Tuesday’s nail-biting Democratic Presidential primaries in Texas and Ohio have become even more dramatic with the release of polls showing Senator Hillary Clinton is starting to regain her Texas base and narrow the lead on Senator Barack Obama — and clings to an increasingly slim lead in Ohio.

In essence, if you look at a variety of polls, the bottom line is that they’re all within the margin of error — which means as of this moment the two races are essentially tied. Neither camp can take anything for granted.

What this likely means: in the end, what happens on Tuesday may come down to which candidate has a better “ground game” of getting supporters to the polls. The polls paint a picture of an increasingly fluid primary electorate with good chunks of undecided voters who can tilt the high-stakes scales.

In Texas, the Zogby Poll shows it Obama 45% and Clinton 43% — indicating in the past few days Obama has lost some support and Clinton has regained some. Zogby writes:

Hillary Clinton may be making a connection with Democratic voters in Texas, especially among those in key demographic groups that have supported her all year. Among those age 65 and older, she has made strong gains in the last 24 hours of polling. She also retains a big lead among Hispanic voters in Texas, and has made small gains among white voters.

“However, it is important to note that Barack Obama continues to hold big leads among voters in Dallas and in Houston, where there is a heavy concentration of congressional districts and, therefore, delegates to the Democratic National Convention. By most accounts, Clinton needs to win big in both Texas and Ohio to make significant inroads in Obama’s delegate lead, and our polling shows that is going to be difficult for her to accomplish.

Zogby has not been acutely accurate in polling predictions this year. And go to THIS PAGE at Pollster.com and you’ll see a list of polls, which may show Clinton or Obama ahead — but all are within the margin of error (you can also see a cool graph).

In Ohio, Zogby sees a dead heat (45%) between the two battling Democrats.
Meanwhile, a new poll conducted for the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. of Washington, D.C finds Clinton ahead — but barely:

Ohio Democratic voters are nearly split over their choice for president, according to new Plain Dealer poll that shows Hillary Clinton clinging to a 4 percentage point lead over Barack Obama in Ohio, 47 percent to 43 percent.

Trailing in national polls and in the all-important delegate count, Clinton has been looking to Ohio as a firewall to campaign of Obama, whose 11-straight presidential contest victories has propelled him to front-runner status.

But a small Clinton win in the Buckeye State would only marginally help her since she and Obama would split the state’s 141 pledged delegates, the bulk of which are awarded as a proportion of the popular vote in each of the state’s 18 Congressional districts.

Clinton’s lead among Democratic voters is from women, who favor her over Obama, 53 percentage to 38 percent. Men favor Obama by nearly the same margin.

Obama, who is the first black presidential front-runner in history, is crushing Clinton among black voters, 83 percent to 8 percent, according the survey.

Unlike in Texas, polls in Ohio show Clinton ahead and some by wide margins. Here’s the list the paper offers:

Zogby: Tied

• Rasmussen: Clinton 47%, Obama 45%

• SurveyUSA: Clinton 50%, Obama 44%

• Fox News: Clinton 46%, Obama 38%

• University of Cincinnati: Clinton 47%, Obama, 39%

• Real Clear Politics — head to head: McCain 464%, Clinton, 44.9%; Obama, 47.1%, NcCain 43.6%

This means if Clinton loses Ohio, it’ll be a big news story. If she holds on, even if it’s hard for her to win the nomination…she can hold on. If Obama wins big, it’ll be a big story.
And the campaigns? This is Frenzy Weekend as both campaigns are going full blast. Here’s look what’s going on:

–Hillary Clinton continues to hammer Obama on experience and has sharpened her attack:

“My opponent says it’s fear mongering to talk about national security and the fact that we’re at war,” Clinton told a crowd at the historic stockyards in Fort Worth. “Well, I don’t think people in Texas scare all that easily.”

Clinton sought to belittle Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, as inexperienced compared to herself and McCain.

“He (McCain) will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Sen. Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002,” she told reporters aboard her plane.

….“His entire campaign is based on one speech he gave at an anti-war rally in 2002,” Clinton said of an Obama speech opposing the war in Iraq. “And I give him credit for making the speech, but the speech was not followed up with action, which is part of the pattern we have seen repeatedly—a lot of talk, little action.”

–Obama is reporting making a massive push in vote-producing organization and TV media buys in the two states:

The intensity of Mr. Obama’s drive is especially apparent on television, where he has outspent Mrs. Clinton by nearly two to one in the two states. That is helping him eat deeply into double-digit leads she held in polls just weeks ago.

But after a month in which she raised $32 million — a remarkable amount, but still less than the $50 million or more brought in by Mr. Obama — Mrs. Clinton is fighting back.

Their expenditures, combined with a travel schedule that sent the two Democratic presidential candidates and their surrogates from border to border in Texas and Ohio, reflect the expectation that the voting this week may be climactic. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have suggested that she will bow out of the race if she falters in either state, after 11 straight losses.

