I'm not aware if Mark Penn has issued one of his brilliant missives on the relative importance of certain states since last night, but prior to Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was certainly trying to underplay the importance of the February 19th contests and get everyone to look beyond to the big states on March 4th. At a certain point, though, they seemed to realize, hmm, if what happens in Wisconsin is bad it will matter, and so they tried to compete there with ads, surrogates and finally, the arrival of the candidate herself. Well, as we found out last night, the result was quite bad and we can see from the media coverage that in fact it does matter, not because of the unquantifiable momentum that comes with another "Obama Wins!" headline, necessarily, but more concretely because of the voting trends the Wisconsin electorate exhibited, namely that, as CNN cleverly put it today, Barack Obama is stealing Hillary Clinton's bases.

H/t to CNN's Bill Schneider for the data for the charts below showing Obama's share of the vote in Wisconsin among certain demographic groups vs. the share he received on February 5th.

First take a look at how Obama is eating into the support among groups that have traditionally voted for Hillary Clinton:

And on top of that, Obama is getting even stronger among the groups that have always leaned toward him:

To say Clinton needs to reverse these trends on March 4th is, of course, an understatement; assuming she does so and is able to win Texas and Ohio (as even Bill Clinton now concedes she must), expect the Clinton camp to use this new focus on voting trends to point toward a justification for why she should remain in the race even if March 4th results in only a minor dent in Obama's delegate lead. No doubt, suddenly Mark Penn will be writing memos reminding us how much the results out of Wisconsin, Virginia and Maryland mattered in order to play up the contrast in voter habits between those contests and those on March 4th and ultimately demonstrate what they hope will be a real shift in momentum leaving Ohio and Texas.

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Here's the most important figure out of last night's elections: The Democrats pulled in about 173 percent more votes than did the Republicans in Wisconsin. Here are the totals from CNN's initial tally (with the 2-party vote percentage in parens):

Democrats: 1,099,625 votes (73.2 percent)
Republicans: 403,437 votes (26.8 percent)

Let's make clear that there isn't necessarily a correlation between turnout in primary elections and general elections. In 2006, for instance, turnout in the Democratic Senatorial primary in Virginia was quite low, though that didn't stop Jim Webb from winning the general election that November. What's more, the comparison between the Democrats' numbers in Wisconsin and those of the Republicans is not exactly apples-to-apples given the fact that the Democratic race is more contested at this point than is the Republican race.

That all said, Democratic turnout nearly tripled that of Republican turnout yesterday in Wisconsin -- a state, I might add, that although the Democrats have carried in every Presidential election since 1988 is nevertheless viewed as a swing state given the narrow margins by which both Al Gore and John Kerry won it in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Remarkable.

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As of 12AM Pacific, with 99% reporting, Barack Obama appears to have beaten Hillary Clinton by 17% in Wisconsin tonight. Remember just a few days ago when this looked like a 5 point race? But since then, even ARG switched from Hillary up to Obama up 10% (props once again to PPP who got closest with a prediction of Obama by 13%.)

Remarkably, in the wake of this loss, Howard Fineman was reporting on MSNBC earlier that the Clinton team was spinning it actually as vindication of their Wisconsin strategy since Clinton did better here than she did in the Potomac primaries, where she lost by 29% and 23% in Virginia and Maryland respectively. Gee, yeah, by all means, break out the champagne. Ok, sure, being even with Obama among women as she was in WIis better than losing them by 14% as she did in MD and losing voters without a college degree by 6% is better than losing them by 13% as she did in Maryland but that's cold comfort to say the least. The point is Wisconsin was supposed to be demographically more favorable territory for Hillary Clinton than either Virginia or Maryland was and, particularly worrisome for her, it's probably the most similar state to Ohio as we've had so far. A couple caveats: both Wisconsin's proximity to Illinois and the open primary/same day registration rules certainly all benefited Barack Obama, two things that will not be operative in Ohio, but one statistic from the exit polls that should send chills up the spine of the Clinton team: in Maryland Hillary Clinton won white Democrats by 13%; in Wisconsin Obama cut that margin to just 3%.

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We're half way through the evening (we won't start hearing from Hawaii for another two hours or so), and here are some thoughts right now:

• The Clinton campaign might have tried to dampen expectations in Wisconsin, but this is a big loss for her no matter how you cut it. Looking at the demographics of the state, the Clinton campaign isn't on particularly strong ground in arguing that this was a natural state for Barack Obama to win in (not that that argument holds much water elsewhere). Indeed, as recently as a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was leading in the state, and the most recent credible polling had her within the margin of error of Obama. So this was not a meaningless loss for Clinton but rather one in a state that she well could have won in.

• Moreover, I've said it before and I'll say it again now: It was a poor decision by the Clinton campaign to keep their candidate out of Wisconsin for most of the week leading up to the primary. Once they sent Clinton herself to the state and, perhaps more importantly, went up with attack ads against Obama, they were stuck in an "in for a penny, in for a pound" situation. Perhaps it wasn't to be after all. But a few more days of campaigning might have been able to close the gap for Clinton and potentially even give her the win, thus giving her an important momentum boost ahead of March 4 (note her leads in Texas and Ohio are by no means insurmountable).

• Finally (for now) on those negative ads the Clinton campaign ran in Wisconsin. According to exit polling, 53 percent said that Clinton was unfair while just 33 percent said Obama was unfair. Certainly it could be the case that Obama would have won by a wider margin had the Clinton campaign not gone up with the spots. But at least from the first read of the numbers, it sure looks like the attack ads didn't do it for Clinton.

What are your thoughts now that we're at halftime?

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Just over the wires... CNN calls it, too.

Update [by Jonathan Singer]:Some actual results...

√ Barack Obama: 499,416 votes (58 percent)
Hillary Clinton: 359,083 votes (41 percent)

80 percent of precincts reporting (11:31 PM Eastern)

CNN's early projections have Obama gaining 31 pledged delegates from the state to Clinton's 22 pledged delegates. More as we hear it...

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