Viewers Guide

Some Things To Know as you follow the returns tonight:

From Political Wire:

What to Watch For Tonight

To make some sense of today's voting, Political Wire reviewed all the polls, surveyed our favorite pundits and flipped a coin when necessary in an attempt to highlight the key races.

Here's how we rate the races for Democrats:

Advantage Clinton:
Arkansas, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee

Advantage Obama:
Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota

No Clear Favorite:
Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Missouri, Delaware, Utah, Massachusetts, American Samoa, Democrats Abroad

Here's how we rate the races for Republicans:

Advantage McCain:
Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Montana, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee

Advantage Romney:
Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Utah

No Clear Favorite:
California, Missouri, Georgia, Minnesota

---- And ---

About California

All eyes are on California, as most polls show the Democratic presidential race either very close or completely up in the air.

For example:
The latest Reuters/C -Span/Zogby poll shows Obama leading Clinton, 49% to 36%.

The latest SurveyUSA poll gives the edge to Clinton, 52% to 42%.

But Marc Ambinder notes it may not matter who actually wins due to the strange rules for awarding delegates. "If, in many congressional districts in California, a Democrat does not receive more than 62% of the vote, he or she will receive the same number of delegates from that CD as the he or she who finishes second. Hence Hillary Clinton could win California by, say, 20 points... and take a sliver of a delegate advantage there."

Further confusing the situation: The Hotline notes we may not get the final delegate tally until Friday.

From Salon

Predicting California isn't easy - Alex Koppelman
Looking for some early sign about how the Democratic race in California, one of the most important states on that side of the aisle, will shake out tonight? Good luck.
On the one hand, you could look to the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, released today, and decide that Sen. Barack Obama has a nearly overwhelming advantage in the state. That poll shows Obama leading rival Sen. Hillary Clinton 49 percent to 36 percent, with a margin of error of 3.3 percent, and has the momentum strongly in Obama's favor.

But on the other hand, there's the latest SurveyUSA poll, which shows nearly the exact opposite result. That survey, conducted over the same dates as the aforementioned one, has Clinton leading 52 percent to 42 percent. SurveyUSA characterizes the results as showing that "Hillary Clinton appears to fend off a late charge from Barack Obama."

If you're hoping that at least by tonight you'll know who -- if anyone -- was right about how California will shake out, we've got some bad news on that front as well.

On Monday, the San Francisco Chronicle's Politics Blog noted, "Want to know who will win the California primary? You'll probably be waiting until Wednesday morning -- and maybe longer," and quoted Stephen Weir, the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials and the top election official in Contra Costa County, as saying, "The East Coast is going to tune in the next morning and we are still going to be counting."

And, from Walter Shapiro

Here are a few things to watch for on the Democratic side early in the evening before everyone starts treading water in the tidal wave of returns.

Georgia -- The first returns of the night will begin to roll in when the polls close at 7 p.m. (EST). While no one will be proclaiming, "As Georgia goes, so goes the nation," it will be illuminating to see if Obama attracts anything like the 78 percent of the African-American vote as he did in neighboring South Carolina. In South Carolina, John Edwards (who has since dropped out) finished first among white men, with 44 percent in a three-way race. It will be worth watching how Georgia now splits in a race between a woman and an African-American.

Alabama and Tennessee -- The polls here close at 8 p.m. (EST) and these states should quickly indicate whether the trends from the Georgia exit polls can be extrapolated through the South.

Illinois -- Obama's home state (8 p.m. EST closing time) should not offer much suspense about the outcome. But this is another place where it would be worth watching to see how white male Democrats split their vote in downstate Illinois.

Massachusetts -- At 8 p.m. (EST) we will also get a quick test of the power of endorsements. From Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to Gov. Deval Patrick, this state has become the launching pad of Obama campaign surrogates. But Massachusetts also has a vibrant blue-collar Democratic tradition -- and Clinton's performance among lower-income voters could be a bellwether for the evening.

Connecticut -- The candidates' own polls clearly indicated that Connecticut is up for grabs, since both Clinton and Obama were campaigning in the state Monday. (The best way to read a campaign's strategy is to watch where they send the candidate.) With the polls closing at 8 p.m. (EST), we should know fast the power of Obama-mania in Clinton's backyard. Working against Obama is that this is a primary open only to registered Democrats.

New Jersey -- Results from the fourth largest delegate haul of the evening will start coming in at 8 p.m. EST. Since independents can vote in the Garden State (unlike New York and Connecticut), we will soon know whether Obama is demonstrating his crossover appeal to these swing voters.

Arizona -- At 9 p.m. (EST) we will get our first look at the Latino vote in a primary out West. If Clinton does not roll up a large margin among this group in Arizona, it does not bode well for California, where the polls close at 11 p.m. (EST).

Minnesota -- While it is always difficult to draw larger conclusions from caucuses (since only a fraction of registered Democrats participate), Minnesota has perhaps the most vibrant caucus tradition in the Democratic Party, aside from Iowa. The caucus voting should be over by 9 p.m. EST -- and we should get another snapshot of how Obama is doing among party activists.

By the time we finally learn what happened in American Samoa (either Clinton or Obama will presumably come out with a 2-to-1 majority in the caucuses), our attention will probably have shifted to next Tuesday's Potomac primary with Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia all voting Feb. 12.

Even though a numerical majority of Democratic delegates will have been selected by the time the final returns trickle in on Wednesday, the real Super Duper Party Pooper Tuesday may come on March 4 when Texas and Ohio hold primaries that could (note the conditional) select the nominee.

From Chuck Todd at MSNBC

Looking for the break: But campaigns rarely deliver split decisions, and that’s why it’s possible that the Democratic electorate could break one way or the other. What if undecideds all go one way? And don't assume we think we know which direction they will break. We could easily explain how women power a break for Clinton, allowing her to win most states on the board today -- just as we could easily see undecideds breaking Obama and him cutting into Clinton's massive advantages among women and Hispanics thanks to a surge of younger voters that alter the makeup of electorates. The polls over the last week seem to indicate momentum is on the side of Obama, but we've all seen this movie before (think New Hampshire).

How to count delegates: On the Republican side, it's VERY easy; there are enough winner-take-call states to allow anyone who did ok in high school algebra to follow along. The Democratic side is not so easy: The threshold for winning an extra delegate (from 3-3 in a six-delegate district to 4-2 to 4-3 to 5-2 in a seven-delegate district etc.) changes. Then you add in the superdelegates. The Clinton campaign claims about a 100-delegate advantage among the supers. So if she gets any delegate advantage tonight, then she'll claim a 100+ delegate lead early and often. Obviously, Obama's folks would like to win the night on the delegate front, so that Clinton's super lead is cut into the double digits. Speaking of the spin war, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns did their best yesterday to lower expectations, with Team Clinton reminding folks this could be a convention fight (can you say Florida and Michigan credential fight?) and the Obama folks reminding the media that Clinton's still the favorite tonight to win more delegates and more states. The truth? As always, somewhere in between!