Tomorrow 24 states in America vote in primaries and caucuses in the next round of elections to select the candidates for the Democrats and the Republicans for the Presidential election in November.

In order to win the nomination, you need to win delegates. On the Democratic side about 50% of the delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday and on the Republican side about 40% of the delegates will be decided tomorrow.

Some more key sources to learn more about the process include:

• Polling information from Gallop.com on the race for ’08
• A discussion of the allocation of delegates from Electoral-Vote.com
• Commentary from a group of academics at the PolySigh blog, including more on the tricky issue of allocating delegates
• Results as they come in from the CNN Election Center 2008

The latest video from the campaign to ‘go viral’ is a version of Barack Obama’s speech from his win in the Iowa caucuses, that features contributions from a range of musical artists:

The conventional wisdom says that:

John McCain has a chance to cement his position as the Republican frontrunner tomorrow, the winner takes all format of Republican primaries and Rudy Giuliani dropping out means that liberal Republican votes will flock to him.

Hillary Clinton may still be ahead on the Democratic side, but the proportional allocation of delegates in the Democratic primaries, means that as long as Barack Obama remains close, the battle for delegates will go on beyond Super Tuesday.

… however, the conventional wisdom has been overturned enough times in this race already, so as ever it is best to wait until some real votes have been cast.

For some academic reading to fill in the time before the results roll in, why not try:

• Web and Mass Media Campaigns by Political Candidates, MoveOn.org and the Democratic Party in the 2003-04 Presidential Primaries by Kern
• Dynamics of the 2000 Republican Primaries by Hagen et al.
• Beating Reform: The Resurgence of Parties in Presidential Nominations, 1980 to 2000 by Cohen et al.
• Negativity in the Evaluation of Political Candidates by Klein and Ahluwalia

Intute: Social Sciences features more resources on the 2008 US elections – just scroll past the Editor’s Choice selections to see the latest additions.