The last post may seem redundant to most people. Except me. I outlined that I wanted to document the change and evolution of the primary race between South Carolina and the end of Super Tuesday. Thus, having written the bulk of the last post yesterday, then realising that there had been major changes through the polls, I decided to post the last one, and now bring to the latest news for Super Tuesday. And boy it is good news if you’re a Barrack Obama supporter. A supporter like me – from the beginning.

Connecticut has a poll out about it where Obama is winning!!! This is further progress from when I reported to you Obama and Hillary Clinton in a tie for the state. The SurveyUSA poll has Obama with a 4% lead on Clinton (48% to 44%), with only an 8% uncommitted. This is the first time Obama has lead in the state. How has this happened? Evolution my friends. When the data for poll that said there would be a tie was collected, John Edwards was still in the race. He dropped out, and the race changed. It seems that most of Edwards’ support has filtered through to Obama in the state, while some of those earlier ‘uncommitted’ have chosen Obama in this new race. As I said earlier, Connecticut has always been viewed as a lock for Clinton, so an Obama victory here would be huge.

But not as huge as a win in California would be. And that, my friends, is also on the cards. In the latest Zogby poll, Obama has taken a 4% lead on Clinton – 45% to 41%! This is huge. Really huge. The biggest state in the primary process. A very mixed state where you have to do well in all demographics to win. And Obama can win it in a few days time. That’s what the headlines would be reading as. That’s what all the news cycles would revolve around: Obama winning California.

However, as excited as I might sound, I’m hesitant too. This is one poll. It isn’t made clear whether it takes into account that absentee votes that have already been lodged. From reports, they are going to make up roughly 25% of the primary vote and they support Clinton heavily. If it doesn’t take them into account, then the poll probably should still say a Clinton lead. If it does though, or they have somehow been factored in, then this is worrying, worrying news for the Clinton camp. And it would be the reason why both Hillary and Bill have been holing out in the state for the past few days, trying to drum up support, and leaving the rest out in the dry.

Either way, this is going to be a really tight state race.

New York is Clinton’s “home state”, and a lock for her. New Jersey has been classified exactly the same for as long. It was always hoped that Obama could muster up at least a third of the delegates there, maybe two-fifths at best. That would require a 40% vote – rather high for a New York-esque state. The latest poll, however, says that it’s easily done. Obama has moved up in the poll, and now he is only 1% away from Clinton in N.J. – really, a tie. This is also reported in the Zogby article, but on the wake of other polls suggesting a very tight race (Rasmussen had Clinton at 49%, Obama at 37%; SurveyUSA had Clinton 51%, Obama 39%; G.Q.R. had Clinton 44%, Obama 38%. Clinton was leading N.J. by 30%+ just a few weeks ago too – now she struggles past 10%).

While the California poll might be surprising, the N.J. poll will be so shocking enough to cause headaches for the Clinton campaign. They had banked, invested, and expected returns on New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They expected big wins there to deliver more delegates than if the campaigns had spread their resources, time, and money in all the other ’smaller’ states. And they followed this plan to the t – they haven’t bothered with some states at all, and campaigned heavily in the big ones where Obama was competitive to save delegates. Now with Obama looking like he could run extremely close to Clinton, if not win, then Clinton campaign could lose twice – in the big states and the small states.

Also coming out of the Zogby poll, and further enforced by an American Research Group poll and a SurveyUSA, Obama is also in a tie with Clinton in Missouri. I said in Super Tuesday III, that I just put up, which was written Saturday, that it could go either way, and then guessed that it would be Clinton up by 4%. I was right with the either way at this juncture and with the 4%. A tie, which is what the Zogby poll suggests, or the 2% lead the A.R.G. poll indicates for Obama, or the 4% lead Clinton has in the SurveyUSA poll, are all on the cards at this moment. A tie or Obama win, in this state, is significant. It has a reasonable amount of delegates, but it is also close to Ohio and Indiana, in terms of demographics and geography. They vote on the 4th of March and the 6th of May respectively, and there are quite a few delegates up for grabs there too (161 and 84). A win in Missouri would be encouraging for the Obama campaign, and would make big news in these two states. Not to mention that it’s more delegates at the end of Super Tuesday.

