From an interesting website atlantic-community.org, a 15 minute video compilation of person-on-the-street impressions of Obama's speech:

Sen. McCain is at Ohio State right now at the LIVESTRONG Summit, hosted by Lance Armstrong:

On Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m., Senator John McCain will share his cancer plan and answer questions from the audience. Lance Armstrong will moderate the event.

This event was not open to the general public, but I took a few photos of a small demonstration outside (High St.) put on by SEIU and ProgressOhio, to the chants of "John McCain get off our backs, we don't want your health care tax." Nothing too exciting, but for the record:

Obama has been catching some dimissive flak from certain pundits regarding his upcoming trip to Europe.

Granted, Sen. Obama is merely a candidate and not yet the leader of the Free World (although that may be a foregone conclusion) but it's interesting to compare the press musings before Pres. Kennedy's European trip in 1963, equally dismissive and patronizing--and ultimately so wrong.

Last week I posted a diary analyzing the Ohio Democratic primary with an eye to predicting the Pennsylvania results on April 22. The bottom line of that analysis was a 57-43 Clinton victory in the Quaker State.

Indiana Democrats are slated to weigh in two weeks later on May 6, and insofar as Indiana also shares demographic characteristics with Ohio, a similar analysis in presented here for the IN contest.

First, recapping the analysis of the actual results in Ohio's March 4th primary, a cluster analysis (k-means) of Ohio's 88 counties on a set of five non-political factors (population density, median household income, percent blacks, percent high school grads, percent college grads) yielded the following map:

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Handicapping the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, many pundits are saying in effect that as Ohio went on March 4, so Pennsylvania will go on April 22, citing "similar demographics."

As such, it's useful to compare the demographics of the two states as a kind of bottom-up approach to predicting the PA outcome. I did a statistical cluster analysis on Ohio's 88 counties, classifying them according to five variables: population density, black population, household income, high school graduation and college graduation. The analysis (k-means clustering) was set to report 6 different clusters. Here's a map of the result:

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The San Francisco Department of Elections website has precinct-level election results available as an Excel spreadsheet.

This is how the 579 San Francisco precincts broke down on Obama/Clinton preference on Feb. 5 (click for a larger image):

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I put the unofficial Mississippi primary results (by county) into a spreadsheet (available at Google Docs).

As with the recent Texas and Ohio results, analysis shows a marked racial divide in the voting. Plotting the black population (%) in each county vs. the Obama support:

At the extremes, Clinton support approaches 90% in the nearly all-white counties and Obama support approaches 90% in the nearly all-black counties. The scatter around this trend is not very large.

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In a diary a couple of days ago (now deleted) I posted a map showing precinct-level results in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Unfortunately, due to a programming bug that map was erroneous, overstating Obama support generally. Here's a corrected map (click for larger version):

The true picture of Cuyahoga's 1,436 precincts reveals a very sharp racial divide in the voting, with Obama very strong in the black concentrations on the east side, but not so much elsewhere. Clinton won heavily in the white, blue-collar Democratic strongholds, as well as in most of the traditionally Republican towns along the periphery, the exceptions being in the wealthy Republican suburbs on the eastern boundary, where Obama generally prevailed. Overall, Obama won the county 53%-46%.

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Using the unofficial precinct-level data for last week's primary released by the Franklin County Board of Elections, here is the distribution of Obama/Clinton votes across the county polling places (click for larger version):

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For any inveterate data-crunchers out there, here's a googledocs spreadsheet with unofficial Texas primary results by county (per the Texas SoS website):

2008 TX Democratic Party Primary Election (Google spreadsheet)

I put the SoS data into the spreadsheet, and added some demographic data by county (white, black, hispanic, age, sex).

See below for a couple of charts from this data.

Just a quick photo blog of some pics I took this morning of an Obama visibility operation at the Lane and High intersection on the Ohio State campus in Columbus.

Hillary held a rally this morning in Westerville, OH (suburb of Columbus) at the Westerville North High School gym. oddly, Obama is also appearing in Westerville today, at Westerville South High School, so Westerville is the center of the political universe at the moment. Hillary's event was aimed at organizing and signing up canvassers; Obama's is to be a town hall-style meeting.

Here are some pictures (warning -- lots of them!):

Barack Obama campaigned on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus today at St. John's Arena. Here are some pictures (warning, lots of them!).

It was a bitter cold morning, with wind chill below zero. This is around 7:15am, with doors opening at 8:30:

A couple of flyers today in the mail in Ohio today from Hillary for President, showing that two can play at that game:

Reverse (click for larger image):

Pres. Clinton campaigned for Hillary this morning at the Ohio University campus in Chillicothe. He was accompanied on stage by Frances Strickland, wife of Gov. Ted Strickland.

He gave a strong speech outlining Hillary's record in the Senate and stressing her stand on universal health care (as opposed to the Obama plan which leaves 15-20 million uninsured) and that she is the only candidate to vote against the awful Bush energy bill of 2005, which was a giveaway to old energy interests. He also spent some time talking about education reform, ending on the note that Hillary would never forget who put her in the office of president.

Here are some photos of this event.

Hillary held a town hall meeting yesterday evening in Columbus, Ohio at Columbus state Community College. She appeared on stage with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and several local people who told their stories.

Concerning possible quid pro quos between John McCain and his lobbyist Vicki Iseman, here's a list of her clients in 1999, McCain's year of living dangerously:

AMFM Inc
AstraZeneca
CanWest
Capstar Broadcasting Partners
Carnival Corp
City of Palm Springs, CA
Computer Sciences Corp
Hillsborough County
Hispanic Broadcasting Inc
Marin County, CA
Paxson Communications
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Telemundo Network Group
Tulare County
Walter Industries

The Paxson client has already been discussed, where McCain pressured the FCC to vote on an issue related to Paxson. But note the item at the top of the list, AMFM Inc., the consortium of radio stations that was bought out by Clear Channel in a deal announced Oct. 2, 1999. The deal was initially valued at $17.4 billion. So there's a lot of opportunity for favors there.  

Obama for America has opened a campaign office in Columbus, Ohio in preparation for the March 4th primary. The grand opening was last Saturday, Feb. 16. The address is 193 E. Rich St. This location is across the street from the Ohio Republican Party headquarters at 200 E. Rich St., and only about a block from the Hillary Clinton for President campaign office at 309 S. 4th St.

They don't have yard signs at the moment but bumper stickers are available for $1 each.

Here are a few shots of the operations going on there today: