It's become almost commonplace for Democrats to be outpolling Republicans nationally, such that we almost forget to mention it these days. On Super Tuesday nearly everywhere there were dueling Democratic and Republican primaries, the Republicans were left in the dust.

In only two states, Utah and Arizona, did the Republican winner yesterday get more votes than the leading Democrat. And in the former, Barack Obama got more than four times as many votes as presumptive frontrunner John McCain.

It's nearly the same story when you compare total votes cast in the Republican and Democratic primaries. Republican candidates attracted more total votes than Democrats only in three states, UT, AZ, and AL.

In fact in Alabama, the combined Republican vote was only very slightly higher than the combined vote in the Democratic primary. Out of more than a million ballots cast yesterday in the state, the difference between total Republican and Democratic votes was less than 20,000. And Barack Obama ended up with 75,000 more votes than Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner. We're talking about Alabama here.

Republicans are running on fumes this year.