Today is the day of the Democratic primary in West Virginia, a contest Hillary Clinton is expected to win by a ridiculous margin. West Virginia is the heart of Appalachia, a region of the country that follows the Appalachian mountains from southern New York down through West Virginia and into northern Alabama, Georgia, and northeastern Mississippi. It also covers southeastern Ohio, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, western North and South Carolina, and eastern Maryland. Those regions in Appalachia which have already voted have voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, and it's not difficult to see why. This region is overwhelmingly poor, overwhelmingly white, and very poorly educated. That makes it the best place in the country for Clinton, and very poor territory for Obama. DHinMI over at DailyKos wrote an excellent analysis of the region here, and you can see from the maps that the vast majority of the counties Clinton has won so far by more than 65% border West Virginia and Kentucky.

So expect a 30-40 point victory margin from Clinton tonight, but don't expect it to change the race. At this point the race will be decided by superdelegates, and Obama has gained the lead in that margin since last week's Indiana and North Carolina contests. Superdelegates aren't stupid, they know that a big defeat is coming for Obama, and they aren't going to change their minds because he lost a race he was expected to lose big. Even with a 30-40 point victory, Clinton only stands to gain around 10 pledged delegates. The only real impact this race will have will be what the media makes of it.

A much more important race (in terms of consequences) going on today is the runoff special election in Mississippi's first district, where Democrat Travis Childers and Republican Greg Davis are facing off to fill that district's House seat, a blood-red district which voted 62%-37% for Bush in 2004. That said, in the initial election a couple weeks back, Childers managed to beat Davis by around 3%, and came within 500 votes of winning a 50%+1 majority outright. Both the NRCC and DCCC have spent a lot of money in this district, as the DCCC sees a serious opportunity to gain more momentum and the NRCC desperately wants to fend off a loss in a third consecutive red district special election. If Childers can win tonight, then Republicans will only have 199 members in the House, and don't stand a very good chance of increasing that number in the fall.

Polls close in West Virginia at 7:30PM eastern and in Mississippi at 8PM eastern. I'll update as results come in, but don't expect West Virginia to take too long.

-David Kleppinger, Morons.org Legislative Analyst

UPDATE 7:30PM: Hey, look at that, Clinton won. Big surprise. MSNBC is saying it's a 2-1 margin, which would be about as good as Obama could hope for.

UPDATE 7:39PM: I've looked at the spoiler vote again in CNN's exits. Continuing a trend, 6.8% of voters would vote for McCain over Clinton despite voting for Clinton today, and only 3.6% of voters would vote for McCain over Obama despite voting for Obama today.

UPDATE 9:36PM: With 24% in, Clinton is leading 63-30. More importantly, with about half the results in in MS-1, Childers is leading 54-46. A good night for Democrats if that lead holds.

UPDATE 10:15PM: Childers is still ahead 51%-49%, with 80% reporting. Though that seems really close, Davis' main base of DeSoto county has already fully reported, while Childers' main base of Prentiss county is a bit less than half in. It looks like Republicans have now lost 3 straight special elections for House seats, all of them in red districts. This bodes very poorly for them in the fall.