–The Clinton campaign continues to try to change expectations about what would constitute a big Clinton win and a big Obama loss:

Analysts and even supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have said she needs to win two big states next week to keep her presidential campaign afloat. But her advisers are seeking to put the burden on front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, saying if he doesn’t sweep all four states Tuesday, it would show Democrats are having second thoughts about him.

Obama’s string of 11 victories since the Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” contests has raised questions about the viability of Clinton’s candidacy. As recently as Feb. 20, even former president Bill Clinton pinned his wife’s hopes on Ohio, in the Midwest, and Texas, in the South.

“If she wins in Texas and Ohio, I think she’ll be the nominee,” the former president told a Beaumont, Texas, audience. “If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be.”

But in an e-mail and conference call to reporters Friday, Clinton’s campaign laid the groundwork to keep her campaign alive if the results are disappointing Tuesday in the four states, which also include Rhode Island and Vermont.

Obama has been leading the former first lady in the popular vote, committed delegates and fundraising. In Friday’s conference call, senior Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson seized on those facts to reshape expectations about the Democratic contest.

HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF WEBLOG OPINION ON VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE POLITICAL RACE:

–Buckeye State Blog:

Obama down by 4, within MOE. With 9% undecided. That’s a big undecided number, which tells me that someone is losing supporters to the undecided column before those same voters switch. Gee, wonder who might be losing support? Starting to look like Wisconsin to me, which was a dead heat the weekend before the election, and a 17 point landslide on election day.

–Ann Althouse wonders why the letters “NIG” appear on the child’s pajamas in Clinton’s controvresial “red telephone” ad airing in Texas:

Is the campaign responsible for sending out a subliminal message to stimulate racist thoughts in the unsuspecting viewer? It is either deliberate or terribly incompetent. There is no other writing on screen until the very end of the commercial, and if letters appear in any place in a commercial, they should be carefully selected letters. Certainly, each image is artfully composed and shot and intended to deliver an emotional impact. Could this be a mere lapse?

In 2000, there was a much-discussed commercial for George W. Bush that displayed the letters “RATS”…

–American Street thinks both candidates are laudable:

Fresh endorsements done, their strongest ads saved for last, they each will now exhaust themselves slugging it out these final three days. Still, I saw Obama was also in Rhode Island yesterday, fighting for the one state Clinton had firmly behind her. Such competition is intense and while their fans howl at each other, I remain pretty confident that there’s two such fighters who might yet right our country’s direction off the battered course it’s been on. So many lives squandered, so much truth hidden, so much treasury plundered by greedy weasels, incompetent jackalopes and worms that feed off rotted flesh.

Why should I complain that these two vie in a bloodless sport to gain a hand on the rudder? No matter who your bets are on, you know the victor has the greater task afterward, as do we all. Well past the first battle - winning November - comes a multiyear struggle just to reach a smoother sea.

–Texas-based Prairie Weather is impressed by the Obama campaign there:

For those of us who live in Texas, it’s hard to avoid being impressed by the organization of the Obama campaign.

Let’s not forget that, in addition to raising more money from many more supporters, the Obama campaign appears to have managed its resources much better than the Clinton campaign. In Texas, Obama campaigners have turned up to respond to questions from voters in even the most un-Democratic, rural areas, while the Clinton campaign has resorted to what have amounted to be endless and repetitive nuisance phone calls from Hillary, suggesting how we can take over the caucuses for her and leaving us to assume that she prefers telling us what to do rather than listening to us. It’s not reassuring to know that the Clinton money has been spent on hors d’oeuvres in Iowa and New York.

–The Aristocrats runs The Toledo Blade’s unusual endorsement of Obama.
–The Seminal notes that conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has been urging his Texas Republican listeners to vote for Clinton:

Appearing on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh recently encouraged Republican voters in Texas to cross the aisle, as it were and vote for Clinton in the up-coming primary next week. As much as it pains Limbaugh to support Clinton, he is willing to do so because if Clinton wins the party’s nomination, McCain’s chances for winning the general election increases ten-fold. Limbaugh explains his motives pretty clearly in this video and makes it obvious that his support for Clinton comes from his desire to see the GOP win in November.

As other Seminal authors have argued, Clinton is an easy target for a Republican candidate to take down; Obama will be more difficult to defeat his campaign has a grassroots following that breaks with convention. Contrary to what Limbaugh says, though, current debates within the Democratic party will not tear it asunder but rather serve to make it stronger. Keeping Clinton in the campaign keeps some focus on the issues, but don’t be fooled by the GOP’s dirty games.

When a staunch Republican encourages his fellow conservatives to cast their votes for a Democrat, you know the GOP is in trouble. I don’t want to reduce this game to its most simplistic form—that a vote for Clinton equals a vote for McCain—but I were voting in one of the primaries next week, I’d want to steer clear of casting a vote for any candidate Limbaugh promotes.

–Andrew Sullivan looks at Clinton charges that the press has a pro-Obama bias.
–My DD has this comprehensive diary making the case in several areas for Hillary Clinton.