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Surprising and very good news for Romney in Delaware and Missouri. Too close to call in California --but very early as well with a huge pile of absentees that roll in at * PM Pacific. And Arizona is stunning: McCain only 44% and Romney at 39%.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 HORSERACEThe Great Big Early Exit Poll ReportI just got a big pile of exit poll data. The early wave in California: McCain 40 percent, Romney 36 percent, Huckabee 10 percent. Fascinating and fun as it is, I remind my readers that this doesn’t tell us that much, as we don’t know what the district-by-district breakdown is. Also, there are three million absentee votes that I’m pretty sure are not included in this. So while these numbers are nice to hear for McCain fans, I take them with even more caution, skepticism and grains of salt...

DECISIONS, DECISIONS - About one in 10 voters in each party said they decided whom to vote for on Tuesday. Slightly more said they decided in the last three days. About half of Democratic primary voters and a third of Republicans said they made up their minds more than a month ago. ECONOMICS - Voters in both parties most frequently picked the economy as the most important issue facing the country. Given three choices, half of Democratic primary voters picked the economy, 3 in 10 said the war in Iraq and two in 10 said health care. Republican primary voters...

Mike Huckabee won the first of 21 GOP contests on Super Tuesday, pulling out a victory in the West Virginia Republican convention even though Mitt Romney won the first round. The convention had to go into a second round of voting Tuesday after no candidate took a clear majority. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was knocked out in the first round, but Huckabee, Romney and John McCain moved forward.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Mike Huckabee won the first contest declared on Super Tuesday, picking up all 18 national delegates awarded at West Virginia's state GOP convention. Huckabee bested Mitt Romney, who entered the Mountain State event with the largest bloc of pledged convention-goers. Both men and Ron Paul made in-person appeals to the more than 1,100 convention delegates attending Tuesday's convention.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama surged to a big lead over Hillary Clinton in California hours before "Super Tuesday" voting began in 24 states, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Tuesday. In the Republican race, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney held a 7-point advantage on Arizona Sen. John McCain in California, while McCain added to commanding double-digit leads in New York and New Jersey. On a sprawling day of coast-to-coast voting, the biggest ever in a U.S. primary race, the U.S. presidential contenders in both parties were fighting to win a huge cache of delegates to...

From FoxNews: Conservatives - Mike Huckabee 32%, John McCain 26%, Mitt Romney 19%, Fred Thompson 17% Independents - John McCain 37%, Mike Huckabee 23%, Ron Paul 15%, Mitt Romney 14% Evangelicals - Mike Huckabee 41%, John McCain 27%, Fred Thompson 14%, Mitt Romney 11% Veterans - John McCain 36%, Mike Huckabee 25%, Mitt Romney 20%, Fred Thompson 13% As far as the three most important issues to voters: McCain and Huckabee are tied on the economy, Huckabee is leading on immigration and McCain is winning on Iraq.

Foxs just released some exit poll numbers.... McCain up with military and independents... Huckabee up with evangelicals and conservatives... Fred not doing well with any groups... Sad.... Really Sad....

I'm surprised no one else has put this up yet. I'm hearing the first round of exit polls have Romney 35, McCain 29, Huckabee 15, Ron Paul 10, Giuliani 4. This doesn't count absentee ballots. If this holds, the networks will be able to announce shortly after 9 p.m. eastern time... Of course, all the standard disclaimers apply, and the later voters may differ from the early rounds, and the polls are still open, so if you're a Michigander, go out and vote for your favorite.

Early exit polling from Michigan appears to bode well for Mitt Romney and ill for John McCain. McCain won the Republican primary in 2000, thanks largely to support from independents and Democrats who crossed over. But while independents made up 35 percent of primary voters in 2000, they only comprised about 25 percent of voters today, according to the exit poll, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The Associated Press and television networks. While Republicans made up less than half of primary voters in 2000, two-thirds of GOP primary voters surveyed today said they were registered Republicans,...

Yes, the television networks will be conducting exit polls today. But if you are looking for the leaked exit poll estimates that typically appear online on Election Day, you are probably out of luck at least until later tonight. More on that below. But as long as you are here, let me tell you a little bit about how exit polls are conducted, how they will be different this year, and why it is probably best to try to ignore the exit poll estimates that will inevitably leak later tonight. I have always been a fan of exit polls. Despite...

