March 13 Results

[Mr. Morden]

CNN results for AL, HI, MS, and AS here:

http://edition.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/dates/20120313

AP results:

Alabama

Hawaii

Mississippi

AL and MS polls close at 7pm Central / 8pm Eastern.  Hawaii doesn't close until 8pm Hawaii time / 2am Eastern.  I don't know about American Samoa.  Haven't found any details on the caucuses there online.  But it's an hour behind Hawaii in terms of time zones, so it could be pretty late.

The Missouri caucuses actually begin tonight too, but just for one county (Barry):

http://www.mogop.org/2012stateconvention/caucuses/

[Mr. Morden]

Also, Romney has been campaigning with Jeff Foxworthy in AL and MS:

[Mr. Morden]

Hah, some actual details about the American Samoa caucus:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/293354/how-american-samoa-caucus-works-brian-bolduc

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So the caucus ends at 7pm local time, which is 2am US Eastern time, same time that the Hawaii caucus ends.  Also, it's expected that perhaps as few as 50 people will show up to caucus, and so they're holding the caucus at just one location, the Toa Bar & Grill:

http://news.yahoo.com/american-samoa-gop-ready-caucus-bar-181941669.html

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[Mr. Morden]

More exits:

http://gop12.thehill.com/2012/03/wave-of-cnn-exits-comes-in.html

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[Mr. Morden]

Great. Now MS is going to go past midnight.

I'd like to see polls close in Hawaii (2am East Coast time) before there's a call in MS.

[Mr. Morden]

The demographic divide per the exit polls doesn't seem to mean much in Miss and Ala. Odd. But Mittens is carrying the post graduate degreed vote in Alabama.

Don't people tend to lie like crazy about their education level in polls?  45% of the voters in the Alabama primary claim to have college degrees, according to the exit poll.  How realistic is that?

[Mr. Morden]

It doesn't actually matter how coming in 3rd might have "embarrassed" Romney, or what the delegate count might be tonight.  That's not actually the bad news for Romney.  The bad news for Romney is that Gingrich failed to win either state, and so now there's actually a chance that he might drop out soon.  Gingrich dropping out soon is the one thing with the potential to shake up the race at all.  If Gingrich stays in, then the status quo prevails, and Romney wins the nomination relatively easily.  But Gingrich dropping out at least has the potential to change the dynamics enough to make it interesting.