By Elise Soukup 

Let me make some generalizations about the women in my mommy group: They're young. They live in Manhattan. They're Mormon. They're registered Republican. They voted for Mitt Romney. There are exceptions, of course. Jennifer Strent, for example, is a registered Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton. As everyone was e-mailing about their votes, she sent an e-mail that asked these questions: one, "Doesn't a Republican agenda go against the teachings of Christianity and Mormonism?" and two, "Doesn't interfering with a person's right to choose interfere with God's plan for us?" The e-mail spurred some 50 e-mails within the next 24 hours. The responses, if you were wondering, almost universally said to number one: no and to number two: no.
 
But amidst all of this chatter, another theme emerged: encounters at the polls with workers who were shocked, and baffled, to meet Republicans. (Especially young, cute ones.) I've compiled my friends experiences below in a sort of oral history of voting Republican on Super Tuesday in New York City:
 
Laurel Walker, 27, a stay-at-home mom to two children: "I voted today and the lady at the table said, and I quote, 'You're a Republican? Shame on you, Shame on you, Shame on you!' Then she made a big deal of telling the guy at the booth to 'move it over to the Republican side!' like no one else had needed it that day."
 
Rebecca Hunt, 31, a stay-at-home mom to four children: "When I told the ladies that I was a Republican, the one said to the other, 'No way, what number does that make her?' The second replied, '16, wait, no, 15. The 15th Republican.' And I voted at 3:00pm."
 
Hillary Ridge, 27, a stay-at-home mom to two children: "When I voted the lady started to hand me a Democrat paper, but then had the professionalism to ask. When I answered Republican, she cringed a bit, but handed it to me nicely..."

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

NEWSWEEK'S Sylvia Spring files this report from Iraq on American soldiers' thoughts on Super Tuesday:

For Sgt. Matthew Villalpando, Tuesday wasn't so Super in Baghdad. The California native has to be at the International Zone's Checkpoint Two by 6 a.m. every day for work, so when the results of the primaries started rolling in late Tuesday night, he was sound asleep in bed with his alarm set for 4 a.m. He didn't even have time to check on what had happened before heading out the door Wednesday morning.

Like Villalpando, most troops were too busy--or tired--to stay up to watch Super Tuesday's results as they unfolded back home. Few had the time to vote themselves, saying that, given their busy schedules, it was not a priority. Soldiers abroad vote by absentee ballot, which they can request over the Internet from their home states. Voting Assistance Officers at the U.S. Embassy can also help, but some still say the process should be made simpler.

Yet even for those who did not vote in their states' primaries, there is a strong feeling that the next American president could have a direct impact on their lives. Sgt. Villalpando is leaning toward supporting Sen. Barack Obama. "He displays confidence, good character and the backbone to bring this war in Iraq to an end," he says. "It's time to cut our losses."

READ THE FULL POST HERE

Here's NEWSWEEK's Arian Campo-Flores on what yesterday means for the Democratic race: 

Beyond the fight for delegates, though, is a far less tangible battle: one over perception. In the buildup to Super Tuesday, Obama's candidacy seemed to be surging. He scored a series of high-profile endorsements, he raised about $32 million in January, his celebrity-studded campaign events took on the character of religious revivals and he was quickly gaining on Clinton in the polls. Tuesday night's results, Clinton's advisers argue, managed to slow, if not block, that momentum. "We had to listen to two weeks of 'Oh, you're not having rallies, you're not appearing with celebrities, you're having these boring discussions about issues'," said one adviser who didn't want to be on the record appearing to gloat.

The campaign was especially gleeful about Clinton's victory in Massachusetts, where Obama benefited from the highly coveted endorsement of Sen. Edward Kennedy, as well as that of Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick. Late deciders went mostly for Clinton, advisers pointed out-proof, they argued, that voters, unlike the media, are not blinded by Obama's star appeal. The Clinton team also celebrated her victories in Republican states like Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. "This proves Hillary Clinton can win anywhere in the country," said campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe. "The voters finally got tired of the pundits and prognosticators telling them how they were going to vote."

