Two months ago, I was fairly confident Barack Obama would be our 44th President of the United States. After all, back in May of this year, 81% of Americans believed this country was moving in the wrong direction, so logically, one would assume a different type of president is what would be wanted. Well, just like when I thought my meatball and spaghetti bloody mary mix would eventually “catch on”, I was proven wrong once again.

Now, it’s not like I am extremely surprised by the news that Obama’s numbers are slipping. I have always said that if the election becomes about Obama, he will probably lose. Unfortunately, that is what appears to be happening, so now it’s time to make this election about McCain as well.

So why the dip in Obama’s numbers?

Democratic Presidential candidate and Illinois Senator, Barack Obama, will be launching his first official general election campaign commercial in Wisconsin and 17 other states on Friday. The first video introduces Wisconsinites to the candidate by laying out his biography (hat tip, Salon).

Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama made history when, under the rules of the Democratic Primary system, the Superdelegates pushed him to the magic number he needed to clinch the nomination. Sen. Hillary Clinton technically hasn't conceded and depending on the math one uses she is laying claim to having won the popular vote (to count caucuses or not), but based on the headlines today and the speech last night, Obama is the presumptive nominee. To further cement Obama's nomination, superdelagates who had been playing it safe and keeping quiet until they saw a clear winner, are now coming out of the woodwork. The Green Bay Gazette is reporting that both Wisconsin Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl have thrown their support behind Obama today, giving Obama 13 of Wisconsin's 16 supers.

When I first heard that 9/11 theorist and UW-Madison Lecturer Kevin Barrett was running as a Libertarian for Rep. Ron Kind’s 3rd District congressional seat, I was elated. Not because of any desire one way or the other to see Barrett unseat the congressman, but because it means the race is suddenly much more interesting then it was two weeks ago. Kind already has a competitor in Republican Paul Stark, but it is highly unlikely that Stark can unseat the New Democrat and Free Trader from La Crosse. Kind, who has held the seat since 1997, defeated his most recent Republican challenger in 2006 with 65 percent of the vote. Stark is trying to defeat Kind by tying the incumbent to Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. Obama defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in La Crosse County with 58 percent of the vote. On the Republican side La Crosse County went to Senator John McCain by 48 percent, but Mike Huckabee came in a close second with 41 percent of the vote.

Wisconsin's spring elections take place today, Tuesday, 1 April.

As always, you can register at the polls on the day of the election, and most things with your address on it (including an ID card, lease, bill, or paycheck) can be used for identification. If you don't know where to vote, you can look up your polling place at the city clerk's web site.

To find out what's on your ballot ahead of time, you can look it up at the WI Voter Public Access site.

On my morning visit to Facebook I couldn't help but notice the little ad on the left side of my profile telling me to "Retain Justice Butler." This is the first localized political ad I've noticed in the massive social networking site. Facebook ads are dirt cheap and, while I'm still not convinced they have an impact with Facebook users, it is a savvy move on the part of the Butler campaign. Students utilizing Facebook and heading to the polls tomorrow may not know the candidates well, but the repetition of seeing Butler's name everytime they check to see what their friends are up to could create a flicker of familiarity when they hit the voting booths. While we don't make endorsements at Dane101, we do appreciate candidates who bring on board staffers who seem to grasp the vast possibilities that Web 2.0 can provide. So, we offer Kudos to the Butler campaign.

On April 1, Wisconsinites will (hopefully) go to the polls to vote on a number of state and local issues and candidates. Included on their ballots will be a decision over whether to elect a new or incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. On the one hand, your choice is current Justice Louis Butler, and on the other hand you have Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman.

A great deal of sound and fury has been coming from the blogosphere over which candidate deserves the seat more. Recent television ads have only added to the noise. Newspapers and officials across the state are declaring their support for one or the other, and the debate rages on. For the uninitiated (or those who have better things to do with their time than endlessly surf blogs), the whole mess probably seems, well, messy. So, in the interest of clearing the air a little bit and helping to create a more informed voting populace, I will be attempting to lay out the facts, events and controversies in as concise a manner as possible. Yes, I’m a masochist.

