According to David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, by sweeping today’s caucuses and primaries, Senator Obama more than doubled his pledged delegate lead over Senator Hillary Clinton.Before today, Obama led Clinton by 27 pledged delegates (pledged delegates are those won through caucus and primary election wins, as opposed to superdelegates which are basically endorsements by officials. These superdelegates are not necessarily fixed and can change their alliances).”In the four contests today, we estimate we won 103 delegates to Clinton’s 58 delegates for a net gain of 45 delegates,” wrote Plouffe on the Obama website.”The pledged delegate total through February 9 now stands at 1,012 for Obama and 940 for Clinton.”

Keep up with St. Louis politics at www.pubdef.net

From the Missouri Democratic Party…

The Missouri Democratic Party today preliminarily awarded 36 delegates each to Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton following their thrilling performances in Tuesday’s Missouri Presidential Primary.

By virtue of his 10,479-vote victory statewide, Obama won Missouri’s statewide delegates by a 13-12 margin, while Clinton won Missouri’s congressional district delegates by a 24-23 margin.

According to the Missouri Democratic Party delegate selection plan, Missouri Democrats award 72 of their 88 delegates proportionally based on how the presidential candidates perform in the primary. Of those 72 delegates, 25 are awarded proportionally based on statewide performance, while 47 of the delegates are awarded proportionally based on performance in Missouri’s nine congressional districts. Congressional districts with higher past Democratic performance receive a greater share of the 47 delegates. Candidates must meet a 15 percent threshold to qualify for delegates. Therefore, the percentages in the following chart do not include votes cast for candidates that did not meet the threshold. The delegate breakdown is as follows:

Click to enlarge

(* The statewide vote totals are slightly more than the sum of the congressional district totals because some local election authorities have not assigned absentee votes to their appropriate precincts yet. This should not affect the delegate totals for either candidate.)

The remaining 16 of Missouri’s 88 Democratic delegates are unpledged superdelegates, who are members of Missouri’s Democratic Congressional delegation, Missouri members of the Democratic National Committee, and distinguished party leaders. These superdelegates will cast their vote at the August Democratic National Convention in Denver for their favorite candidate, regardless of Tuesday’s primary results.

Congressmen Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan, both St. Louis Democrats and both early endorsers of Barack Obama, celebrated Super Tuesday election results with other Obama supporters and volunteers at The Moolah Theater in Midtown last night.

With over 95% of the Missouri vote in and Obama close to victory, Clay and Carnahan addressed the crowd…

St. Louis County Results

In Lacy Clay’s 1st Congressional District (north St. Louis County):

DEMOCRATS
BARACK OBAMA . . . . . . . . . 62,264 (68.54%)
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . 27,323 (30.08%)

REPUBLICANS
JOHN MCCAIN. . . . . . . . . . 8,922 (38.40%)
MITT ROMNEY. . . . . . . . . . 7,639 (32.88%)
MIKE HUCKABEE . . . . . . . . . 4,994 (21.49%)
RON PAUL. . . . . . . . . . . 1,069 (4.60%)
RUDY GIULIANI . . . . . . . . . 217 (.93%)
FRED THOMPSON . . . . . . . . . 183 (.79%)

In Russ Carnahan’s 3rd Congressional District (south St. Louis County):

DEMOCRATS
BARACK OBAMA . . . . . . . . . 23,600 (55.63%)
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . 17,888 (42.17%)
JOHN EDWARDS . . . . . . . . . 675 (1.59%)

REPUBLICANS
JOHN MCCAIN. . . . . . . . . . 8,988 (43.39%)
MITT ROMNEY. . . . . . . . . . 6,957 (33.58%)
MIKE HUCKABEE . . . . . . . . . 3,519 (16.99%)
RON PAUL. . . . . . . . . . . 840 (4.06%)
RUDY GIULIANI . . . . . . . . . 168 (.81%)
FRED THOMPSON . . . . . . . . . 134 (.65%)

Call it the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline of the 21st Century. The Associated Press called the state of Missouri for Hillary Clinton around 10:30 PM.

NOT SO FAST!

As more precincts came in it became clear this was going down to the wire. By 11:00, Barack Obama was within 5,000 votes. After midnight, results showed Obama winning by about 9,000 votes.

With 3,357 of 3,371 precincts reporting, Obama leads Clinton 403,343 votes to 394,566. That’s 49.1% to 48.1% .

Wow.

With 20% of precincts reporting, PubDef.net is projecting that Barack Obama (D) and John McCain (R) have won the City of St. Louis.

Now we’re heading to the Obama Watch Party at The Moolah…

12,803 absentee ballots were cast in St. Louis County. Here are the results:

REPUBLICANS
RON PAUL. . . . . . . . . . . 3.69%
FRED THOMPSON . . . . . . . . . 5.65%
MITT ROMNEY. . . . . . . . . . 25.22%
RUDY GIULIANI . . . . . . . . . 7.52%
JOHN MCCAIN. . . . . . . . . . 38.74%
MIKE HUCKABEE . . . . . . . . . 15.85%

DEMOCRATS
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . 41.83%
BARACK OBAMA . . . . . . . . . 46.16%
JOHN EDWARDS . . . . . . . . . 9.83%

Barack Obama will very likely win Lacy Clay’s 1st Congressional District, but a good predictor of how well Obama will do in the all-important delegate count in Missouri will be how well he does in Russ Carnahan’s 3rd Congressional District.

The 1st District, located in north St. Louis City, midtown, and north and central St. Louis County) has a very large African-American population.

The 3rd District is mostly white and contains parts of the City of St. Louis basically south of Interstate 44 and parts of south St. Louis County.

Both Clay and Carnahan have endorsed Obama.

Only 1% of the vote is reporting right now, but according to CNN’s Missouri Exit Poll, Barack Obama won among men (45% of total Democrats voting today), while Hillary Clinton won among women (55% of Democrats voting today).

Obama was favored by voters 18-39. Clinton was favored by voters 40 and over (Clinton lead by just 2 points in the 40-49 category).

54% of whites between 18-29 chose Obama, while more over-30 whites went with Clinton. 63% of white Missouri Democrats over 60 years-old chose Clinton.

Church-goers chose Obama.

Based on exit polls, CNN is projecting that Barack Obama will win his home state of Illinois. No surprise there. The real question will be by how much. Will he be able to rack up on needed delegates? IL has 153 up for grabs.

CNN is also projecting Hillary Clinton will win Oklahoma. OK has 47 delegates up for grabs today.