Wisconsin - Hillary's Waterloo or Austerlitz?

10pm It's close to a blowout for Obama - currently his margin is more than 15 per cent.  What's even more impressive - and another alarming sign for the Republicans in November - is that Obama got more votes himself than the entire number of votes cast for all candidates in the Republican primary. Now, it's true that the Dem primary offered more of a contest and that voters here are free to choose which primary to vote in. But even so, the scale of the enthusiasm in the Dem primary contest is palpable.

8.38 On our tv screens right now, a powerful tableau that might say everything about the Democratic race. As Hillary rambles on and on in Youngstown, Ohio, all the TV networks cut away to carry Obama's speech in Houston, Texas. Obama looks like the story. Hillary looks increasingly like history.

8.20 Well, we didn't have to wait long. NBC have called Wisconsin for Obama - which presumably suggests the early results are consistent with that big exit poll lead.

8.15pm The exit poll is bad for Hillary. It puts Obama's lead at about 10 percentage points.  The really disturbing thing for her is the crumbling of her demographic base it appears to show. She used to have big majorities in these kinds of states among women, the over-50s and the realtively lower-paid. In Wisconsin, her lead among women all but disappeared (and there were very few African-Americans here), her lead among all age groups except the over 65s disappeared and her lead among income groups disappeared except for the very poorest. Still, the exit polls have been wrong so many times in this primary campaign. We must learn to wait for the real result.

8.10pm McCain wins. No surprise here.  The Republican race was over a couple of weeks ago.

What's interesting about McCain's victory speech is how aggressively he is going after Obama - explicitly attacking a number of things the Illinois senator has said (most notably his remarks from last summer about how he might bomb terrorist targets in Pakistan). How ironic that McCain - the most hawkish candidate in the entire field of Republican or Democratic candiates in this campaign - is going after Obama - among the most dovish - for being a dangerous warmonger!

7.30 Central Time Greetings from just across the Wisconsin state line in Duluth, Minnesota, where I shall be liveblogging the latest episode in the melodrama that is the Clinton Family Campaign. I don't wish to overdramatise but there is something fateful in the air tonight for these latter day Bonapartists. If Hillary manages to pull out a shock win here it will surely mark a turning point, not unlike the one Napoleon scored over the Russians and Austrians in 1805. But if she loses - especially if, as some exit poll rumours have it (oh no, not those exit polls again), she loses badly - Barack Obama will look much more like the Iron Duke than the Hapless Tsar. Stay tuned.

Comments

[Cuban Pete]

Today Fidel stepped down (sort of). One would think that H.R.H. Hillary Clinton would read the writing on the wall and follow suit!!!

This was not Hillary's Waterloo. It was in fact Hillary's Stalingrad!!!

[Kathleen]

Is Obama winning because people don't want Hillary?