In the first few days after the 2004 presidential election, Steve Freeman was more perplexed than anything. How could it be, the University of Pennsylvania professor wondered, that exit polls showing John Kerry would win most of the critical battleground states were wrong and that George W. Bush wound up winning the popular vote by almost 3.5 million? When he realized no one in the mainstream media was investigating the glaring discrepancy, Freeman, who has a Ph.D. in organizational studies from MIT, decided to conduct his own investigation."I just felt that the discrepancy ought to be explained - that people...

NEW YORK - Warren Mitofsky, a survey researcher who pioneered the use of exit polls to cover elections and helped develop the sampling method used in most modern telephone polling, has died. Mitofsky, who was 71, died Friday in New York City of an aortic aneurysm. Joe Lenski, Mitofsky's partner in exit polling for the last two national elections, confirmed his death Saturday. Mitofsky started conducting exit polls in 1967 for CBS News and developed the projection system and analysis system used by CBS and later by a consortium of news organizations that conducted national exit polls. "He was the...

Political Wire obtained a copy of the exit poll last night done by CBS News and the New York Times that provides some interesting insight into the views of Connecticut Democrats who voted in the primary yesterday. Key findings: As expected, the war in Iraq played a significant role in the race with "a significant majority" of primary voters saying they disapproved of the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq, and most of them cast their ballots for Ned Lamont. Of those surveyed, 78% disapproved of the decision to go to war. Among the war’s opponents, 60% cast...

I noticed several hundred (at least) incoming Google searches on various combination of "Connecticut exit poll Lieberman Lamont," so let me pass on the official word regarding today's Connecticut primary from ABC's The Note: "There are no pooled network exit polls" [emphasis added].** The Note also passes along this helpful information for those who plan to follow the returns:

Trinity Baptist Church in Ellenwood in south DeKalb County was one of the polling places where U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and challenger Hank Johnson jockeyed for the Democratic nomination to represent the Fourth District. Shawn Manns, like many McKinney supporters, blamed the media for a negative portrayal of the outspoken lawmaker. “I think it was a witch hunt,” the 38-year-old Atlanta firefighter said. “She’s had her controversy but she’s human. I feel like she’s done a good job.” On the other side was Gregory Johnson, a 45-year-old mortgage banker. He said he voted for Hank Johnson because he “has his...

Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's presidential election is too close to call between a leftist anti-poverty campaigner and the conservative ruling party candidate locked in a tie, a respected exit poll said on Sunday. The extremely close vote raised fears of a political crisis if any of the main candidates challenge the results and call street protests. Pre-election polls had showed Felipe Calderon of the ruling party and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, in a virtual tie. Exit polls from Mexico's two main television station and the El Universal...

Just like the 2004 US elections. The exit polls here had the Prodi leading Berlusconi 54-45. My question is... are exit polls the same in every country? ROME (AFP) - A dramatic shift in Italian vote projections indicated Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may defy all predictions and cling to power in both houses of parliament. If borne out in the full count, it would be a stunning reversal of fortune for opposition leader Romano Prodi, whose centre-left Union coalition had been ahead in exit polls and early partial results. With the picture changing by the hour, thousands of Prodi supporters...

ROME - Exit polls indicated Monday that the Italian parliamentary election pitting center-left economist Romano Prodi against flamboyant billionaire Premier Silvio Berlusconi was too close to call. Projections showed Berlusconi's coalition leading in the Senate, but the two sides running neck-and-neck in the lower Chamber of Deputies. Based on 86 percent of pollster Nexus' sampling, Berlusconi's alliance won 157 Senate seats, compared with Prodi's 152. The margin of error for the sample was between 1 and 3 percentage points. Also, the projections did not account for six seats chosen by Italians abroad. Earlier projections showed Prodi set to beat Berlusconi....

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Tough-talking Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski led Poland's presidential runoff Sunday after a campaign in which he stressed traditional Roman Catholic values and the need for a social safety net. An exit poll for Polish public television showed him leading with 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent over pro-market legislator Donald Tusk, and Tusk said he had lost. "Today I must tell myself I did not make it," Tusk told glum supporters at his election headquarters. An exit poll for TVN24 private television showed an even wider margin, Kaczynski with 53.5 percent and Tusk with 46.5 percent. Partial...