Super Duper Tuesday

The Super Bowl — so yesterday’s news. (O.K., the super sad faces around here are definitely today’s news. Congratulations, Giants fans.)

Tomorrow’s news: Super Tuesday! If you are in the U.S. or follow U.S. politics, you can skip to the bottom of this entry. For those of you outside the U.S., I thought I’d mention the excitement that has suddenly joined the campaign for president. Tomorrow, nearly half of the 50 states will hold primary elections to select the Republican and Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidential race. Amazingly, the vote in Massachusetts will be relevant! It has been ages since our primary votes have been meaningful. To underscore this fact, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain have scheduled last minute stops to the state. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will be following the election results here tomorrow. The pundits expect Super Tuesday to clarify the race to be the Republican nominee, but the Democratic nominee may not be determined until much later in the spring, or even this summer. It’s a great first election for someone like my son, who isn’t old enough to vote tomorrow, but will cast his first vote next November.

Massachusetts is sometimes called the “bluest of blue states,” meaning that we have an unusually high proportion of registered Democrats, and an unusually low proportion of registered Republicans. (On political maps, states tending Republican are colored red, and states leaning Democratic are colored blue.) Check out this page for details for Massachusetts, broken down by county.

As for admissions work, we do that, too, here — in between rooting on our teams and casting our votes. Admissions Committee members are toting applications around, reading them wherever and whenever they can. (Full disclosure, I didn’t watch the whole game last night, and took advantage of the time to read a few applications.) Continue to monitor the progress of your application on-line, and let us know if you have any questions.