No surprise in Vermont as Obama and McCain win easily

Predictably, the networks called Vermont for Obama and McCain respectively as soon as the polls close. All eyes now on Ohio, where the polls close in quarter of an hour.

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Prepare for a long night

The early buzz from the exit polls is that Obama and Clinton are pretty much level in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island with Vermont set for an unsurprising Obama blow out. I should, though, point out that the exits have been mighty off at various points in this cycle.

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Why the popular vote in Texas is so crucial

It is pretty much certain that Barack Obama will win more delegates in Texas than Hillary Clinton. It would be a major surprise if Obama did not win the vast majority of the third of the delegates awarded in the caucus element of the process: as before in this race, the Obama campaign is just much better prepared for the organisational complexities of a caucus than the Clinton one.

Yet if Hillary wins the popular vote but loses in the delegate count because of the caucus part, she’ll be able to launch...

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Hillary's final appeal in Texas

Hillary is closing strongly here in Texas. She turned in an assured, confident performance in her final town hall which her campaign paid to have broadcast on a local cable channel.

Clinton is at her best when she is answering questions from voters. It allows her knowledge of policy to shine through and she comes across more sympathetically in this kind of environment.

The news from tonight’s event, apart from the fact that Hillary is sporting a new hair-do, was the way she talked about Iraq. Answering a question from two...

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Red state express

The GOP National Convention this year takes place in Minneapolis. At the back of the hall, half obscured by balloons and bunting, there may well be glimpsed a fat Briton holding a hand-scrawled placard reading “British eBay shoppers for a Republican victory”. That'll be me. For some years, I have been a heavy user of eBay.com, and at two dollars to the pound the practice makes better sense than ever. In the process I have noticed an almost infallible rule of thumb. Quite simply anything posted to the UK from red states will...

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Obama gets testy with the press

In recent weeks, Obama has been the presidential candidate who has been most distant from the press. Today, he held a media availability after his town hall in San Antonio. Unsurprisingly it was dominated by the story about a senior Obama advisor suggesting to Canadian officials that they should ignore the candidate’s anti Nafta rhetoric and the trial of Tony Rezko, a former Obama patron.

Obama’s performance was unimpressive. After taking heat from national and Chicago journalists about his ties to Rezko, Obama called a local reporter who—predictably—turned the conversation...

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Obama's veteran appeal

In an attempt to answer the Clinton charge that he is, as they say in this part of the world, all sizzle and no steak, Barack Obama has added a bunch of small, issue-specific town halls to his schedule. Earlier today, I was at one I am at he did at a veterans’ home in San Antonio, Texas.

This was the first time I had seen Obama take questions from voters and it is clear that the town hall is not Obama’s best environment. He is nowhere near as fluent when talking...

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Recriminations watch

With less than 24 hours to go before Texas and Ohio vote, the Clinton campaign desperately wants to be driving its message about Obama’s lack of national security experience and his double-talk on Nafta. But instead, the chatter is about the blame game inside her campaign.

Amazingly, Mark Penn — Hillary’s chief strategist — emailed the LA Times at the weekend to say that he had "no direct authority in the campaign" and was just "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me." He went...

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Rodeo politics

This afternoon, in an attempt to get beyond the liberal bias of Austin—a city that will go overwhelmingly for Obama and where a Barack button is an essential fashion statement—we headed out to the Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo just outside of Austin where the vast majority of attendees were from rural Texas. At the show you were reminded that this is a Republican state with most people I spoke to saying they were planning to vote in the Republican primary and for John McCain. Few of them were particularly enthusiastic about...

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Tight in Texas

The latest polls here in Texas show Obama to have the narrowest of leads. Considering that a third of the delegates from the Lone Star state will be awarded by a caucus, which plays to the Obama campaign’s organisational strength, Obama should pick up the most delegates here. However, if Hillary Clinton can eke out a victory in the popular vote this might be enough to allow her to credibly continue if she also wins in Ohio, where she has a slim lead.

Oddly enough, the problem for Obama is...

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