Read the right polls

I've heard a lot of talk from pundits in the last 12 hours about the exit polls showing that half of Clinton's supporters would vote for McCain over Obama in the general election. The talking heads say this spells big trouble for the Democrats and proves the party is divided. And while those numbers don't look good, my hunch is that they aren't reflective of the truth. My guess is that when Democrats are given the choice of McCain and Obama, they will flock en masse to Obama.

But what is more telling, I think, are the numbers from the Republican elections yesterday. John McCain, who has been the nominee for months now, won 73 percent of the vote in North Carolina and 77 percent in Indiana. Twelve percent of the voters in North Carolina, the ones who already know who the nominee is, decided to go out to the polls and cast their vote for Mike Huckabee. Similarly, 8 percent in the Tar Heel state voted for Ron Paul.

Now, I would guess that if Clinton dropped out today, she would still get substantial support in the upcoming states. But, and again, this is based mostly on hunches, I think it's noteworthy that about a quarter of Republicans are still voting against their nominee months after the contest has been decided. Certainly it's something that should be noted by the talking heads.