Super Tuesday

Excitement is building as tomorrow is "Super Tuesday" in the American political world.

On Tuesday, Feb. 5, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans in about two dozen states will be casting ballots in primaries and caucuses which are being staged by both our political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats.

On the Republican side, some 1,081 convention delegates will be at stake on Tuesday; a candidate needs 1,191 out of 2,380 to get the Republican Party's nomination. On the Democrats' side, 1,681 delegates are up for grabs. A candidate will need 2,025 out of 4,049 total delegates to get the party's nomination.

These two major primaries were set up to help select a winning, if not leading, candidate by early February. With the leading candidates identified, the theory goes, both parties would rally around their front runners, bury their differences, and unite for the November presidential election.

But things haven't quite worked out as neatly as all that, according to many election observers in the U.S., including me!

It appears that on the Republican side, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, currently the front-runner, is poised to win the lion's share of delegates over his principal rivals, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and U.S. Representative Ron Paul. Currently, Sen. McCain is generally thought to have 93 total delegates from the primaries and caucuses to date. Governor Romney has 77, Governor Huckabee has 40, and Rep. Paul has three.

However, many analysts also believe that the race between Sen. McCain and his nearest competitor, Gov. Romney, is still not settled, and that while Sen. McCain may do very well on Tuesday, it may not be enough to knock the other candidates from the race. So we can look for Sen. McCain to lead after Tuesday; whether he will have enough to sew up the nomination is still an open question. Sen. McCain has leads in national approval polls over Gov. Romney and the others, but some of these polls indicate a very tight race.

On the Democratic side, the picture appears even more muddied. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the winner of the Iowa caucus and South Carolina primary, has been skyrocketing in the polls as of late, partly due to a fine showing in a nationally-televised debate in Los Angeles last week with the winner of the New Hampshire Primary, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. For the first time, several polls show Sen. Obama the leader on a national level among Democrats.

The state by state comparisons indicate a very tough race for the two, with Sen. Clinton perhaps favored to win more states on Tuesday than Sen. Obama. But with the Democrats awarding delegates from these states largely on a proportional basis, there may not be a clear delegate winner, even though one or the other may win most of the actual votes. The consensus among analysts is that the two will split the delegate count fairly evenly, moving the race beyond Super Tuesday with no clear front-runner indicated.

Of course, as we have seen this year, predictions and polls have not always been as accurate as political scientists would like. But the bottom line is, I believe, that neither of the two races will be decided on Tuesday, although the Republicans may closer to that goal than the Democrats.

Tune in the Voice of America in English or in your native language to hear live reports on the voting; also our terrific website, www.voanews.com will have election reports.

I'll be posting about results and polls on Tuesday evening and try to make sense of the results on Wednesday.