So the primary results are in nationwide, and what did Californians do with our newfound power in deciding candidates for president? We chose the establishment candidates. Instead of risking our votes on underdogs, we voted the same way most of the country did. Georgia was more interesting tonight than California. Color me disappointed.

Democrats

On the Democratic side, the media and punditocracy were quite surprised to be calling California so early. Scarcely one hour after polls closed, California was called for Hillary Clinton after early results showed the New York Senator ahead by almost 20 percentage points. As of 11:15 pm, Clinton’s lead appears insurmountable and every major media organization has called the state for her.

Clinton will receive a majority of this state’s 441 Democratic Delegates, though Obama will certainly not walk away empty-handed since California’s delegates are assigned on a proportional basis.

A Zogby poll this morning showed Obama beating Clinton by several points in California -more than the margin of error anyway- so I had thought it would be much closer than it was. I guess one shouldn’t trust Zogby polls? More on that later.

Nationwide though, California may not matter much to Obama. As of this writing, Obama has won 13 of the 22 states up for grabs, including impressive victories in Missouri, Kansas and Georgia.

In contrast, Clinton cleaned up on the coasts, winning California, New York, New Jersey, and a few of the so-called flyover states.

So why did Obama lose California? It could be a lot of things. Perhaps the youth vote he’s courted didn’t turn out to vote. Perhaps Latinos trust a white woman more than a black man. Perhaps California’s million plus absentee ballots were sent in before Obama’s victory in South Carolina or his famous speech in Iowa.

But Obama fans can be happy that their candidate is still in the hunt (and indeed may be stronger), which is more than I can say for the local GOP favorite, Mitt Romney.

Republicans

Everyone knew McCain would clean house tonight, the only question was by how much. Here in California, that turned out to be a lot.

The Zogby poll mentioned above pegged Romney with a 7 point advantage over McCain in CA, but as of this evening, Romney has been thumped by California voters by at least 16 points. I’m hearing a lot of talk that Governor Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of McCain cemented the Arizona Senator’s victory here, but did voters really care how the Governator wanted them to vote?

I thought Romney would be competitive in California for two reasons: 1) California has a large LDS population and conversely many non-evangelical Republicans (indeed, 40% of weekly GOP churchgoers voted for Romney), and 2) Romney has touted his plans to fight illegal immigration, which is a huge issue on talk radio and in many voter’s minds. Romney’s also a businessman, which should have made him popular in the state of Darrel Issa, Bill Simon, and other GOP businessmen.
But again, didn’t matter. California Republicans voted for McCain by a huge margin. I’m at a loss to explain why, especially since many California congressman supported Romney. Maybe the answers are in these exit polls.

Where does Romney go from here? There’s already talk of “frank discussions” (code for dropping out), despite the fact that he won several states tonight. It can’t be encouraging to Romney that he failed to win anything in the South. My guess is that anti-Mormon bias is what lead voters in the “Bible Belt” to vote for Huckabee, who’s campaign is the surprise sensation of the night. Huckabee won Alabama, Arkansas (no surprise), Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia and came close to beating McCain in Missouri.

Closing notes

I hoped to have some special coverage of the primary vote and Santa Clarita on the website today, but it didn’t work out. I must have spoken to at least 30 voters, and only two were willing to talk to me about how they voted (one was a convicted felon who was actually turned away from voting). I learned two things: voters in my precinct aren’t friendly and can be quite rude, and the job of an exit pollster must be tough.