WASHINGTON -- Today's coast-to-coast presidential vote, the closest thing ever to a national primary, is likely to disappoint those looking for decisive winners in both parties.
If the polls are right, John McCain will sweep enough delegate-rich states to become the presumptive Republican nominee tonight.
One sign of confidence in Camp McCain: The Arizona senator is planning to head overseas this weekend for an annual military conference in Germany and talks with the top leaders of Britain and France. One sign of caution: He added a last-minute campaign stop today in California, where at least one statewide poll showed a surge by Mitt Romney.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, meanwhile, seem so evenly matched that neither is likely to emerge as the overwhelming favorite after Democrats in 22 states choose between them.
Officials in both Democratic campaigns agreed that Super Tuesday won't end the Clinton-Obama battle.
"We don't expect things to be decided" today, a Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, told reporters. "There are some very big states coming down the pike: Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania. ... These are very good places for us."
Conspicuously absent from that pre-election commentary was any mention of contests over the next two weeks where Obama is heavily favored, including the Maryland primary next Tuesday.
A Clinton spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said tonight's results "are frankly likely to be close and inconclusive."
Indeed, defining victory on Super Tuesday might not be as simple as it seems.
In politics, the saying goes, a win is a win. With 1,681 Democratic delegates being awarded today, the only tally that matters is the number won by each candidate.
But the candidate who loses in the delegate count may find other ways to discern a victory.
For example, Wolfson predicted that tomorrow morning "we will wake up with a delegate lead." Since Clinton holds a 71-delegate advantage, that apparently means that her campaign will see a positive Super Tuesday outcome even if Obama wins 70 more delegates than she does.
Penn, the Clinton pollster, used the words "New Hampshire" and "tightening polls" in the same breath, cautioning reporters that "you never really know how the votes are going to come out until they're cast."
The clear implication: A recent Obama surge, which has him statistically tied with Clinton in the latest national polls, could be as misleading as the wildly inaccurate pre-primary surveys in New Hampshire last month. One big difference: The polling this time has continued through the weekend before the vote.
Meanwhile, Obama alluded to himself yesterday as "the underdog" and cautioned against believing pre-election prognostications. He made the remark at a New Jersey campaign event near the stadium where the New York Giants football team, upset winners of the Super Bowl, play.
Obama's campaign manager made his contribution to the time-honored game of pre-election expectations by declaring that Clinton is "certainly the favorite" today. David Plouffe, in a memo distributed to reporters, pointed to "the huge leads she has held in many of these contests throughout the course of the campaign and the political, historical and geographic advantages she enjoys in many of these states."
Besides counting up delegates won and total votes for each candidate, the candidate who wins the most states is likely to claim the widest geographic appeal, even though capturing thinly settled states such as Idaho or Alaska yields few delegates.
Yet another way of defining victory would be to focus on states that could be crucial to the outcome in November. That would include New York, New Jersey and Illinois, three of the largest that vote today. It also would take in Missouri, a classic swing state often regarded as a bellwether in general elections.
But a real victory - a result that makes either Clinton or Obama the clear favorite for the nomination - would require much more, Democratic strategists say. To really pull away, a candidate would have to pile up nearly 1,000 delegates today.
That's theoretically possible but extremely unlikely because of the way the Democratic process works. Strict proportionality rules, which means the loser in a close two-way fight gets almost as many delegates as the winner.
Most likely, say party strategists, Clinton and Obama will win roughly 800 delegates each.
As a result, their competition will remain intense. Both are preparing for delegate contests this weekend in Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine and the Virgin Islands.
Then comes the Potomac primary next Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, with Obama positioned to sweep all three.
Many Democrats think the Clinton-Obama fight will go all the way to the national convention in late August and be decided by about 800 party officials who are unpledged "superdelegates."
That could put added pressure on Clinton to stay ahead in the delegate competition, which Obama has been winning in the primaries and caucuses.
"Any superdelegates who aren't currently with Clinton, she's going to have a tough time getting," said Steve Murphy, a Democratic strategist who advised Bill Richardson's campaign.
By some estimates, the outcome in California - the biggest prize at stake - might be so close that it will be tomorrow, at the earliest, before the winner is known. It wouldn't surprise insiders if each candidate came away with half of the state's 370 delegates.
An opinion survey released over the weekend by the respected Field organization showed Obama surging to within 2 percentage points of Clinton, who owed her edge to heavy support from Hispanics. That poll was conducted before Maria Shriver, the highly popular wife of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a member of the Kennedy family, endorsed Obama at a rally on Sunday.
In a hypothetical California matchup against McCain in the general election, Obama would carry the state, which has one-fifth of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, according to the Field poll. Clinton and McCain were statistically tied.
Clinton's pollster Penn played down those results, saying that "in the long haul" she would emerge "as the obvious candidate to stand up to McCain."
Signaling what could be a new, more aggressive campaign against Obama, the top Clinton strategist said that after Super Tuesday, the race will enter "a different phase" where there will be more comparison of the records of the two candidates. He argued that voters have been going to the polls "without full information" on Obama, and that many, including former supporters of John Edwards, were making "a fast decision" as the candidates raced through more than half the states in the first month of the campaign.
paul.west@baltsun.com