Here is your thread for Texas exit polls and election results for the Texas primary. We will live-blog throughout the day on March 4th, 2008, for both the Republican and Democrat primary so use this thread to start the dialog. Winners will be posted as soon as we can make the call.

Conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama erased Hillary’s lead and should win. However, Right Pundits detects a resurgence by Hillary Clinton in the state of Texas according to the very latest pre-election polls. We think that the now famous national security advertisement by Hillary Clinton was more effective than people will give credit.

The two-step primary plus caucus system in Texas is confusing everyone. Here is a primer to help you sort it out. When you understand it, please come back and explain it to us.

Experts expect the vote to break along race, gender, and ethnic lines. Despite all of the talk about issues, group identity will play a major role as always. This fact is not a good omen for Obama because the rhetoric does not match the reality.

Finally, what is all of this talk about Republicans voting for Hillary Clinton in Texas? How do Democrats feel about this effort which has been promoted by Rush Limbaugh?

Here are the polls on election eve:

Texas Polls

WFAA Belo (Feb.28 – Mar.1):

  • Obama 46%
  • Clinton 46%
  • McCain 56%
  • Huckabee 31%
  • Paul 6%

Survey USA (Mar. 1-2):

  • Obama 48%
  • Clinton 49%
  • McCain 53%
  • Huckabee 36%
  • Paul 5%

PPP (Mar. 1-2):

  • Obama 44%
  • Clinton 50%
  • McCain 50%
  • Huckabee 38%
  • Paul 6%

Reuters – CSPAN – Zogby (Feb.29 – Mar.2):

  • Obama 44%
  • Clinton 47%
  • McCain 50%
  • Huckabee 38%
  • Paul 6%

March 4th 2008 Live-blogging Updates:

Texas exit poll data:

(March 4th, 2008.)

12.25 EST: See report below, McCain supporters crossing over to “defeat Hillary today”. Will other Republicans who want to run against Hillary cancel the Houston crossovers out? One thing is certain, there are Republicans crossing over and meddling in the Dem. Primary, whether they’ll caucus is yet to be seen. Stay tuned.

12.15 EST Update: I just got an odd report from someone in the Texas Hillary camp. She’s supposedly running better than expected around Dallas, which is surprising as that’s a heavily black area. When I asked what “better than expected” meant, she said 5-7 points higher. Can anyone decipher this? Does this mean that Hillary is only losing the Black vote 85-15 instead of 90-10??? Does that even matter? I’ll wait for more data as this gal has been off once before, but she sounded kind of excited. She also said Hillary is “cleaning up” in West Texas, which begged the question, Is there anything to “clean up” in West Texas?

12.25 EST Update: Contrary to reports that Republicans are supporting Hillary, I just got another solid report from a Republican organizer (someone in the know) that Republicans in the suburbs south of Houston are making a concerted effort to defeat Hillary now. “We figure we might as well just beat her now so there is no chance she wins in November”. According to Blake, They have organized a somewhat successful Republican get out the vote effort with the battle cry “defeat Hillary today”. He also said that a majority of these voters are McCain supporters. Which makes one wonder what effect, if any, will the crossover vote have on McCain’s margin of victory in Texas. I doubt many of these Republicans will also caucus, they hate Hillary, but not enough to miss dinner to defeat her.

12.45 EST Update: Rush Limbaugh, who has recently been urging Republicans to vote for Hillary so she can “bloody up” Obama some more, is out sick and not on the air today. A talker our of Dallas is sitting in for him.

2 EST Update: FIRST WAVE. These numbers aren’t statewide but a good cross-section. You aren’t going to get our head to head numbers yet as we want to be conservative and make sure they are right, but as Rightpundits told you earlier, the crossover (Republicans meddling in the Dems affairs) is huge. Despite heavy heavy turnout, the crossover vote is still making up somewhere between 5%-8% of the Democratic vote. The crossover vote is coming from the older republican crowd. Of course, one can assume Republicans are really liking the “Rockstar” candidate, but you’d be kidding yourself, these are McCain voters in the general. Here’s another tidbit, about 10% of the Dem primary voters have NEVER voted before and a little more than half have never voted in a primary. Be weary of this first wave of polling if it is reported by other sites, in my opinion, something is messed up with the African-American turnout. Either they all slept in or they didn’t show up. I can’t believe either of those and suspect they are somehow undereported. In other words, Obama’s base (black voters) is definitely going to turn out and the numbers aren’t right.

