Hillary Clinton after voting at a school in Chappaqua, New York, on Tuesday. (AP)

Washington, Feb. 5: Some key questions that will, hopefully, be answered after the polling ends on Super Tuesday:

Will the Democrat or Republican race end tomorrow?

Democratic strategist Bill Carrick put it best: “To paraphrase Churchill,” he wrote in an email, “the Democrats are at the end of the beginning and the Republicans are at the beginning of the end.”

The Republican race is on the brink of ending, unless John McCain stumbles badly. Party rules mean he should win a big batch of delegates by carrying such winner-take-all states as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Missouri. California has become more competitive, which prompted Mitt Romney to return to the state for a late rally. He hopes a win there will trigger a conservative backlash against McCain.

The Democratic race will not end tomorrow and may not end for another two months. The Super Tuesday contests will end up awarding more than 1,800 delegates — half of the pledged delegates going to the national convention in Denver in August — but party rules make it difficult for a candidate to emerge with a substantial lead.

Hillary is counting on New York, New Jersey, Arkansas and California as her base. Obama’s strength is in Illinois and the half-dozen states with caucuses rather than primaries, but his campaign predicts neither candidate will emerge with a lead of more than 100 delegates.

As a result, both campaigns are looking ahead to contests in the district and states such as Maryland, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, all of which will be held this month, and to Ohio and Texas on March 4.

What constitutes victory?

This is obviously easier to answer on the Republican side: The candidate who wins the most states and the most delegates will be today’s winner, and that is expected to be McCain. On the Democratic side, party strategists say some combination of popular vote, states won and delegates accumulated will figure into the assessments of who won.

History suggests that winning states creates psychological success, which is to say that if either candidate wins a clear majority — say, 14 or 15 of the 22 at stake — that would be seen as a big night, even though the delegate count will probably show a very close race. There will be a major spin war by the Hillary and Obama campaigns in what may be the most consequential such public relations battle since Walter Mondale’s campaign spun itself out of a weak performance on Super Tuesday 1984.

But there are reasons to be cautious about declaring winners and losers. Nevada is an example: Hillary had a higher percentage of voters in the state’s Democratic caucus, but Obama may emerge with one more delegate.

Polls in California do not close until 4 am GMT, and late-arriving absentee ballots may not be counted until tomorrow.

Will women continue to be Hillary’s secret weapon?

By now, there is nothing secret about Hillary and women: She has relied on them everywhere. But they are her most important assets. Women made up 57 per cent of the Democratic electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire, 59 per cent in Nevada, and 61 per cent in South Carolina.

Over the past month, Hillary has increased her margin over Obama among women in Washington Post-ABC News national polls. Right after New Hampshire, she had an 11-point lead.

As of this weekend, it was 15 points.

Advisers in both campaigns will be carefully analysing the exit polls tonight to see whether they continue to make up more than half the Democratic electorates and whether there is any slippage in Hillary’s support.

In reality, she may need to increase her percentages among women now that it’s a two-person race in order to win a decisive edge in delegates.

Hillary won where she had a decisive margin among women and lost where she did not. As one Democratic strategist wrote: “If she doesn’t win big with women, she doesn’t win.”