We have results:

√ Barack Obama: 319,164 votes (58 percent)
Hillary Clinton: 228,494 votes (42 percent)

84 percent of precincts reporting as of 4:25 AM Eastern

Update [by Jonathan Singer]: The Merkley-Novick Senate primary is close so far with Merkley now leading 47 percent to 41 percent with 54 percent of precincts reporting (12:43 AM Eastern).

Update [2008-5-21 0:56:36 by Jonathan Singer]: Per KGW, Steve Novick will concede within a few minutes. I'm with Markos -- this competitive primary race could turn out to be a boon for the Democrats, helping the party get ready to take on Gordon Smith in the fall.

Update [2008-5-21 1:10:37 by Jonathan Singer]: KGW news has called the Democratic Senate primary for House Speaker Jeff Merkley, and Steve Novick is now conceding the race.

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Update [2008-5-20 23:24:29 by Jonathan Singer]: Per exit poll data on KGW, Portland's NBC affiliate, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton among those without college degrees, defying a bit of conventional wisdom that he cannot win that demographic.

Update [2008-5-20 23:27:49 by Jonathan Singer]: Also defying conventional wisdom, Obama is not only winning in the Portland-area but also more rural regions of the state, including places like Jefferson County in the middle of the state and Curry County down on the California border.

Update [2008-5-21 2:2:37 by Jonathan Singer]: Crunching the numbers, it looks like Obama should pick up 30 delegates out of the state to 22 for Clinton (though the numbers could move one or two delegates in either direction).

NBC News calls the Oregon primary for Barack Obama.

There's more...

Yes, the title is meant to be sarcastic. While the media will inevitably frame the division found within the early exit polls out of Oregon and Kentucky released today as "Democrats divided," (in fact, they already are) what we're seeing is actually a nation divided -- the stark differences that exist between the voters in two very different parts of the country.

In Kentucky:

In Kentucky, just 33 percent of Clinton voters said they would back Obama in the general election if he is the Democratic nominee - 41 percent said they will vote for McCain, and another 23 percent say they won't vote.

Meanwhile, in Oregon:

Oregon voters felt differently on that question, according to the exit poll. A majority of Clinton and Obama voters in the state would be satisfied if their opponent got the nomination. And 68 percent of Clinton voters say they will back Obama in the general election if he is the nominee and 80 percent of Obama voters say they will back Clinton in the general election.

Last week, the media's narrative had no counterbalance or context to it since WV was the only contest, so they merely projected the West Virginia results onto the the nation as a whole; tonight, thank goodness, the media will have Oregon to serve as a reality check.

There's more...

During Barack Obama's North Carolina victory speech two weeks ago, I couldn't help but notice the complexion of those chosen to sit behind Obama as he spoke: it was a sea of white faces. The message being, of course, that despite what the media is telling you, Obama does not have a white voter problem. One suspects that's at least partially behind his choice of where he'll be speaking after his expected Oregon victory tonight:

Sen. Hillary Clinton will spend Tuesday night in Kentucky to celebrate what's expected to be a big win in that state's primary. But Sen. Barack Obama won't be in Oregon, even though he's favored to win that state's contest Tuesday.

The Illinois senator will appear at a rally in Iowa, where he kicked off the primary season with a January 3 caucus win -- a victory that helped propel him to Democratic front-runner status.

Yes, Iowa, the state that put Obama on the map as it were, and, perhaps more importantly, proved that he can win among white voters. Expect that to be the message out of tonight, driven both by his choice of Iowa as a venue from which to speak to supporters, but also by the actual results from tonight's Oregon primary. As Jeff at Blue Oregon notes, Oregon isn't exactly a paragon of diversity itself, nor is it, for the most part, a terribly wealthy state.

Enter Oregon.  Forget the People's Republic of Portland--the Beaver State is plenty hardscrabble.  Obama_waterfront Our median income is nearly $2,000 below the national average, our per-capita income is lower than the national average, we have more people in poverty, and we regularly have higher unemployment.  And of course, we're bone white--90.5%, tenth whitest in the nation.  Come tomorrow night, Obama will have notched another primary thanks to the broad support of whites, and pundits will be reminded that Obama did well with that demographic in Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

I think Jeff's right to conclude that

Oregon's central role in this election won't be putting Obama over the 50%-mark in pledged delegates (though we probably will do that).  Rather, it's in reminding everyone that his broad base of support includes whites and poorer voters.

There's more...

SurveyUSA has released its final round of polling out of Oregon gauging Democratic voters' sentiments about the presidential primary going on in the state (with an all vote-by-mail system, Oregon's election day is effectively two weeks long), and the numbers look like this:

Candidate	All Voters	Already Voted	Likely Voters
Obama	55	53	62
Clinton	42	44	34

The overall margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points, so Barack Obama's lead over Hillary Clinton in the state is statistically significant. Doing some back of the napkin math, it appears that the margin of error for the subsample of voters who have already turned in their ballots is roughly plus or minus 4.46 percentage points, meaning that Obama's lead in this category is just statistically significant as well.

Other pollsters who, to the best of my recollection, have never polled in Oregon before and thus do not necessarily have a good grasp as to how to poll such a drawn out election (or at least have the experience doing it before) show the race to be tighter, within the margin of error. However, with the pollsters who actually have a history of polling in the state (SUSA, but also national pollster Rasmussen Reports and Oregon pollster Tim Hibbits) pretty unanimous in having Obama up by a solid double-digit margin, it's hard to see this race being a tossup. What's more, although rallies are not generally the best metric for gauging support (a whole lot more voters don't go to rallies than do), the fact that Obama apparently drew 75,000 people to Waterfront Park in Portland says a lot.

Man, I kind of wish I had gotten up to Portland a day earlier...