Some Late Thoughts

There's going to be plenty to examine tomorrow, but some of the finer points from this evening are immediately apparent.

For one thing, McCain had a huge night, and Romney had a terrible one. He will likely still end up in second place in delegates after the count so far solidifies in the morning, but all the momentum from tonight goes to McCain and Huckabee, who performed surprisingly well. McCain is going to be hard to stop, and now Huckabee becomes the wild card.

The AP says that the Democratic contest more or less ended up as a tie. Clinton won the big prize states of New York and California, but Obama won more individual states than Clinton did. You can expect victories to be found at even greater granularities than that in the next few days as both campaigns claim a win but say they are in it for the long haul.

The delegate advantage will be very slim for the campaign that comes out ahead after tonight (and at 2:00 AM, Chuck Todd puts Clinton ahead by 60 or so, superdelegates included), and how the media portrays tonight — either as Clinton holding her ground or Obama coming on strong — will largely determine the perceptions of future primary voters as to how the race is going.