The result is 55 pages — divided by state, district or territory — that compiles the popular vote, a pledged delegate count and, most importantly, a system to track the superdelegates. We’re identifying them, determining whether they’ve endorsed a candidate, and trying to track whether their vote is in line with what the constituents in each state want. With Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama racing toward a photo-finish, the superdelegates might decide who gets the nomination.

Chris Bowers wrote a great introduction over at OpenLeft, if you want some of the back story on the process.  Otherwise, if you’re interested in the role these individuals will play in the Democratic nomination, you should head over to the project and read up. If you want to help shine some light on the process, help out. If you need any assistance, just let me know.

State Democratic Party leaders said 16,871 provisional ballots were being counted Wednesday.

At noon Wednesday, four precincts still had not reported their vote totals. They included three precincts in Rio Arriba County and one in Sandoval County where Rio Rancho voters experienced extremely long waits at the city’s only polling location. Some reported taking three hours to cast their ballots.

Also, the state Democratic Party’s Web site is less than helpful at 2:30 Eastern time (sorry, stuck in D.C. mode):

New Mexico’s Democratic caucus remained unsettled early Wednesday morning as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were separated by just 117 votes with nearly 17,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton held 65,845 votes, or 42.97 percent, while Obama held 65,728 votes, or 45.89 percent.

State Democratic Party leaders said 16,871 provisional ballots were still to be counted Wednesday morning starting at 9 a.m.

The CNN site for New Mexico doesn’t even have that much information, while the vote tally section of the New Mexico Democratic Party is still lacking information on Bernalillo, Doña Ana and Grant counties.

Hopefully the picture will firm up by the time LP comes on.

LP has already mentioned the overall results indicated by CNN’s exit poll from New Mexico. However, I wanted to take a look at a few things that stand out to me, notably this response:

This indicates to me that Obama’s message of change played a very large role in New Mexicans’ decisions in this election. “Change” was the most important issue for more than half of all voters, and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

More breakdown of the exit poll after the flip:

The economy is definitely on voters minds, and it looks like people most concerned by the situation were supporting Clinton. Unsurprisingly, Obama won among those who thought Iraq was the most important issue, while it was much closer in regards to the health care block.

Here’s three charts on voters’ gender, age & race, and income:

So, while more women showed up to vote than men, it looks like the candidates split the female vote. Obama won among men though, and among those making more than $50,000 a year. Clinton was a big winner when voters were making less than $50K, and her support among Latinos of all ages is strong. However, it looks like Obama brought in more white voters than Clinton, and that white voters outnumbered Latinos.

Obama’s appeal among affluent voters appears strong: voters with a college education swung for him by a large margin:

Finally, here’s a bit on ideology, where Obama won among liberals and conservatives while Clinton carried moderates:

Biden has more momentum than Richardson or Dodd going into the final month, and is picking up traction in some places around the state. I expect him to finish fourth , but he has a very long way to go to pull off a shocker and get into the top three- he’s not surging by anywhere near that much, not yet at least.

The race in Iowa has an interesting mix of “WTF” going on right now, but I’ll put some stock in Lux’s thoughts since they’re not outside the realm of possibility. In addition, with Richardson “sucking up” to Hillary lately, who knows if he’s feeling some of the affects of Obama’s recent surge in the polls.