Obama's side had its own triumphs to savor. One that was especially sweet: Missouri. Just before Obama bounded on stage in Chicago, the Clinton campaign released a statement touting her victory in the bellwether state of Missouri. "Hillary's Big Night Continues," it read. Problem was, Obama ended up winning the state. In the rear of the Chicago ballroom, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who endorsed Obama, clapped and cheered at the turnaround. "People are getting to know Barack Obama," she told Newsweek. "The story that needs to come out of tonight is that this was supposed to be the end. This was going to wrap it up for Senator Clinton." Yet as Obama senior strategist David Axelrod put it, "We took on the big bad machine that was going to finish us off on February 5 and they didn't."

Looking ahead, the Obama camp remains optimistic. For one thing, the day's results put to rest some key arguments against his candidacy. He won Connecticut, Delaware and Colorado, where independents weren't allowed to vote, thus proving that he could win without them. And he captured a healthy 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in Arizona, showing he could make inroads in a constituency that has largely aligned itself with Clinton. Now, the Obama campaign argues, Clinton's strongest states-including New York, New Jersey and California-are behind her. "We always thought she had an advantage today," said campaign manager David Plouffe. "As we started planning this, February 5 was always a tough hill to climb. Now we move on to what we thought was always a more favorable part of the calendar."

Read the rest here. 

By Brian Braiker

Erik in New York City was frustrated because, as an independent voter, he wasn't allowed to cast a primary ballot. Dan in Minneapolis spotted Al Franken at the St. Louis Park High School caucus location, but there was no sign of Dan's first-grade teacher. And Peter in Lowell, Mass., who voted at the fire station down the street from his house, wanted it known that a fire engine turned on its lights and siren while he was casting his choice.

These election-day snapshots are not from man-on-the-street interviews. They are yet another Google offering. The search giant teamed up with a company called Twitter to create the killer Super Tuesday Web application. Twitter is a group-messaging service that allows users to hold a Web-based conversation using instant and text messaging. Users subscribe to each other's feeds to receive short updates--or "follow"-friends.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Check this space for frequently updated analysis of the Super Tuesday returns.

OVERALL

With wins in Delaware and Connecticut, it was clear that Obama could capture toss-up states. But in the end, he couldn't win the biggest battleground of all: California. Combine Obama's defeat there with losses in Massachusetts and New Jersey--states where some observers expected his recent surge to counter Clinton's early strength--and Hillary may wake up Wednesday with a "stopped Obama's mo" narrative working in her favor.

All in all, though, expect a tie. "In terms of delegates we're going to end up in essentially a draw today," Obama guru David Axelrod told reporters earlier. That's not spin. The current count is Obama at 562 and Clinton at 582, according to CNN--with neither California (Clinton) or Missouri (Obama) tipping the scales too far in favor of one candidate, thanks to proportional allocation of delegates.

On the Republican side, McCain, who won the crown jewel of California shortly after midnight, is still well on his way to steamrolling the opposition--but perhaps without sizable Southern support, as Huckabee eked out close victories across Dixie in West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Expect the pundits to obsess over Huck's surprise showings at the expense of McCain's expected victories, even if they're not worth as many delegates--an emphasis that will underscore the work still required to reconstruct the Republican coalition. Romney, of course, was waiting for the Big Enchilada with fingers crossed--he needed a major win outside of his home states of Massachusetts and Utah to stay alive. But when word finally arrived that McCain had captured the Golden State, you had to wonder: will Romney keep on keeping on?

One MSM note going forward: the networks have spent the night "calling" full states like it's Election Day--even though, in many cases, the delegate tallies matter more. Not that I blame them; what else is there to do before the votes are even counted? Still, I wonder if by the time they get around to crunching the numbers, viewers will have moved on--or fallen asleep--with largely irrelevant story lines already firmly fixed in the national consciousness.

DEMOCRATS 

Clinton: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Tennessee, Oklahoma, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey

Clinton is looking at least as strong as expected, if not stronger, considering Obama's wave of positive press over the past two weeks. The first big disappointment of the night for Obama: New Jersey. An upset there would've signaled a potential tidal wave nationally, but the Latino vote swung the state for Clinton--which ended up also helping the New York senator capture Arizona. The Clinton camp is breathing a sigh of relief after fending off a last-minute Obama surge in Massachusetts, fueled, perhaps, by the Kennedy endorsements. (Some good they did.) The size and swiftness of the win (a surprise even for the Clintonistas) was encouraging--especially as an omen for California, where Clinton was hoping to thwart a similar Obama insurgency. And ultimately she did, finally capturing the Golden State as Tuesday turned to Wednesday (key constituencies: Latinos and women). In the "no duh" category, Clinton was expected to win handily in all three Southern states and her home state of New York. Final margins--and the all-important delegate counts, which could show closer-than-expected Obama finishes in the Empire, Garden, Golden and Bay States--still to come.

