1. Who will win each of the seven contests, which are Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Carolina?



2. In how many states will each of the candidates (Clark, Dean, Edwards, Kerry, Lieberman) get delegates? What states?



3. When all Tuesday's contests are decided, what will be the order of the candidates in CNN's delegate count, which includes committed superdelegates? (Totals as of now: Dean 113 / Kerry 94 / Edwards 36 / Clark 30 / Lieberman 25 / Sharpton 4 / Kucinich 2. [See below for CNN's updated count])



4. For extra credit, I'll give the final delegate count for all the candidates.

Here are my guesses:

1. Winners
   AZ - Kerry / 2/3: CNN calls at 9
   DE - Kerry / CNN calls at 8
   MO - Kerry / CNN calls at 8
   NM - Kerry / CNN called at ?
   ND - Kerry / CNN calls around 9:30
   OK - Clark / Clark by 1275 over Edwards, Kerry 3 pts back, CNN won't call
   SC - Edwards / CNN calls at 7:00:01.362



2. Delegates awarded in
   Clark - 4 states (AZ, NM, ND, OK) / 2/3: correct
   Dean - 2 states (DE, NM) / NM correct; none in DE; but 3 in AZ
   Edwards - 4 states (MO, ND, OK, SC) / no delegates in ND, rest correct
   Kerry - all 7 states / correct
   Lieberman - 1 state (DE) / Looks like Joe lays an egg, see below



3. Total delegate count order
   Kerry / Dean / Edwards / Clark / Lieberman / Sharpton / Kucinich
   
   As best as I can figure, given the missing delegates (see the post below), this will indeed be the order of the delegate count.



4. Total delegate count
   Kerry: 258 (+164) / Dean: 123 (+10) / Edwards: 91 (+55) / Clark: 84 (+54) / Lieberman: 29 (+4) / Sharpton: 4 / Kucinich: 2

Update (2/3): CNN changed their delegate count before the SC results started to come in:

Kerry 115 / Dean 114 / Edwards 41 / Clark 31 / Lieberman 25 / Sharpton 4 / Kucinich 2.

This makes my final prediction for delegate counts after tonight's contests to:

Kerry 115 + 164 = 279 / 115 plus at least 129 = 244 / 2/5: +145=260
Dean 114 + 10 = 124 / 114 plus at least 7 = 121 / stet
Edwards 41 + 55 = 96 / 41 plus at least 61 = 102 / +66=107
Clark 31 + 54 = 85 / 31 plus at least 48 = 79 / +49=81
Leiberman 25 + 4 = 29 / 25 and no additional = 25 / stet
Sharpton 4 / 4 plus 1 additional = 5 / +2=6
Kucinich 22 plus no additional = 2 / stet

2/3: unaccounted for: 23 (18 in MO, 5 in ND) / 2/5: all delegates accounted for

Final accounting (2/5) (Predicted-Actual):
Kerry 279/260 -- Dean 124/121 -- Edwards 96/107 -- Clark 85/81 -- Lieberman 29/25 -- Sharpton 4/6 -- Kucinich 2/2

That this is not bad, as blind guesses go, is testament to the accuracy of the Zogby polling, because it was the basis for most of my calculations.

=========================================

Update (2/3, somtime early in the evening): Everything's looking real good, except that some sort of mathematical error dropped into my back-of-the-envelope (literally) scribbling, because these delegate adds don't even add up to the number of delegates at stake tonight. Oh, well, we'll see what happens in the end (which is pretty much where I pulled these figures from, that and the Zogby polling).

More: I didn't intend to do any real-time blogging, but, oh well again. As of 9pm and 64% in of the Delaware vote, it looks like Lieberman won't get *any* delegates, and AP is reported that he'll (yeah!) drop out. About time, since he's now in a virtual tie for "failure".

9:47 I'm beginning to think that I completely misunderstood the process by which delegates are awarded in these primaries and caucuses. (CNN has a tremendously unclear explanation here.) My assumption was that once you eliminated candidates who received less than 15%, the state's delegates were then awarded in proportion to the votes each candidate received, but that really doesn't seem to be the case -- or else why would CNN, for instance, show Kerry in Delaware, with 99% of the precincts counted, as having won only 9 delegates, when I thought that 15 delegates were at stake? Clearly, in Dan Akyroyd's ringing phrase, I'm an ignorant slut who shouldn't be throwing around his ignorance in public this way, by making predictions based on faulty assumptions and faulty math.

It's at times like these that I'm glad no one actually reads this blog.

But now that I'm on the defensive, let me turn it around and go on the attack: Is there nowhere one can go to watch election returns? MSNBC has the terrible Chris Matthews and the incredibly loathsome Scarborough asshole, CNBC has the loathsome Dennis Miller, Faux News is collective loathsomeness incarnate, and on CNN I have to put up with Larry King's nonsense (talk about ignorance!) Bob Dole and Bob Woodward -- not to mention Wolfie and company, who at least dribble out some hard news occasionally. There's no where to go!

10:08 OK, with 100% of the vote counted in Delaware, CNN now has Kerry with 50% of the vote, no other candidate over 15%, and Kerry has been credited with 14 of the 15 available delegates. I'm not quite sure what happened to that other delegate, but maybe I didn't misunderstand this thing as badly as I thought. Maybe. [Note to self: yes you did -- Sharpton got the other delegate, presumably because he carried one precinct, or something. Note to readers: if you've come this far, I'd just stop now.]

11:40 Atrios can't figure out how Sharpton got that delegate either.