The Note: Super Tuesday

Feb. 5, 2008 -- NEW YORK -- There is no fatter Tuesday in the race for the presidential nominations.

An unprecedented nationwide crush of voting will impose a super-sized measure of electoral reality on the presidential field on Tuesday, with a wild coast-to-coast primary set to anoint clear favorites -- and award all-important convention delegates -- to the remaining contenders.

The day (and late, late night) could all-but crown a Republican nominee, with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., hoping to sweep enough winner-take-all states (in addition to bigger-than-big California) to leave him with an overwhelming advantage over former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass., and former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., fight a round that will go to the judges' scorecards: They are poised to split delegates in contests across the country, given party rules that award delegates based on vote percentages.

Clinton called the day ahead "both intriguing and somewhat mystifying," saying on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that "we're all kind of guessing about what it's going to mean, because it's never happened before."

"Right now I am ahead in both the popular vote and in delegates; I hope I stay there," Clinton said. "With two wars abroad and a looming recession, people need a president who's ready on day one to be commander in chief and to turn the economy around. We also need a candidate who will be able to win in November."

Countered Obama, also on "GMA": "We're seeing that the American people are understanding, unless we change how things work in Washington -- reduce the power of special interests and get our economy back on track -- that a lot of people are going to be hurting."

Behind the spin and expectations-setting are the raw, intimidating numbers: 43 races in 24 states and one territory, for a total of 23 Democratic contests and 21 for the Republicans. In a single day's voting, Democrats will award 1,681 convention delegates (87 percent of the total needed to clinch the nomination), while Republicans have 1,038 delegates at stake (83 percent of the way to the magic number), making for one electorally obese Fat Tuesday.

In an odd quirk, the top five candidates are all voters themselves on Tuesday: All live in Feb. 5 states, and are hoping for some hometown love.

On a stormy day through much of the country, brace for election results to roll in like the Giants' defensive line, starting with the close of West Virginia's Republican convention at 12:30 pm ET and finishing (maybe) with Alaska's poll closing at midnight ET.

Georgia's polls close at 7 pm ET, and the first big hour to set your clock for is 8 pm, when 10 states (including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, and Tennessee) cut off voting.

The biggest prizes will force us to wait a bit longer: New York's polls close at 9 pm, and California's at 11 pm ET -- though results from the Golden State aren't likely to be tabulated until Wednesday morning or later.

It could be California that determines winners and losers -- and don't wait up for the results unless you absolutely have to. "A record number of California voters is expected to cast ballots in today's presidential primary, fueled by excitement over tight and highly anticipated races on both the Democratic and Republican sides," John Wildermuth and Zachary Coile write in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"But the deluge of voters might also mean a record wait to find out who won the largest of two dozen states choosing candidates for president today."

Maybe it is worth waiting up for, though: "Should Mr. McCain win in Massachusetts and hold on to California, that would probably be the lights-out moment at the Romney headquarters," Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times.

"If Mr. Obama wins California, that is a real momentum blocker for Mrs. Clinton: There are few states in the country that are more identified with the Clinton presidency than this one."

Romney is battling for his candidacy's survival, coming off of tough losses to McCain in South Carolina and Florida. But recent polls have shown him very much in the mix in delegate-rich California, and he has the collective weight of the conservative talk-show aristocracy hoping to stop McCain's momentum.

"What you're seeing in our party is that there's a coalescing of support around my candidacy because a lot of people don't want to take the left turn that would be represented by John McCain becoming our nominee," Romney said on "GMA."

"The conservative voices of people like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have come out, endorsed my campaign, and conservatives are saying, 'Look, we've got to take this party, we don't want to have John McCain take it over.' "

(That's not quite accurate about Rush -- though it's very, very close.)

But McCain began airing a new TV ad on Monday that calls Romney's GOP credentials into question, unearthing video clips that all GOP campaigns have been holding on to for months: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush; I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush," Romney says in an excerpt from a 1994 Senate campaign debate included in the ad.

With the compact and predictable one-state-at-a-time voting mechanism giving way to a de facto nationwide primary, the candidates found new ways (and new voices) to make their final pitches.

Jack Nicholson endorsed Clinton, while Robert De Niro hit the trail for Obama, and Dave Matthews came out in support of Obama. Obama's candidacy even inspired three living members of the Grateful Dead to reunite for an evening.

Clinton hosted a first-of-its-kind nationwide video town hall -- broadcast over the Internet and on the female-friendly Hallmark Channel -- on Monday, and grabbed a seat on Letterman's couch to reach a nationwide audience on the night before the big voting started.

"In my White House," she told Letterman, "we will know who wears the pantsuits."

A hoarse Clinton may or may not have teared up on Monday, but the Democratic race has undeniably tightened over the past 10 days. National and state-level polls show Obama mounting a late surge, with Clinton trying to hang on to a lead she's nursed virtually since the campaign's long-ago start.

While the Democratic race will produce a delegate leader (and the proportional system makes it hard to make up ground the longer a lead holds), Super Tuesday will not settle anything. "To paraphrase Churchill," Democratic strategist Bill Carrick tells The Washington Post's Dan Balz, "the Democrats are at the end of the beginning and the Republicans are at the beginning of the end."

The proportional system "could reward Clinton and Obama in their respective pockets of strength: she among working-class voters, women and Latinos; Obama among young voters, the more affluent and African Americans," Maria L. La Ganga and Peter Nicholas write in the Los Angeles Times.

"Advisers to Clinton (N.Y.), once the clear front-runner, were stoic as they envisioned a 'lengthy process' that could continue for months, possibly through the Democratic National Convention in late August," Anne Kornblut and Michael Shear write in The Washington Post.