According to USA Today's vote totals, the turnout in the Democratic primary in Mississippi today was 417,428. Add that to the number of voters who turned out in the Republican primary today and total turnout amounts to 559,242, wayyy more than the 125,000-150,000 voters that the MS Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann had predicted. And yes, once again, the Dem primary turnout breaks the record, exceeding 1988 when 359,000+ voted. What the hell was Hosemann thinking?

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Tonight Hillary has been the beneficiary of a large number of Republicans crossing over to vote in Mississippi's open Democratic Primary. I very much doubt that more than a few of these Republicans would vote for Hillary in November.

13% of the voters in Mississippi's open Democratic Primary were Republicans.

Exit Polls: Clinton draws Republican support

CNN) -- Are some of Mississippi's Republicans trying to cause mischief? Thirteen percent of the voters in today's Democratic primary identified themselves as Republican; they voted for Clinton, 78 percent to 22 percent. And 37 percent of the Democratic primary voters have a favorable opinion of John McCain; this group also went for Clinton, 62 percent to 37 percent.

We all remember HeadRush Limbaugh urging Republicans to hold their noses and vote for Hillary like in the story below the fold from Faux "News":

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Because the previous threads are getting full:

√ Barack Obama: 253,441 votes (61 percent)
Hillary Clinton: 154,852 votes (37 percent)

99 percent of precincts reporting (11:45 PM Pacific)

Doing the back of the napkin math, it looks like Obama is nearing the territory where he would get an extra delegate statewide (which comes at a bit above 59 percent, if my calculations are correct). No word on the district-by-district breakdowns yet, however.

Update [2008-3-12 2:48:11 by Todd Beeton]:Another blowout for Obama. As for the 11 delegates allocated by the statewide vote, because Barack Obama only received 61% of the vote, these delegates will be allocated 6-5. Sheesh. What's a guy gotta do? As for the remaining 22, allocated by cd, I'm cribbing from USA Today + Chris Bowers here:

cd 1: 3-2 Clinton
cd 2: 5-2 Obama
cd 3: 3-2 Obama
cd 4: 3-2 Obama (barely)

Total (projected): 19 Obama - 14 Clinton

OK, so Obama doesn't get too hosed. A 61-37% popular vote split is likely to equate to a 58-42% delegate split.

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As I wrote HERE, Barack Obama's performance on March 4th represented a real loss in support among non-Democrats who up until last week had tended to support him over Hillary Clinton by fairly large margins. We're seeing the same thing in Mississippi today.

According to CNN's exit poll, 13% of those that voted in the MS Democratic primary today were Republicans and they went for Hillary Clinton by a huge margin of 77-23%. Among independents who voted in the Democratic primary today, Clinton loses only by a slight 48-51% margin. These results represent a phenomenal improvement for Clinton among these groups as compared to her overall pre-March 4 results when she lost among Republicans 29-64% and among Independents 36-56% (h/t Open Left.)

The real story here is Clinton's performance among Republicans though. This is the first open primary since John McCain secured the nomination, so it makes sense that they would participate in the Democratic primary in larger than normal numbers (Republicans represented about 9% of the Dem primary electorate in the last 3 open contests in Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio) but going for Hillary by more than 50%? What made her Republican support in TX and Ohio so surprising was that she had closed the gap to a single digit deficit or a tie, but here she is well ahead. I was skeptical of the right-wing campaign to turn out for Hillary Clinton so that the battle for the Democratic nomination would drag out even longer, supposedly meant to help John McCain (John, who?), but today's results make it difficult to ignore. Although, the more insidious side of what may have motivated these Republicans to vote for Hillary against Barack is that the racist vote may have been alive and well. The electorate was deeply polarized along racial lines (90% of black voters went for Barack, 73% of white voters went for Clinton) in Mississippi today and I don't think it's entirely unrelated that the exit polling The AP did show Clinton benefiting from a distinctly anti-Obama sentiment.

--[Just] 4 in 10 Clinton voters said she should pick Obama as her running mate if she wins.

-- Nearly three-fourths of Clinton voters said they would be dissatisfied if Obama wins the nomination.

--Only about one in five Clinton voters said Obama [offered clear and detailed plans to solve the country's problems.]

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Here are the results:

√ Barack Obama: 151,655 votes (57 percent)
Hillary Clinton: 107,309 votes (41 percent)

68 percent of precincts reporting (10:26 PM Eastern)

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