Just wanted to make a quick run through the initial exit poll data to see what we can say so far. Most obviously, if you deduce an overall Hillary-Obama margin from the male-female split, you'd expect Hillary to win by roughly a 52-48 spread, which is great news for Obama.
But if you look individually at some of those barometers I flagged yesterday and earlier today, none of them look so good for Obama. For example, I suggested Obama needed the African American share of the electorate to get into the upper teens, and it's only at 14 (though he's winning by a remarkable 92-8 margin). I thought he needed the percentage of voters under 45 years of age to cross 40, and the exit polls put it at 27 percent. I thought he'd be in trouble if the Pittsburgh area accounted for more than 30 percent of the vote, and it looks like it's around 33.
So my sense is that something doesn't add up. Either those regional and demographic categories are screwy--which isn't unusual, since they're often revised later in the evening--or that 52-48 spread is wrong. We'll see.
--Noam Scheiber