Mississippi Forecast: Sunny with Scattered Landslides

That’s my read of the way things are shaping up, anyway, from the vantage point of my trusty telephone in Tempe, Arizona.

It’s based on pre-election phonebank interviews that I conducted over the past three days with 256 registered Democratic voters in Mississippi who—incidentally and unexpectedly—moved into a virtual tie with Vermont and Wyoming voters (at least, in this reporter’s practiced eye) as the most polite, and enthusiastic, Obama phonebank call-recipients in the nation.

All results are unofficial and preliminary, of course, but this observer believes that they will borne out by early-afternoon exit polls while tomorrow’s voting is still in progress in the Magnolia State.

My prediction for an early projection of the state for Obama by the newschannels tomorrow evening? I’ll go way out on a short limb and guess that the first “calls” of Mississippi for Obama (by CNN, MSNBC, and FNC) will come in somewhere between 7:00 p.m. and 7:01 p.m. CST, 30 seconds or so after the polls close.

The “slash-and-burn” campaign tactics of Senator Hillary Clinton were rated as a significant factor powering their individual choices by survey participants, who preferred Senator Barack Obama, in this sample, by a margin of 66 to 6. [No kidding...about that, at least, although some kidding is coming. Keep reading and see if you can spot it.]

The unofficial tally for my phonebank sample is as follows:

1. Barack Obama: 66
2. No Answer: 54
3. Line Disconnected/No Longer in Service: 44
4. Left Message: 43
5. Refused Call: 19
6. Line Busy: 14
7. Hillary Clinton: 6
8. Undecided: 6
9. Fax/Modem Line: 3
10. Republican: 1

When asked for a response, a hypothetical spokesman for the Clinton campaign (pontificating inside my own head) immediately downplayed the survey’s results, arguing that Senator Clinton shouldn’t be judged by results in states she loses or in which she otherwise “underperforms.”

“Besides,” my imaginary Clinton spokesperson sputtered on, “if you assume that Senator Clinton would carry 80-plus percent of the ‘No Answer’ and ‘Line Disconnected/No Longer in Service’ voters—which we believe is our natural constituency and plays to Senator Clinton’s strengths as an experienced leader and a vital change-agent in a dangerous, dangerous world—then you factor in all the 3 a.m. calls that President and Senator Clinton will make to all the superdelegates, and multiply by why?, this race is a statistical dead-heat.”

“And, hey,” my internal Clintonspeak spokespecialist shrugged, eying the results one last time for a glimmer of the spin that campaign absolutely lives on (and for), these days: “Senator Clinton is beating the pants off the ‘Fax/Modem Line’ crowd. That proves something, right there.”