Delaware, which I predicted Clinton would win easily, has thrown us a curve-ball too. In another A.R.G. poll, it says Obama again has a lead on Clinton, again 2%. A win in Delaware would be big for Obama – as big as Connecticut. I win in either/both would bring into their column many delegates that they had never counted on – and taken many that Clinton had expected. Obama’s actions these past few days, in the light of what the Clinton campaign had been doing, was to focus on winning the smaller states that Clinton was ‘ignoring’ – Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho, Kansas, Colorado, and Minnesota. May lack-of-polling-data-guess in Super Tuesday III said that, out of those, Kansas would be a Clinton win. I predicted an Alaska and Colorado win for Obama, Minnesota too, and that the mid-West (N.D., Idaho, and Utah) would be up-for-grabs. If Obama continues to focus attention on these states, he will sweep them, along with wins and close finishes in the other ‘big’ states.

Speaking of Utah, the latest poll out of there has Obama up – up in a big way. In what is the first reliable poll from the state, the Desert Morning News has Obama polling at 53% to Clinton on 29%. A huge win here in the mid-West state, and a win will boost the Obama nomination prospects. There is still a fair few states to vote in the mid-West after Super Tuesday, and sweeping most of them can only enhance Obama’s chances of getting the rest.

I’d like to devote a little bit to the Republicans here. Mormon Mitt Romney, in Mormon Utah, is pollinglike crazy. He is at 84%, compared to John McCain’s 4%. That’s sort of a convincing win I guess.

Another mid-West state that has come into play is Arizona. I too was pulled into the 20+ point leads that Clinton was posting through January in this state. The latest poll from Arizona, however, says that she is only leading Obama by 5% now – 46% to 41%. With her big drop, if it turns out to be true, then the racial divide between voters might have been forgotten too. That would do wonders for Obama, for the Democratic party, and for the country.

Alabama I said would be an 8% to 10% Obama win on Saturday. Two polls have come out from the state, one from SurveyUSA that has a tie between Obama and Clinton at 47% a piece, while one from A.E.A. has Obama up by 5%, 40% to 35%. While Alabama is a must-win for Obama in terms of delegates, it’s also a must-win if he is going to have legitimacy in the electability debate. If he can win the South and the mid-West by himself, then he can argue broad appeal in traditionally Republican states.

Georgia, and another Southern state that I predicted a win for Obama in Super Tuesday I. I said Obama win 48% – but that was with John Edwards still in the race. Since he dropped out, I would scale that up to at least 55%, maybe as high as 60%. He needs a convincing win here too to secure the delegates needed to stay in the race with Clinton. The latest poll, from InsiderAdvantage, with a 12% ‘uncommitted’, has Obama at 52%, while Clinton trails well behind on 36%. That ‘uncommitted’ is rather high I think, and I expect Obama to gobble most of it up – especially considering the ‘black’ vote isn’t really polled accurately in these.

Interesting enough though, Tennessee is solidly behind Clinton, if the latest InsiderAdvantage polls are to be believed. Clinton is at 59%, Obama at 26%. I would have thought a much closer race in this state, and it may still be. But, at this late juncture, and with those figures, Obama may just concede the state and focus on winning those other states that he has all-of-a-sudden found himself rather close in.

And what state can I finish on that is a higher note than Illinois? Obama’s home state. Rasmussen’s poll spells out domination. Obama is polling at 60%, Clinton at 24%. 16% are still ‘uncommitted’. That’s only 8% from what Clinton’s vote is at right now. This is how to win a home state – convincingly and uncompromising.

So what do these new polls suggest? That Obamamania is running rampant all over the country. Everywhere Obama is surging in the polls since Edwards dropped out, and endorsements flowed his way. And I still suspect that the South Carolina romp is still having effect. There is one great scenario that is coming out of all these though: If Obama wins big in Illinois, and stays competitive in New York, he could end up getting more delegates out of Illinois that Clinton will from New York. This utterly negates the advantage that New York gave to Clinton. Picking up one or two of the Clinton locks (New Jersey and Connecticut) would cancel out the other in effect. A Georgia win gives more than a Tennessee win, and Alabama, Missouri, and Utah cancel out all the small states that Clinton seems to be polling favourably in. And thus we come back to California. At the end of the day, there’s one scenario that means Obama and Clinton are so close that whoever wins California will have won Super Tuesday on the delegate count. Of course, if Obama is within 200 delegates of Clinton by the end of the day, I think he and his camp would consider the day an Obama win anyway. But there is the prospect of Obama winning the delegate count as well. If that were to happen … of but if it did …

Thomas.