Super Tuesday and California's super strength

Welcome to Super Tuesday. At the end of the day, we should have a good idea of who’ll be running for president in November and while it’s not as apparent as it could be, tech voters will have a heavy hand in today’s outcome.

Polls this week show the Democratic race narrowing into a tense neck-and-neck struggle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both bidding for history, as the first woman or African-American presidential nominee.

And while Senator John McCain holds substantial lead over his closest rival Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a lesser challenger at this point, the game’s not won yet.

This year, Super Tuesday is being referred to as “Tsunami Tuesday” by some, because the number of states scheduled to hold primaries or caucuses has tripled from February 2007 to today’s 24. 

The states, holding 52 percent of all pledged Democratic Party delegates and 41 percent of the total Republican Party delegates within them, account for more than half the delegates at party conventions in August and September, which formally appoint nominees for the presidential election in November. And there’s a battle brewing for the biggest Super Tuesday prize, California, especially on the democrat side.

The state, with 370 pledged delegates, is of tremendous importance in what’s playing out to be one of the most intense primary elections in recent history. The state also is home to some of this country’s most tech-minded people (not to mention great percentage of EDN’s readers). New York, home to IBM and its growing upstate tech valley, is also at stake today, as are Arizona, Illinois, and Massachusetts, to name just a few.

With so many tech-related issues at question in the 2008 presidential election — immigration and H1B visas, the digital divide, mobile spectrum auctions and rules, technology education, environmental legislation, China’s growing role in global commerce, Internet taxes, IP rights and counterfeiting, and renewable energy, to name a few — how are you voting today?  And how do these issues weigh with you as compared to, say, the war or the economy?

Voice your thoughts on the candidates, the issues, and Super Tuesday below.

–Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News