Clinton And McCain Lead In Early California Returns

CNN’s election center shows that with 10 percent of the vote in, Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican Senator John McCain are ahead in their parties’ respective 2008 Presidential nomination primaries.

This obviously could change throughout what some expect will be a long night of counting — a night that could actually extend beyond the night due to mail-in ballots.

CLICK HERE for constantly-updated results. But at this writing (8:51 p.m. PST) it shows that with 10 percent of the vote in, Clinton has 497,842 votes, or 55 percent; Obama so far has 286,566 with 32 percent of the votes; and John Edwards (who is no longer in the race) has 93,697 or 10 percent percent of the votes.

On the Republican side, McCain has 341,709 or 43 percent of the vote; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has 201, 181 or 26 percent of the vote; former Arizona Gov. Mike Huckabee has 92,867 or 12 percent of the vote; former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (no longer in the race) has 77,973 or 10 percent of the vote and Rep. Ron Paul has 29,609 or 4 percent of the vote.

It may be a long night…and perhaps even longer in California since before the vote officials indicated that it may take a while to count all of the state’s whopping number of mail-in ballots.