8:43 PM EST: For the last few years, my polling station has been located at Saint Peter's Church in midtown Manhattan. This small house of worship is an ecumenical outpost of the massive Citicorp Center--a supposed terrorist target back in 2004. But the mood there this morning, as Super Tuesday got underway, was decidedly sleepy. I was the only voter on hand. I was issued a green registration card, which I surrendered to a patient-looking man in khakis next to the booth. Then I parted the curtains and stepped inside to play my infinitesimal part in the great democratic experiment. In most of this state, we still use mechanical lever machines--descendants of the Myers Automatic Booth, which made its debut in Lockport, New York, in 1892. The red lever and the little tabs for individual candidates are products of the Industrial Age, and will no doubt be supplanted by digital technology any minute now. But I'll miss the satisfying clank as you move the lever to the right, then back to the left. The mechanical sound indicates that you have accomplished something. Still, the polling station fell silent again as I exited. Super Tuesday was feeling rather anticlimactic in midtown.


Elsewhere, though, the excitement was mounting. By lunchtime, Mike Huckabee had won the West Virginia primary, aided by a procedural spat between the McCain and Romney camps. The next state to close its polls was Georgia, at 7:00 PM EST, and there Barack Obama sailed to a clear victory over Hillary Clinton, gaining substantial support from the state's black population. Seven additional states closed their polls at 8:00 PM, and by now, the results of what is essentially a national primary are coming in thick and fast. John McCain is looking to be the victor in New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and Illinois--not bad for a guy who was written off as a penniless joke just a few short months ago. Massachusetts gave its delegates to Mitt Romney, who either resuscitated the state or destroyed it during his tenure as governor (it all depends on who you ask). Hillary Clinton, who must have originally conceived of Super Tuesday as her political Sweet Sixteen party, has won in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. But the tug-of-war between her and Obama is still underway in a number of populous states, including Connecticut, New Jersey, and what is widely perceived as a Clinton stronghold, her electoral equivalent of Helm's Deep: that would be New York. Who will be the last man (or last woman) standing? Check in throughout the night, as we update this post. And in the meantime, take a look at this Super Tuesday photo gallery.

9:18 PM EST: Just 30 minutes ago, things were beginning to look a little grim for Hillary Clinton. Although she had cleaned up in a number of early contests, including Arkansas and Tennessee, Obama was nipping at her heels all over the Eastern Seaboard. Well, things have firmed up for her since then. First she took Massachusetts, where Obama, having obtained the endorsement of local icon Teddy Kennedy--and the slightly less iconic John Kerry--had real hopes of prevailing. No such luck. Clinton soon added New York to her tally: a loss in her home state would have been mortifying, but even the Obama camp recognized this as an unlikely outcome. And at 9:18, ABC News projected her as the winner in New Jersey.


A close contest between the Democratic contenders will surprise nobody. What's more intriguing is the strong showing made by Mike Huckabee throughout the South and West. In Alabama--which, according the ABC News, saw "the biggest evangelical vote ever"--he won with 48 percent, and he's currently leading in Missouri as well, with 37 percent to John McCain's 30 percent. And elsewhere, in Tennessee and Oklahoma, he's trailing McCain but leaving Mitt Romney in the dust. It may be that Romney's attempt to peel the conservative block away from McCain has worked all too well--but those voters are defecting to the former Arkansas governor instead of pulling the lever for the eerily telegenic Mitt. Could this boost Huckabee's chance of landing a vice-presidential berth? Probably. Meanwhile, Romney is pinning his hopes on California, where evangelicals are thinner on the ground and his high-tech credentials have a better chance of wooing the voters.

Like the average American, I'm getting my Super Tuesday results from the TV. George Stephanopoulos looks half his age. Diane Sawyer looks half her age--maybe half his age. But if you want something more futuristic, Google has obliged with an automatically updated chart and a map whose exact purpose I haven't figured out yet. Enjoy!

11:25 PM EST: At 10:13, Obama was declared the winner in North Dakota, and by 10:31, he won in Minnesota as well. Was the pendulum now swinging away from Hillary Clinton? Perhaps. But as one of the talking heads pointed out, the two Democratic candidates were still heading for a photo finish in terms of the popular vote. They had split the 6.4 million votes cast so far right down the middle, with less than 200,000 votes separating them. The outcome in California, where the polls are just about to close, will make all the difference.


Over on CNN, Romney addressed his followers in Boston. In a dark suit, surrounded by a sea of bright red baseball mitts, he told the crowd he wasn't giving up. The good news: his former zip codes were kind to him. "There was a special feeling in my heart when I realized that the three places where Ann and I lived have all voted for us: Michigan, Massachusetts, and Utah!" Without a Romney victory, he prophesied, "America will emerge as a second-tier power." The only thing standing between us and mediocrity are "the values of Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and Teddy Roosevelt." The absence of the current president from this pantheon was hard to miss; so too was Romney's pledge to stop illegal immigration, a dagger aimed quite clearly at John McCain's heart. Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, screamed the crowd, as he administered his final jab: "I think it's important to have a president who's actually had a job in the private sector!"

Back in the Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer was dwarfed by the giant wall of monitors, logos, graphics, and charts. He promenaded up and down the red-and-blue ramp--a pundit's Yellow Brick Road--and announced that McCain had won in Arizona. The good news: McCain didn't drop the ball in his own state. The bad news: the Arizona conservatives had deserted him for Romney, who picked up 47 percent of their votes. Might Mitt be bouncing back after all? (By 11:12, Romney would be declared the winner in Minnesota as well.)

At 10:50 Blitzer cut over to Hillary Clinton, addressing her own crowd in New York City. The senator, in a sharp yellow suit, found it hard to quiet the audience. Both Chelsea and Bill--apparently not banished to Antarctica after all--were briefly in evidence behind the podium. But now she began to speak: "Tonight, we are hearing the voices of people across America." Nutty cheers. "People of all ages, all colors, all faiths, and all walks of life." As usual, there was something mechanical about her delivery, plus she was hoarse, but this was clearly a delightful moment for her. "And it's not over yet--the polls are still open in California for a few more minutes!" The speech went on and on, but what caught my eye was the "Latinos for Hillary" sign prominently displayed over the candidate's left shoulder. In Arizona, Clinton picked up only 53 percent of the Latino vote to Obama's 44 percent, and that's the sort of margin she clearly wants to widen.

At 11:18, the first returns start to trickle in from California. With a picayune two percent of precincts reporting, Clinton is leading Obama 57 percent to 32 percent. Of course it's too early to tell, but if she sweeps California with these sort of numbers, she may actually land the knockout blow that has eluded her all night--and all fall and all winter.

12:30 AM EST: CNN just projected a Clinton win in California, by a wide margin. No doubt the champagne corks are popping in Chappaqua. But Obama's coast-to-coast performance tonight, and the stemwinder he delivered to a rapt crowd in Chicago, can't possibly be discounted. His resilience as a candidate--along with that of Mike Huckabee, who motivated evangelical voters across the South--is among the major lessons of Super Tuesday.

Back in April, Netscape sent a crew to the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Over the course of several days, Alexia Prichard and Dakota Smith covered an assortment of events, most of them featuring heavy hitters from the worlds of politics and culture. In this first video installment of their coverage, the topic is the impending Super Primary in February 2008, and the participants cover what we might call the ideological waterfront: Mort Zuckerman, Arianna Huffington, Ken Mehlman, Bill Frist, and Harold Ford Jr. The moderator is the ever frisky panjandrum of Fox News, Roger Ailes. Enjoy!