CNN has called Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia for senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, and Republican Arizona senator John McCain. 
Tuesday's string of Potomac primaries victories catapaults Obama into the lead in the race for the Democratic nominaton for president, reports CNN.
Pundits and political reporters are pointing to the demographics of the states and D.C. as a primary reason for Obama's decisive victories.
But Obama's campaign, and its supporters, also worked hard. The campaign organized volunteers to make thousands of phone calls to get out the vote. It reports, for example, that it made 5,000 calls in Spanish in Virginia alone using its online Spanish phonebanking tool (it's encouraging supporters to use the tool to get out the vote in Texas too, which has an upcoming primary.) For today, the campaign also texted supporters' mobile phones to remind them to go to the polls.
The campaign in addition held a series of "real-world" events, photos of which it constantly posted on its headquarters' blog in order to emphasize the sheer physical size of its supporter base.
Hoping to take advantage of an assumed surge of supporter emotion, excitement and momentum, the campaign immediately sent out another text alert around 10 pm Eastern time. It let supporters know that CNN had called the primaries for Obama. Campaign organizers included a request to spread the word.
"Fired up? Ask friends to join our movement by texting HOPE to 62262," read the victory message.
Outside groups have also helped Obama. MoveOn, whose members recently endorsed Obama, just raised $500,000 for him. They also created an online Endorse-a-thon widget that enabled its members to engage in a peer-to-peer online endorsement campaign by sending out 500,000 e-mails and Facebook messages to their friends recommending the candidate.
Obama supporters all over the spectrum have in the past few months engaged in a multi-media viral marketing campaign with online music videos and humor. Along with the celebrity endorsements, these activities seem to be fueling what can only be called Obama fever or Obamamania.
The Obama campaign itself, it seems has gotten into the game. Its 21st-century version of the auto bumper-sticker is ring tone mash-ups of Obama's speeches, which are sure to be conversation starters about the candidate and what he stands for between the owner of the phone and whoever's in the vicinity.
What could broadcast your hip, geeky socially-conscious status more than a phone with Obama's voice ringing out to a club beat with: "We can have universal healthcare in this country! We can do that!"
Update: The Politico's David Paul Kuhn's parsing of the exit polls seems to show that the Spanish language phone-banking might have worked: Obama won 54% of the Hispanic vote, which was a bigger chunk of the electorate that has been the pattern so far during this election cycle, Kuhn says.
Update II: Here's MSNBC's Chuck Todd once more, explaining the significance of Obama's ballot box victories this evening:
Update III: Ron Fournier of the Associated Press explains how former Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee could continue to be a factor in the 2008 campaign, despite his narrow loss to McCain this evening. And a supporter at Huck's Army, a volunteer-powered parallel Huckabee campaign, explains the logic behind the Baptist minister's ongoing efforts in a video about delegates and the Republican convention.
In an e-mail message, Lucas Roebuck, Hucksarmy.com's public information officer, writes about tonight's results:
The author of the blog Science Sense also has a few thoughts on Huckabee's standing in the race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rW09KiU98
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