Three and a half months. That's how long it has been since John Edwards suspended his bid for the White House. Every day since speculation has abounded on both sides over who, and if, the former senator would endorse. What to take from tonight is not just that Senator Edwards has finally come out for the presumptive nominee, but the timing therein.

There's more...

Hillary Clinton: 232,773 votes (67 percent)
Barack Obama: 89,578 votes (26 percent)

With 97% of precincts reporting at 1:09 AM Eastern

Update [2008-5-13 22:1:15 by Todd Beeton]:CNN: John Edwards is winning 7% of the vote.

------------------

MSNBC projects Hillary Clinton to win West Virginia by a 2 to 1 margin, although Chris Matthews thinks the margin may be much larger than that.

Update [2008-5-13 19:40:11 by Todd Beeton]:A friend who's crunched the exit polls tells me that they show Hillary winning 65.6 to 31.5 but recall that traditionally they've tended to over-estimate Obama's vote.

There's more...

How much is she going to win by? The Clinton campaign, is, as you might expect, trying to lower expectations.

Howard Wolfson is hilariously lowballing it:

"I think Democrats across the country tomorrow will be asking themselves why Senator Obama, with all of his money, with all of the great press, with voters being told that he is the inevitable nominee, why did Senator Obama lose West Virginia by 15 points or so?" Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said on NBC's "Today Show."

According to The New York Times, though, the Clinton campaign's official projections lie more in the 25% range:

The Clinton camp believes she could win by as much as 25 points, and Mrs. Clinton is counting on a big victory to impress undecided superdelegates, the party leaders who will most likely decide the nomination.

But I'd put my bet on Poblano.

We are projecting a margin of 39 points and approximately 105,000 popular votes for Hillary Clinton. The statewide and PLEO delegates will almost certainly be split 5-2 and 2-1 respectively. Obama will either salvage 7, 8 or 9 delegates from West Virginia depending whether WV-1 and WV-3 flip a fifth delegate to Clinton.

An interesting sidenote: Poblano predicts a decent showing by John Edwards in WV today.

Forgot to mention: I am reserving 4 percent of the popular vote for John Edwards, which was his standing in the most recent Suffolk
poll. We did not have to worry about Edwards in Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Indiana, as he was not on the ballot there. But he is in West Virginia, and in fact he is featured [first on the ballot.]

What's a little bit unusual about the West Virginia ballot is that it lists each candidate's hometown. Something tells me that the guy from Chapel Hill, North Carolina is going to pick off a few late-deciders from the candidates from Chicago and Chappaqua. Edwards got 4.5 percent of the vote in Tennessee -- he actually beat Obama in a handful of rural counties there -- and he can probably expect to do similarly here.

I recommend reading the whole thing. Poblano offers a thorough and refreshingly detached analysis.

Update [2008-5-13 17:58:40 by Todd Beeton]:Via Marc Ambinder, Team Obama wades into the pre-counter-spinning of Clinton's West Virginia margin of victory:

The Clinton campaign has already been touting their margins in these states – In fact, Bill Clinton said that Hillary can win West Virginia with 80 percent—and the West Virginia Senate Majority Leader said Clinton needs to win by “80-20 or 90-10.” And in keeping large margins in perspective, it is worth noting that, while Senator Clinton will win big in West Virginia, Barack Obama won neighboring Virginia by 29 points.

There's more...

What's the big story today? Hillary's expected big win in WV or who garners the most delegates?

So far today it's Obama +5, Hillary -1. Will Hillary make this and whatever other gains Obama makes today up in WV? What will the MSM push as the big story: Hillary's big win or Obama's increasing margin?

There's more...