Dane101 was recently invited by the HuffingtonPost to help "HuffPost's OffTheBus Superdelegate Investigation." (hat tip to Frank Paynter for putting us on their radar). HuffPost was gracious enough to give us permission to use any of the content generated by our contributors on dane101. However, our contributors, Katjusa Cisar and Nathan Comp, ended up being assigned to interview superdelegates in Ohio instead of Wisconsin, and because that runs counter to our Madison- and Wisconsin-centric content mission we don't have much to offer on the local superdelegate front (at this time). So it goes. We still love the idea of using sunshine on the unaccountable and some other dedicated citizen journalists have provided profiles on HuffPost for a handful of the 16 WiscoSupes.

Projected winners by CNN/MSNBC/FOX are Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

10:30 p.m.: Oh, are you still here? Come back tomorrow and we'll have a results breakdown for you. We've been blogging all day and we need to unwind. Thanks for tuning in!

9:40 p.m.: Poking around the rest of the state we see that in Brown County, home to Green Bay and a large blue collar population, Obama beat Clinton 56-42. With 93 percent of the votes in Obama had 22,044 votes and all of the Republicans combined took in 15,847.

9:15 p.m.: Middleton went heavy for Obama which proves Google Trends predict absolutely nothing. Obama more than doubled Clinton's numbers: 4664-2011.

9:00 p.m.: With all Madison wards still out, these are the numbers we have in terms of turn out in Dane County. Democrats with 41,007 and Republicans with 9,819. In 2004 during the Wisconsin Primary the turn out for Democrats in Dane County was 125,363. President George W. Bush was uncontested.

8:45 p.m.: Obama continues to dominate in Dane County. He has not lost a single municipality with all of the following reporting: Albion, Berry, Black Earth, Blooming Grove, Blue Mounds, Burke, Christiana, Cross Plains
Deerfield, Dunkirk, Dunn, Mazomanie, Medina, Middleton, Perry, Pleasant Springs, Primrose, Roxbury, Sun Prairie D-3, Vienna D-2, Westport, York, Belleville, Black Earth, Blue Mounds, Brooklyn, Cross Plains, DeForest, Marshall, Mount Horeb, Rockdale, Shorewood Hills, and Middleton. McCain was also the victor in all of those with the exception of Christiana and Albion. Those communities went to Huckabee.

8:30 p.m.: We now have winners for the Dane County District 28 race. Kurt Schlicht and Susan Beil will go on to compete on April 1. They won 38 percent and 27 percent respectively.

First things first. Official word from the City Clerk is that they have no preliminary turnout numbers because "It's a zoo" and turnout is so high. Stay tuned for continuous coverage as the night goes on. Tell us what you are thinking in the comments below or email them to editor at dane101.com. Photo by Melody Hanson All of our earlier coverage can be found by clicking here.

7:55 p.m.: ...and with that we end our primary day threads as we move onto the long anticipated results threads. We will be bouncing around for the rest of the night between the Barack Obama shindig at the Great Dane and Dane County Supervisor Scott McDonnell's party at Hawk's. View the results thread here.

7:15 p.m.: Casey and Alan do some election day coverage from the Food Court of the West Towne Mall.

7:10 p.m.: Alder Brenda Konkel reports, "Rob just voted at Gates of Heaven - he was number 1091 . . .the line was out the door from the time he got there to the time he left . . .
He said that while standing in line, some people were saying that the room needed more light as it was hard for the poll workers to see the names . . . someone said that they should tell me . . . so Rob told them he'd make sure I knew . . .

btw - I decided not to vote."

6:45 p.m.: Time magazine posts some early exit poll results for Wisconsin. Associated content also has exit poll numbers here. AP exit poll summary here.

