN metros mean that on a near 50-50 vote BHO gets the [slight] delegate split?

I like how Clinton just claimed a win in Indiana. I look for Lake County to swing this state to Obama.

As for Union County going to Clinton. There are still votes out in Marion, Monroe, and Hamilton which are all Obama territory.

laurie:

I thought it was just me ... or the beers I had. Was it one speech, two speeches?

One thing that really came out though is that she's hurting for money. That's going to be a big problem for her moving forward.

Inoit wrote:
My math says he needs to win Lake 61-39 to catch her. I have no idea how reasonable that is

My Comment:
Its reasonable, in fact he should do better than this. Lake County is essentially part of Illinois and its largest City, Gary, has the highest percentage of African-Americans of any city with more than 100,000 residents.

Has anyone heard about missing voter cartridges in Gary?

My math says he needs to win Lake 61-39 to catch her. I have no idea how reasonable that is (the exits had him up about 55-45 in "NW" Indiana, but presumably he runs strongest in Lake). My best guess (and it's not very good) is that this is a 50-50 proposition.

Lake County is prime Obama territory, better than anywhere else in Indiana. Lots of Lake County residents go to work in Chicago and lots of Chicagoans go to Lake County. Add in the racial demographics in the major town in Lake County (Gary) and Obama's going to get more than 65% of the vote. With 200,000 votes in the county, that's a swing of 60,000 in his favor.

Of course Union County hasn't reported either and that's prime Clinton Country.

Does it matter if she can hold on? She's toast at this point.

Chris, you must talk to us about this crazy speech from Hillary. It's schizophrenic and has 100 messages - all mixed. Then she throws in Burma and the junta?

Let me ask: Is she a fighter? Is she quitting? Does she know who she is?

I need an ibuprofen after listening to this.

Lake Country has very similar demographics to Indiana, where Obama got 67% of the vote, if he can win 60% of the vote he could take the state...

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