Obama: Georgia, Illinois, Delaware, Alabama, North Dakota, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, Missouri, Alaska

Delaware was the first toss-up decided tonight, and was seen in Obama circles as a sign of good things to come in Connecticut--another state where independents, who tend to favor Obama, weren't allowed to vote. The harbinger turned out to be true; Obama soon made the Constitution State, once a Clinton lock, the second swing state to swing his way. And by 1:00 a.m., the Illinois senator completed a come-from-behind victory in Missouri--a famous political bellwether--clinching his near sweep of the South and Plains States. The losses in Massachusetts and California, however, were serious let downs that prevented Obama from harnessing any real momentum for Feb. 6 and beyond. Interestingly, Obama's massive margins in Georgia--he won among women and white men, for example--were a bit unexpected, and helped rebut the insta-CW that the senator took the Peach State solely on the strength of his (still overwhelming) black support. A similar story in Alabama, which was a closer contest than Georgia. I expected North Dakota, Minnesota, Idaho, Colorado, Alaska and Kansas to fall for Obama--they're caucus states, which means they're well suited to his organizational strengths (especially among young voters). And as for Utah--Clinton is hugely unpopular in the Beehive State, making it ripe for an Obama rout.

Too Close to Call: New Mexico
 

REPUBLICANS

McCain: California, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri

No alarms, no surprises. With California and Missouri comfortably in his column, McCain is crushing his rivals in the delegate count and will remain the leader when all is said and done. "As much as I've relished come-from-behind wins," he said tonight, "I think we have to get used to the idea that we are the Republican party front-runner for the nomination. And I don't mind it one bit." That said, McCain had hoped to show better below the Mason-Dixon line, where social conservatives made it clear tonight that they're still uncomfortable with candidacy. Huckabee for VP? It'd be one way to thank him for crippling Romney. Let the healing begin.

Romney: Massachusetts, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Colorado, Alaska

A loss in the Bay State would've killed Romney's campaign. Same goes for Utah, where he led in the final pre-Feb. 5 polls by 75 percent. Minnesota was a pleasant surprise (I had it leaning to McCain). And Romney hit his targets in the low-delegate "frontier" states, where he was the only candidate to really compete. But with a bruising psychological defeat in California, his firewall state, and dispiriting bronzes across the South, it's difficult to image Mitt continuing (credibly, at least) to cast himself as the only conservative alternative to McCain. Unless, of course, he's neck-and-neck with Mac in California delegates. Unlikely--but it's his last best hope.

Huckabee: West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee

Arkansas was no shocker--it's Huck's home state. But West Virginia spelled serious trouble for Romney, who was expected to win. (Read my take here.) Eventually, with narrow upsets over McCain in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama--Mac led narrowly going in--Huckabee completed a Southern sweep that dashed Romney's hopes of building an anti-McCain coalition of conservatives. In fact, now that Romney has lost California, Huck will likely supplant Mitt as the last non-McCain standing--an amazing feat considering his constant lack of cash. "Over the past few days, some people have been saying that this is a two-man race," he said from Little Rock. "Well, guess what? It is. And we're still in it." Whether he hangs on as serious rival or potential veep remains to be seen.

Paul: N/A

No wins for Paul, but his libertarian leaning message endeared him to hands-off North Dakotans and Alaskans, who awarded the Texas congressman a total of 10 delegates. Still, with an overall tally that's 10 times smaller than Huckabee's, he's no closer to the nomination tonight than he was this morning.

Citing her 40-33 lead over Barack Obama in the latest local poll, most observers would say that Hillary Clinton is the favorite to win tonight in Minnesota. But the Obama campaign would disagree.

The reason? The youth vote.

It's no secret that voters aged 17-29 propelled Obama to victory in Iowa and South Carolina. In the first-in-the-nation caucuses, kids chose Obama more than four to one over the next closest competitor, accounting for his entire 20,000-vote margin of victory; three weeks later he swept through the Palmetto State with 67 percent of the under-30s. But one of the key questions heading into Super Tuesday was whether Obama could keep turnout up and maintain his youth-vote advantage even though it would be impossible to devote as many resources to mobilizing young'uns in 22 simultaneous, coast-to-coast contests as he did in the handful of early-voting states. If successful, analysts said, he might wake up Wednesday in better shape than expected.