6:40: Bessie Cherry reports, "I was voter number 1617 at Georgia O'Keefe Middle School, a polling place that was full of family folks (at least a dozen kids and some babies with their parents including my own six-year-old) and some neighborhood luminaries, like Isthmus' Kenneth Burns and Harlot Bronte of the Mad Rollin' Dolls. On the way to O'Keefe we caught the end of John Nichols' chat with Rachel Maddow on Air America about his perspective on the WI primaries, a great precursor to my vote. The atmosphere was a bit frenzied-- there were probably 25 people in line behind me, most bemoaning the fact that their names didn't start with letters between M and Z. My daughter loudly announced my vote to all within earshot as she fed the ballot through the machine. She was also incensed that someone had used the voting marker to draw on the walls of the booth. Personally, I wish that O'Keefe had gone the way of the other polling places I read about and held a bake sale (I noticed that Lapham pollworkers were handing out free candy!)-- it makes for a more convivial, neighborhood atmosphere and it's a good way to keep the kids calm. Despite the frigid temps and the impending night, on the way home we passed two girls who couldn't have been older than 8 or 9 jumping up and down atop a snowbank yelling "Go Obama" and holding up adorable handmade signs. I gave them a thumbs up."

We continue our all day coverage of the Wisconsin Primary in this brand spanking new thread. We have included our morning coverage, but if you are so inclined you can also view it here. According to the Dane County Clerk's office voter turn out was at 10 percent as of 10:30 a.m. That is substantial considering the cold morning and many commuters experiencing a rough time with many of the Madison roads encased in ice. As an example, one Sun Prairie resident told us a normal 15 minute commute to downtown Madison took him nearly 1.5 hours. Below we will update until the evening. Feel free to use the comments section below to make your own observations.

5:00 p.m.: This thread is now closed. Please see the "evening primary" thread for current in-coming reports.

4:00 p.m.: We are taking a short nap. Unless something major happens in the next hour we will see you on the other side of 5 p.m.

3:55 p.m.: James, of Jim James and the Damn Shames fame, reports, "I made it over to Midvale Elementary at about 3 pm and it was pretty quiet in the polling gymnasium. There were two or three people who walked by to vote as I filled out my change of address form. One young mother who was also trying to vote must not have brought two forms of ID (eg: driver's license and utility bill) because, as much as they were trying to help, she was made to wait. Be sure to bring the proper documents if you are changing addresses this time around!"

3:40: Tana at the Central Library gives thanks, "We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the library staff you usually don’t see - our maintenance crew - for their hard work in clearing our sidewalks and courtyard of the icy snow that accumulated over the weekend. Thanks Dave, Gilbert, James and Ricardo! The sidewalks were clear for the voters who came first thing in the morning before the library was even open."

Senator Hillary Clinton was in Madison last night hosting a rally before Wisconsinites hit the polls. Phil Ejercito took the following pictures of the former First Lady. Jason Dean wrote about the speech. Earlier today, we posted pictures of Senator Barack Obama's wife Michelle Obama speaking at the Overture Center. We would post pictures of Senator John McCain, but he blew off Madison completely. Click on the pictures to view them larger.

As Wisconsin goes to the polls we bring you these images from Phil Ejercito of Michelle Obama speaking at the Overture Center's Capitol Theatre here in Madison on Monday. In the interest of primary day balance, Phil assures us that images of Senator Hillary Clinton's rally at Monona Terrace are coming soon. Katjusa Cisar wrote about Michelle's appearance for Dane101. Click on the images to view them larger.

This is the morning thread. Please see our afternoon thread here.

Primary Day has arrived in Dane County and everyone who cares about the future of the country is strapping on their ice cleats and putting chains on their tires so they can make it to the polls. Dane101 will be collecting reports from the polls in this entry throughout the day. Feel free to add your personal experiences in the comment thread below.

11:00 a.m.: Adam Schabow reports, "I voted this morning. Due to the crappy roads, a drive that would normally take me 5 minutes took me 20 minutes to get to Hoyt School to vote, but once I got there, it only took me two minutes to actually get in and vote. Not too shabby. I was the 70th person to vote there at 9am this morning."

The scene resembled a victory party more than a political rally.

As supporters entered, they were treated to a banquet of coffee, Doritos, and Pepsi products. The soft sounds of a mandolin flowed through the hall as Harmonious Whale performed for the waiting crowd. The awkward arrangement of the conference room quickly filled, forcing the event staff to open another section and relegate newcomers to an area where the podium was virtually invisible.