Extra, extra, read all about it.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Obama has defeated Clinton 61-37 in today's Mississippi primary--slightly exceeding our 20-point "MVP," or margin-of-victory prediction. (Like the acronym? I just made it up. Ah, the pleasures of blogging.) The spread should net him 20 delegates to Clinton's 13, for an overall gain of seven. Which, as we noted earlier, will completely erase the New York senator's March 4 advances. Congrats!

Not many surprises in the exit polls either. As expected, Obama garnered overwhelming support from the Magnolia State's black electorate, while Clinton won a solid, though less sweeping, white majority. Such polarization is not the norm nationwide; Obama has already captured lily-white states like Iowa, Wisconsin and Wyoming, and typically polls within five to 20 points of Clinton among whites (even winning the category in diverse Virginia). But it has been consistent across the Deep South. Mirroring Alabama, Mississippi saw a nine-to-one pro-Obama split among African-American voters and a three-to-one pro-Clinton split among whites.  That said, I tend to agree with Ben Smith of the Politico about the larger significance of such stats. "If there's one part of the country where you'd actually expect a black candidate to have trouble with white voters, it is the Deep South," he writes. "So I'm not sure there's really all that much to read into this one." Amen.

Earlier I questioned Obama's claim that blacks could flip Mississippi for him in the general. I remain skeptical. While more African-Americans showed up at the polls this year than in 2004, it's impossible to determine how many were spurred by excitement for Obama and how many were simply eager to vote in Mississippi's first relevant primary in ages. Either way, white turnout was up as well, meaning that the rolls swelled from about 60,000 voters four years ago to about 400,000 today--and blacks ended up seeing their share of the electorate drop from 56 to 50 percent overall. That trend isn't transferable to the general election. But it's still doubtful that Obama could carry the state in November.

The most interesting--and perhaps distressing--finding relates to the Republican crossover vote. In state after state, Obama has crushed Clinton two- or three-to-one among GOPers willing to participate in a Democratic primary or caucus. Not so in Mississippi. There, a stunning 75 percent of Republicans voted for Clinton; they were her single strongest group. Meanwhile, the GOP more than doubled its share of the 2004 electorate, skyrocketing from five to 12 percent. For comparison, Republicans accounted for five percent of the Super Tuesday turnout in Alabama--where only 52 percent of them voted for Clinton. Could white racial animosity toward Obama account for the surge in the New York senator's crossover support? Or is Rush Limbaugh's request that Republicans back Clinton actually working? Either way, it's sort of hard to imagine there are that many Mississippi Republicans who have suddenly fallen for Hillary. But maybe I'm just being cynical.