We won't know until the wee hours of the morning if the kids came out. But the bellwether state, says Team Obama, is Minnesota. Of course, the campaign insists that it's building a broad coalition and that young voters are only one piece of the puzzle. But it seems safe to say that if Obama wins in the North Star State, it will be largely on the strength of his unprecedented local youth-vote field program--which in turn might signal that similar results will follow in a series of other states.

Here's why. Hans Riemer, Obama's youth-vote director, recognized from the outset that Minnesota was unusually fertile ground for the 'utes. Thanks to the state Democratic party's coordinated youth-voter turnout programs in 2004 and 2006, Minnesota boasts the highest youth-voter participation in the country. It holds caucuses, which reward small, motivated, well-organized flocks of supporters. Unlike Iowans, Minnesotans can increase a candidate's statewide totals by running up big margins on college campuses. Seventeen year-olds can caucus. And everyone can wait until Election Day to register.

Seeking to take advantage of the "perfect storm" conditions, Riemer started building a youth-outreach program in Minnesota back in March. The plan included Students for Obama programs at every college from "Carleton and St. Olaf's to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities," and "BarackStars" groups in hundreds of high schools in every corner of the state. In September, Riemer sent his deputy youth-vote director, originally recruited from the state Democratic party, back to run the local effort. His triumphant Iowa youth-vote director joined him earlier this month. By last week, the Obama campaign had blanketed the TV and radio airwaves with ads custom-tailored to the sub-30 demographic.

Tonight, Team Obama views Minnesota as something of a "test case." If the Illinois senator can overcome Clinton's advantage in Minnesota, they say, today's other caucus states--Kansas, Idaho, North Dakota, Colorado--could produce similarly "youthful" results. And if all goes well--if Obama's young-voter support spreads virally to states not as susceptible to caucus-style organizing efforts--then the Democratic underdog may stand to gain (or even win) in the battlegrounds of California and Massachusetts.

The folly of youth? Maybe. Or as in Iowa and South Carolina, maybe not. We'll see soon enough.

Contributed by Suzanne Smalley

The networks are calling the West Virginia state primary convention for Mike Huckabee, which is good news, of course, for the former Arkansas governor. But it may be even more significant--in a negative sense--for Mitt Romney. The West Virginia results represent a victory of passion over organization, and it's hard to read them as anything but a repudiation of the Massachusetts pol's* efforts to rally anti-McCain conservatives around his candidacy.

When Romney arrived this morning in Charleston to address the Republican convention, it was largely assumed that he had Mountain State in the bag. That confidence was partly the product of pure investment; his campaign went to work in the state in 2006, long before his rivals arrived, and Romney had visited repeatedly over the past several weeks. And part was establishment support; Mitt began the day with 280 committed state delegates (more than Huck or McCain) and all three West Virginia superdelegates in his column. Finally, the campaign expected its superior ground game to propel Romney to victory in state's new, chaotic "convention" process, which, like a caucus, would reward organization over name recognition or momentum. “We have had the only organizational presence in West Virginia to speak of,” John McCutcheon, a state consultant for Romney, told the New York Times this morning. “It’s all Romney all the time.”

So what happened? Romney led at first with 41 percent, but failed in the second round to secure the 50 percent necessary for a win. Supporters of McCain, who crashed and burned in the first round, may have joined forces with Team Huckabee in the second to put Huck over the top, 52-47. “Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain’s inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney’s campaign of conservative change,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. No response yet from the McCain or Huckabee camps.

All due respect to Madden, c'est la vie caucus. What's clear from the results is that, despite his advantages, Romney was unable to absorb enough Southern conservatives into his coalition for a majority--even in a state where McCain had minimal support. That doesn't bode well for Romney's chances in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri--all hard-fought Dixieland contests where Mitt is hoping that right-wingers will catapult him to surprise first-place finishes as their anti-McCain candidate of choice. If the West Virginia pattern extends to stronger McCain states (like those listed above) Huck will likely continue to split the reliable right vote with Romney and pave a path to victory for the Arizona senator. Huckabee's early upset may even embolden his troops to turn out in great numbers across the South, further diluting Romney's share of the vote.

All in all, not the best way for Romney to start the day.

