Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon May 5, 2008 at 12:46 PM Pacific

After Tuesday, what next?

It would be wonderful if the Hoosier State put an end to the primary, but if the polling is accurate, it looks like we're going to have to wait.

So where will we be on Wednesday morning?

First, we will be almost entirely through the process of voting -- we will have selected just over 93% of the pledged delegates going to Denver. As a result, the focus will shift onto the superdelegates. On Wednesday morning, there will be more undeclared superdelegates than unselected pledged delegates.

As for the primary calendar, the three biggest contests remaining will be Kentucky, Oregon, and Puerto Rico. (West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota are also scheduled to vote.)

But the most important thing is that by Wednesday morning, Barack Obama will have cut his overall magic number by about 1/3, to something in the range of 175 total delegates. (According to the Obama campaign, it is 273 today.)

And don't forget the campaign's next big milestone, which will be in two weeks on May 20 in Oregon, when Barack Obama a majority of the democratically selected pledged delegates.

After that point, the only way he could be denied the nomination is through coup by superdelegate.

Update: It occurs to me that I didn't make one very important point -- if, as expected, Barack Obama wins North Carolina tomorrow, he will have won the largest delegate prize remaining on the calendar. In fact, there are almost many delegates at stake in North Carolina tomorrow as there are in any two of the remaining states on the calendar -- combined.