Super Tuesday: The Most Interesting Number of All

I'm up in NYC, where we are struggling to get dead-tree TIME out the door. As is so often the case, our own numbers wizard Jackson Dykman has come up with the most fascinating bit of data within all these mountains of numbers coming out of Super Tuesday:

TOTAL VOTES CAST

Clinton: 50.2% (7,347,971)

Obama: 49.8% (7,294,851)

Really, could it have been any closer?

UPDATE: Swampland commenters ask; Jackson answers:

Since you asked

Total votes cast in 21 GOP contests yesterday among McCain, Romney and Huckabee:

McCain: 43.1% (3,611,459)
Romney: 35.4% (2,961,834)
Huckabee: 21.5% (1,796,729)

For grand totals, vastly more Democrats than Republicans voted yesterday;

Democratic votes for Clinton and Obama: 14,622,822 (63.6%)
Republican votes for McCain, Romney and Huckabee: 8,370,022 (36.4%)

Put another way, the Clinton/Obama race drew 76% more voters than the McCain/Romney/Huckabee race.

UPDATE2: Jackson's on a roll:

Here are the numbers just for the 19 states where both parties had elections yesterday

Obama/Clinton voters: 14,460,149
McCain/Romney/Huckabee voters: 8,367,694

Or, 73% more Democratic voters than Republican voters.

A lot of this is huge Democratic numbers in New York and California.

UPDATE3: Jackson, ignoring the demands of the High Sheriffs to get back to putting out the magazine, has been sucked into the Swampland vortex and continues to calculate (I'm thinking we should make him a regular feature in this space, assuming he doesn't get fired for blowing his DTT deadline):

I have re-done my calculations with the latest vote totals as of 4:30 p.m., and guess what?

The raw numbers grew a bit, but the percentages are exactly the same.

Clinton: 50.2% (7,427,942)
Obama: 49.8% (7,370,023)

Now keep in mind, this is just among those voting for Obama or Clinton. If you add in Edwards and Uncommitted, etc., the percentages would change slightly, but the point is the same. That breakdown looks like this:

Clinton: 48.7%
Obama: 48.4%
Edwards: 2.7%
Uncommitted: 0.17%
Biden: 0%
Richardson: 0%%