Karen Breslau files this report from Hillary Clinton's campaign: 

A visibly ill Hillary Clinton is at home in Chappaqua, sipping tea and honey, trying to get her voice back for a Tuesday afternoon round of satellite interviews (she coughed so hard during one interview Tuesday morning, it had to be cut off). Meanwhile, the expectations Kabuki goes on: no clear winner is expected tonight. Should Barack Obama lose in California or Massachusetts, two states once thought to be solid Clinton country, it would be a "bad night" for him, says the Clinton team. Two of her top advisers, Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn, held a conference call today, mapping out the "next phase" of the race, leading into the March 4 states. Penn, her chief strategist, says the campaign would like to have "about a debate a week" between now and March 4, and announced that the campaign has already accepted several invitations for debates in Ohio, Texas and Washington, sponsored by CNN, ABC News, MSNBC (Chris Mathews, who has been merciless in his criticism of Clinton, will host), and even FOX News. Penn says the Clinton camp believes she will benefit from "an extended conversation" allowing viewers to make a "head to head" comparison between Clinton and Obama. Clearly her team feels debates showcase her strengths, and could serve to focus more scrutiny on Obama than he gets at his huge, star-studded rallies-which are big on excitement and glamor but short on policy details. Penn was also gleeful over a comment that Obama made Tuesday during a television interview, in which he likened the mandate in Clinton's health-care plan to "telling a homeless person to buy a house."

"I don't think this is something even Harry and Louise would have said," Penn cracked, referring to the famous ad attacking the Clinton health-care plan of the early 1990s. Look for this line in a debate or a commercial before the sun comes up on Wednesday.

Wolfson, Clinton’s communications director, did his best to explain why the Clinton campaign has had to move the goalpost from Feb. 5 to March 4, when the next round of significant primaries are held. “We are all learning" he said, about the complex rules of the Democratic Party, which tend to allocate delegates proportionally and are designed to prolong the contest between two evenly matched candidates, a situation the party has not faced since the current rules were adopted in 1988. "Unless you have an early knockout punch thrown, you are going to get into a situation where two well-funded candidates are going to be unable to amass the requisite number of delegates." The next battle: persuading the Democratic National Committee to seat the pro-Hillary delegations from Michigan and Florida, despite their decision to move their primary dates up so far on the schedule that the DNC stripped them of their delegates.

Wolfson also mentioned the considerable influence that Ted and Caroline Kennedy, "two icons of our culture", have had since endorsing Obama last week and campaigning for him nonstop since and cutting testimonial ads featuring Caroline. Left unmentioned: the apparently unhelpful role Bill Clinton played in catalyzing the Kennedy reaction, with his harsh comments about Obama in the run-up to the South Carolina primary last month.

If the band of showers stretching from the Midwest to New England dampens voter turnout today, we’ll know what to blame.

Cars. Factories, too.

Meteorologists have long known that particles “seed” rainclouds, a process in which water and ice in the clouds grab hold of the particles, forming additional (and larger) droplets that are more likely to fall as rain. That led to the suggestion that particulate pollution emitted by traffic, businesses and factories, all of which are greater during the workweek than on the weekend (traffic to malls notwithstanding), should make for greater rainfall Monday through Friday. A competing theory, however, held that the increased pollution might instead thwart rainfall, by dispersing the water in clouds over more seeds; that would prevent the droplets from growing large enough to fall as rain.

At least for summertime rainfall in the southeastern United States, the verdict is in: weekday pollution is causing more rainfall midweek than on weekends.

Read the rest of the post here
 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Matthew Philips on Mike Huckabee, who's barnstorming the South in an attempt to stay relevant:

Gov. Mike Huckabee is downright tired of people asking him when he's going to drop out of the race for president, particularly as speculation mounts that he's in it just to raise his profile in hopes of a vice presidential nod. The day after The New York Giants stunned the world and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, Huckabee reminded the press of the dangers of calling a contest before it's over.

"They were also talking about how the Patriots had the Super Bowl wrapped up and there wasn't any point in people watching," Huckabee said Monday at a campaign stop in Texarkana, Arkansas, the latest of several he's held recently in airplane hangars at small airports throughout the South. "With only eight percent of the delegates in, it's way too early for that."

A full month after rushing out of the gates by winning the Iowa Caucus, Huckabee's campaign is stuck in neutral. It's not that he's going backwards so much as John McCain is surging ahead and Mitt Romney has continued to move forward.