“If the early voting numbers are any indicator, get ready for a huge turnout on Super Tuesday,” Politico reports.

“In state after March 1 state, election officials are reporting increases in the number of voters who cast their ballot before election day. Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts — to name just a few — report upticks in absentee ballots and voter registration. In at least two of the 12 states voting Tuesday, Georgia and Tennessee, election officials report dramatic surges that have blown past previous records.”

“So far this year, the real action has been on the Republican side. The Iowa GOP caucuses blew through past records and the Nevada GOP reported more than twice as many voters participated in the caucuses Tuesday as in 2012. The New Hampshire and South Carolina GOP primaries also saw higher turnout this year than in 2012.”

A new Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts finds Donald Trump leading the GOP race with 43%, followed by Marco Rubio at 20%, John Kasich at 17%, Ted Cruz at 9% and Ben Carson at 4%.

Harry Enten: “South Carolina is even more of a setback for Sanders than it appears at first glance because it reverses the progress he had been making. If you look at my colleague Nate Silver’s estimates of how Sanders would do in each caucus or primary if the race were tied nationally (Sanders needs to beat these targets to have a shot at the nomination), we see that Sanders did 19 percentage points worse than the benchmark in Iowa, 10 percentage points worse in New Hampshire and 5 percentage points worse in Nevada. That is, Sanders did not hit the target in any of those contests, but he got closer to it as time went on. In South Carolina, it looks like Sanders will run nearly 30 percentage points worse than we would expect given a tie nationally, suggesting that the race has moved in Clinton’s direction since Nevada.”

“Sanders’s loss of momentum couldn’t have come at a worst time for his campaign. There are six Super Tuesday states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia) where black voters made up a larger share of the electorate in 2008 than they did in Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada this year. That Sanders couldn’t break through with black voters in either Nevada or South Carolina, despite a heavy investment, makes it difficult to believe he will have any more success in these six states, where his campaign hasn’t put in the same effort.”

A few new NBC News/Marist polls from Super Tuesday states:

Georgia: Trump 30%, Cruz 23% Rubio 23%, Carson 9%, Kasich 9%.

Tennessee: Trump 40%, Cruz 22%, Rubio 19%, Carson 9%, Kasich 6%.

Texas: Cruz 39%, Trump 26%, Rubio 19%, Carson 8%, Kasich 6%

A few new CBS News polls:

Georgia: Trump 40%, Cruz 29%, Rubio 22%, Carson 7%, Kasich 2%

Virginia: Trump 40%, Rubio 27%, Cruz 22%, Kasich 6%, Carson 2%

Texas: Cruz 42%, Trump 31%, Rubio 19%, Carson 4%, Kasich 4%

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton holds wide leads over Bernie Sanders in each state.

Ross Douthat: “The Trump uprising is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: There would be no Trumpism if George W. Bush’s presidency hadn’t cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadn’t alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.”

“But Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Obama didn’t give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isn’t an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends — with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.”

“In the sprint to Super Tuesday, Marco Rubio is scrambling to parlay his newfound aggression against Donald Trump into enough support at the polls not to be overwhelmed by the suffocating effects of the celebrity mogul’s insurgent campaign,” the Washington Post reports.

“The result is that, rather than aiming to triumph on the biggest day of the Republican presidential nominating calendar, the candidate seen as the party establishment’s best and perhaps only chance of defeating Trump merely hopes to hang on.”