2.41pm – It really does appear that Hillary is exceeding expectations in the early data. As we always caution, take first waves as they are meant to be, which is a pile of data that has not been properly normalized for known demographics. More in a minute.

3pm – New reports of Obama cheating the caucus system on election day. This story will rage tonight.

3.02 – More on the caucus… remember that ANYONE who voted in the Democrat primary is eligible for the Democrat caucus. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that means thousands of Republicans attempting to manipulate the election will be eligible if they want to take the time. Something tells me that this time, the Democrats will not want to make sure every vote is counted. The media coverage of this mess is going to give the Texas election system a black eye.

3.24 EST – The Obama campaign is preparing it’s surrogates to claim the delegate count on a national scale, and why Clinton, even after doing well in Texas and Ohio, still can’t catch Obama in the delegate count, and that Obama is still the delegate leader and has won the vast majority of the last dozen states. They are also going to downplay Ohio and try to build up delegate count in Texas as opposed to popular vote. I don’t know if this is just worst case scenario planning on Obama’s behalf or a tip of the hand at what their internals are showing.

3.50 EST – Turnout is much higher than any previous primary, but turnout is LOWER than all the pundits were predicting. Most pundits and those in the know thought turnout would exceed 3 million, some even suggesting it would be closer to 3.5 million. Absent a huge surge this evening, the predictions seem to be off. Young African American turnout is 1/3 lower than expected, maybe they’ll show up in the final wave??

4.15 EST – Rumors a swirling that some Obama supporters are not voting in the primary and instead are going to turnout in force at the caucus tonight at 7:15 since Obama is supposed to “do well” in the caucus. The only problem with that line of thinking is that those who didn’t vote in the Dem. primary can’t caucus. Somebody better get that word out to the Obama ground game!

4.30 EST – Mood in Obama camp shifting to subdued. They are lowering expectations this afternoon and talking about the next contests like Hillary did in past days. Obama: “We closed the gap, but you know whether it’s going to be enough to actually win is going to depend on turnout. We know there’s not going to be a huge shift in delegates one way or another — just given the math. Which means that either way we will go to Mississippi or Wyoming next week.”

5.28pm – Independents are 20% of vote in Democratic primary in Ohio. On the GOP side, only 14%.

5.43 EST – Plan on hearing a lot about the overall delegate count from the Obama folks tonight.

6.15 EST – IN TEXAS Among Black Voters Obama 83 Clinton 16, Among Hispanic Voters Clinton 64 Obama 32.

6.50 EST OBAMA +2 in Texas. Well within margin of error.

7 EST Regardless of outcome, Obama folks have been told to talk tonight and tomorrow about the overall delegate count being in favor of Barack.

8:42 EST (Update from Tina)- With 1% +/- OBAMA 467,143 56%
CLINTON 356,470 – 43%

9.30 EST I expect Hillary to be a narrow winner in Texas despite her early lead with 2% counted. This is not a formal call, but expect the actual vote numbers to tighten considerably later tonight. (Note that this thread is maintained by multiple analysts who may see the data differently.)

11.30pm – Right Pundits calls Hillary Clinton the winner of the Texas primary as hinted about 2 hours ago. The results are continuing to align with the exit polls. It will be a narrow win but a win nevertheless and don’t forget where you heard it first. Join us in a few minutes for an open thread on the Texas caucus. (call by McCain at 11.30pm)

FYI CNN has exit poll data posted publicly here.

Republican Texas Primary Results (Texas):

Democrat Texas Primary Results (Texas):