Results! Continuously Updated!

I'm working on some other things, which is why liveblogging has been a bit slow. I'm not planning on waiting up until Texas is called, frankly. Events have hewed so closely to my initial predictions that I'm not sure what else there is to say. Regardless of how Texas ultimately shakes out, Clinton clearly has the credibility with her Ohio win to go forward to Pennsylvania despite the fact that from a mathematical standpoint she really can't win the nomination, and no matter what it will do to the party to have her slinging mud at Obama until April. Neither a close Obama loss or a razor-thin Obama victory in Texas changes the calculus in any significant way: If Clinton and her people are determined to go quixotically forward, they will, and the rest of us will all just have to live with it.

Despite losing Ohio 58-40 at the moment, Obama is actually ahead in delegates, 32-28. That's a pretty astounding differential, but probably closer in line to what the final results will look like—as I said below, he'll lose the state, but probably not by 18.

Su, my operative in Ohio, called me just a few minutes ago to concede the state and apologize for her colossal failure in delivering Ohio for Obama. And now Hillary Clinton is the projected winner in Ohio by what looks like a good margin, though it's likely to narrow significantly when the cities start reporting. (Cleveland in particular has barely reported anything yet.) I'd guess the final margin will be under ten points, but that's just a guess.

Josh Marshall boldly tries to claim kos's "line of the night re: Huckabee" award for himself:

Can someone get Huckabee off the stage and end the most painfully embarrassing concession I think I've ever heard? I mean, put him out of my misery. Huckabee seems to have forgotten that this isn't the end of a grand, hard-fought race. It was a farce that everyone indulged because Huckabee's sort of a feel-good wingnut and had a good sense of humor. When he started on to 'Victory or Death' riff at the end I thought he might be about to end with a stunning crescendo of a ritual suicide. But apparently it was Victory or Death (or windy concession speech), the lesser known original version of the line.

John McCain comes out to "Eye of the Tiger." This is a good night for him at least insofar as it's the last night for a good while that he'll have his speeches directly up against Obama's. Meanwhile, kos reports that Obama took the under-65 demographic in all four states.

...got to give McCain credit: it's hard to believe he was able to hang in there and pull it out. A few months ago we all had him counted out entirely. I'm sure a few Imperial Republicans are happy—bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran—but the social conservatives and the natalists have got to be kicking themselves. I bet they're wishing tonight that they'd run only one Ronald Reagan wannabe as opposed to five or six.

No credit for this speech, though. Dull, dull, dull.

As expected, Rhode Island is called for Clinton, though the margin is quite a bit closer than I expected it would be pretty much exactly as I predicted last night, a little less than the margin of victory in Vermont.

Actually, Huckabee dropped out just now. The real loser in all this, of course, is poor Stephen Colbert.

...kos gets in the line of night re: Huckabee. Where's Chuck Norris? Doesn't like to hang out with losers?

The networks are reporting that John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination. Huckabee to drop out tomorrow; better yet, Bush to endorse McCain tomorrow...

Still not much word on Ohio or Texas, but the results so far don't look half bad. Texas has already reported what are apparently the early voting numbers, and Obama has a lead of over 100,000. That's going to be hard for Clinton to make up.

Ohio said to be too close to call. Given where we were a few weeks ago, that's certainly good news...

Since MSNBC isn't streaming tonight, I'm forced to watch CNN. But Marc Ambinder gives me my Chuck Todd fix:

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd on MSNBC points out that Hillary Clinton's delegate spread in Ohio, assuming she wins the popular vote narrowly, could be as large as +5 or as narrow as.. -1..if Obama runs up the margins in the Cleveland-area districts held by Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones.

Go on, Cleveland, work your magic. Ambinder also notes that Vermont may paradoxically be the most important state of the night—it's the only state where one of the candidates is likely to gain very many delegates vis a vis the other.

MSNBC projects Vermont for Obama. No big surprise there.

HuffPo has what it describes as "first exits." I'm not sure whether that means they're the first batch of unweighted exits, which would make them almost entirely useless, or if they're just the first exit polls anyone has seen, which would make them only mostly useless. Regardless, here are the numbers:

VT Obama - 67, Clinton - 33
OH Obama - 51, Clinton - 49
TX Obama - 50, Clinton - 49
RI Obama - 49, Clinton - 49

Based on these numbers I would advise Obama fans to brace themselves for possible disappointment tonight. While Obama has consistently outperformed the last telephone polls before primaries, he has consistently underpeformed early exit data. If the exit data is biased towards Obama in the same proportions we saw last month on Super Tuesday, that would suggest he'll lose all three of the close contests by a few percent.

(On second thought, since the early voting in Texas was generally agreed to favor Obama, he may still squeak out a close win there even if this data is biased towards Obama in the way I fear it is.)

Close margins like that won't matter for the delegate math, but they do matter for the spin war, which rightly or wrongly is the important thing tonight...

While we're waiting for actual information, check out "Hillary's Math Problem" from Jonathan Alter at Newsweek, probably the most linked article of the day, which shows how Clinton can go on to win all of the remaining 16 states by huge margins—which she won't—and still not catch up to Obama's current delegate lead. This thing is already over, regardless of what happens tonight; Dean or Gore or someone needs to pull the plug.

Drudge has already called Vermont for Obama despite the fact that the polls don't close there for another half-hour. It's irresponsible and unethical but almost certainly correct.

That leaves Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas, which Drudge describes as "deadlocked." A look at the random and unreliable exit polls shows good news for either candidate depending on how information that is currently unknown shakes out. There were high numbers of independent voters in all four states, including 20% in Ohio and 25% in Texas—beating the Survey USA assumptions, which is obviously good news for Barack. Fox asked voters "which candidate could better defeat the Republican in November" and the results are also quite O-positive.

Among Ohio voters:

Obama: 52 percent
Clinton: 44

Among Texas voters:

Obama: 52 percent
Clinton: 41

However, other signs point to Clinton, including signs of high Latino turnout in Texas. Without knowing how many people voted early, and in what proportions, Texas in particular is impossible to gauge based on this data alone.