Numbers, numbers, who's got the numbers?

Virginia
Democrats
☑Obama 64%
Clinton 35%
Other 1%

Republicans
☑McCain 50%
Huckabee 41%
Paul 5%
Other 5%

Maryland
Democrats
☑Obama 60%
Clinton 36%
Other 4%

Republicans
☑McCain 55%
Huckabee 30%
Paul 6%
Other 9%

District of Columbia
Democrats
☑Obama 75%
Clinton 24%
Other 1%

Republicans
☑McCain 68%
Huckabee 17%
Paul 8%
Other 8%

So who's up, who's down, who's out?

Who's Up

Barack Obama

This probably goes without saying; Obama's now 8-for-8 since Super Tuesday, and has a healthy lead going into Wisconsin, a state Hillary Clinton appears ready to concede. The dream scenario for the Obama campaign appears to be coming true: Obama should go into March 4 on a ten-contest winning streak, needing only to essentially draw with Clinton in Texas and Ohio to all-but-clinch the nomination.

Obama is consistently outperforming polls in all states, whether caucus or primary states. In general, undecideds appear to be breaking strongly for him. What's more, the exit polls show Obama chipping away at Clinton's core constituencies. He won among women. He won among Latinos. He won among voters over 60. He essentially tied among whites. He won among those earning less than $50,000. The only group he didn't win was white women, a group one would expect to break for Hillary Clinton. Even there, Obama ran competitively.

Conventional wisdom has held that Texas is all-but-impossible for Obama to win, but the last polls out of there, which were pre-Super Tuesday, showed him only trailing by 10 percent. Ohio is a bit more of a stretch -- Clinton's lead there is in the 15-20 percent range. Nevertheless, Obama should be able to keep Clinton from running away with the two states. Given that he's probably going to roll into March 4 with pledged delegate lead in the 150-to-200-delegate range, it's hard to see how Hillary can overtake him, unless she really catches fire in Texas and Ohio to a degree she simply hasn't yet. Obama hasn't sewn it up -- it ain't over 'til the convention -- but he's in very, very good shape.

John McCain

It is a sign of how weak John McCain is that he's up based on fairly pedestrian victories. Obama scored a higher percentage of his party's vote in each of the three contests today, and Obama's competitor is far tougher than Mike Huckabee on his best day. Moreover, McCain took fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in all three states -- and was beaten even worse by Obama. (In DC, the margin was 85,534 for Obama, 27,326 for Clinton, and 3,929 for McCain.) Still, he won the three states, and continues to stagger toward the GOP nomination, just in time to bring his awesome "Hope, schmope" message to America.

Who's Down

Hillary Clinton

The Clinton campaign is in mortal jeopardy right now, and I'm not sure whether anything can be done to save it. Any time you decamp to a later primary state to make your stand, you're playing with fire (see Giuliani, Rudy). But Clinton is taking this to extremes, heading for the West Texas town of El Paso tonight, where she failed to acknowledge primaries were even occurring tonight. She's skipping Wisconsin, a state where she is trailing, but not by an overwhelming margin; 11 points is not impossible to make up, and moreover, as I said before, every delegate matters at this point. But Clinton looks set to concede America's Drunk Tank in order to focus on Ohio and Texas, Ohio and Texas, Texas and Ohio.

By the time Ohexas comes around, though, Obama will be on a 10-state roll. He has a money advantage, so he can flood the diverse media markets in Ohio and Texas in a way Clinton simply can't right now. He has been outperforming his polls, so he just needs to get close. Texas has a screwy system that's part-primary and part-caucus, so Obama has the opportunity to play to his strength in caucuses to close the gap on delegates, even if Clinton can win the primary. And as I mentioned before, Clinton will be significantly down in pledged delegates, and Ohio and Texas, while big states, only have 389 delegates between them. That's a lot, but consider: Obama's poised to sweep a set of caucuses and primaries that have 607 delegates at stake. And after Texas and Ohio, only Pennsylvania and North Carolina have more than 100 delegates at stake; the first probably leans Clinton, the second certainly leans Obama.

In short, Clinton really can't afford to be down this many delegates at this point, unless she's expecting to take 75% of the vote in Texas and Ohio -- for it would take roughly that for her to draw back even with Obama. In the best-case scenario for Clinton at this point, she might draw back to about 100 pledged delegates of Obama, and then she might try to win over the Superdelegates, maybe by arguing that if Michigan and Florida counted, she'd only be trailing by 50 delegates or so. But that's the problem -- under pretty much any scenario one can spin, Clinton would be going to the Superdelegates and asking them to anoint her the winner despite the fact that she has won fewer delegates than Obama. And while anything's possible, it seems to me that the Superdelegates would have to have a collective death wish to hand the nomination to the loser in pledged delegates, whether that loser's name is Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Frankly, looking things over, I'm hard-pressed not to put Clinton into the "out" category. She stays "down" for now only because one underestimates Hillary Clinton at one's peril. Still and all, things don't look good at all right now.

Who's Out

Mike Huckabee

Well, it was a nice run. But alas, poor Mike, he just doesn't have the money to actually get over the top against McCain. Nevertheless, I hope he keeps going, because he continues to highlight just how weak a candidate Old Man Surge is, and I love that.

Mike Gravel

He continues to trail Vermin Supreme in balloting. I tend to think the dream has died. Well, truthfully, it died way back in Iowa, but whatever.

Ron Paul

Paulbots seem to have lost there verve; the most importantest Republican in the history of the world!!1!1!12!!1!@! drew no better than 6 percent, and took less than 1,000 votes in D.C. And somewhere, the ghost of Ayn Rand sheds a salty tear.

Power Rankings in the morning