by kos [courtesy of Daily Kos]

Since the Clinton campaign wants to count unsanctioned contests and include their votes into the popular vote tally ("I've gotten the most votes ever!"), here are a couple more unsanctioned contests that could be thrown into the tally:

Those are all from non-binding primaries conducted in those caucus states. Combined, they'd add 46,547 votes for Obama if we were stupid enough to think that votes that don't matter actually count.  

But that's not all the votes that were cast for either Obama or Clinton this year. There's the Texas caucuses, which aren't counted in any popular vote tallies. But since every vote matters to Clinton, and she's claiming that she's gotten more votes cast for her than any other Democrat in a primary, then of course we have to be intellectually consistent and, well, count every vote.

There are no official tallies of caucus turnout, but estimates range from 900,000 to 1.2 million. Let's be nice and go with the lower estimate, 900K. Obama won the caucuses 56-44. That 12-point spread is another 120,000 108,000-vote gain for Obama.

That means that tallying EVERY single contest this cycle, even the ones that didn't count (since that's the Clinton standard), gives Obama an extra 154,547 votes.

by Todd Beeton [courtesy of MyDD]

The next primary contest is in Puerto Rico on June 1 and both candidates have taken their campaigns to the Carribean island territory this weekend.

During a one-day stop on the largely Spanish-speaking island, front-runner Barack Obama talked about veterans issues and his Republican rival Sen. John McCain before going on a parade-style walk through San Juan. [...]

She has one rally on Saturday and events on Sunday in the territory which is enjoying its moment in the political sun because of this year's prolonged Democratic primary season.

There are 55 pledged delegates + 8 superdelegates at stake in Puerto Rico. So far, according to DemConWatch, 4 supers have declared for Clinton and 2 for Obama. While, I agree with kos that the delegate tally does look absurdly hefty for a territory without general election voting rights, it should be remembered that PR was awarded 4 bonus pledged delegates for keeping its primary so late in the schedule.  

The most recent poll I could find, which was from April 10, showed Hillary Clinton leading 50%-37% with 13% undecided (h/t Talk Left.) Certainly Hillary is favored there, as would be expected, but if this is a baseline poll, then we're likely to see that margin close, especially since Barack is actually competing there, although one suspects Hillary will spend more time than he will in the territory.

by mcjoan [courtesy of Daily Kos]

If there's any governor's mansion in the country the Republicans want to gain in November, it's Washington's. This year's race is a rematch of 2004, with poor loser Dino Rossi trying to capitalize on the sour grapes the state and national Republicans still feel over their 133 vote loss that came after three vote tallies and a failed Republican court challenge. That election was also probably the reason for the firing of USA John McKay, who refused to open a federal criminal investigation into voter fraud allegations.

So there's a lot at stake for Republicans in this. And it's not looking too good for Rossi at the moment. On the heels of reports that she doubled Rossi's fundraising in April, raising well over a million dollars (1.3m) to his $641K, comes some very encouraging polling from Rasmussen.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Washington voters shows Gregoire leading her Republican challenger, Dino Rossi, by eleven percentage points. It’s Gregoire 52% Rossi 41%.

In late March, Gregoire was up by just a statistically insignificant single percentage point. In February, Rossi had a one point advantage. Four years ago, the 2004 election between the same two candidates was one of the closest elections in the state’s history.

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by The Huffington Post News Team [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

The Clinton campaign offered a defiant tone on Wednesday in response to a series of questions, queries and subtle -- if not pointed -- commentary...

by The Huffington Post News Team [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

The NY Time's Adam Nagourney writes about Hillary Clinton's dwindling chances and hopes for a final rescue after Tuesday night's vote tallies in North Carolina...

by kos [courtesy of Daily Kos]

So I was going to go to bed, but I'm sort of wired. So let's see where the delegate numbers are today. All these numbers are tentative, as final vote tallies come in:

Vermont (15 delegates)

Rhode Island (21 delegates)

Texas

Primary (126 delegates, Link)

Caucuses (67 delegates; tentative results based on a straight percentage from 34% reporting)

Ohio (141 delegates, punching in results with 97% reporting here)

So total for the night, thus far, is Clinton 186 and Obama 185. Not all votes are in, so things will change a bit. But at this point, we have a ridiculously tiny one-delegate lead for Clinton for the night, which could either produce her first delegate victory of the election, or be erased by the rest of the still-not-reported Texas caucuses.

by Todd Beeton [courtesy of MyDD]

After watching Meet The Press this morning, it's become clear that a new conventional wisdom has developed around the superdelegate controversy: that the Clinton campaign has the better side of the argument, namely that superdelegates by their very nature and the rules they were established under are free to vote for whomever they choose, but that it will be a cold day in hell when the superdelegates hand the nomination to the candidate who has both a significant pledged delegate and popular vote lead. It's just not going to happen. The definition of "significant" is what's tricky here, of course, sort of a "you know it when you see it" sort of thing I guess, but what's clear is, as I wrote on Friday, that if Clinton can't close the pledged delegate gap, she's going to greatly benefit from a popular vote lead in order to prevent superdelegates from abandoning ship or breaking for Obama. So the news out of New York and California of Obama increasing his vote tallies there, almost 2 weeks since Super Tuesday, can't be encouraging.

First, this disturbing report from some messed up voting machines in New York City (umm, why do we still use those things again?)

...A review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among [New York] city's 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

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