How To Watch The March 15 Results In Real Time

Five states and one overseas territory will be voting on March 15 — the third Super Tuesday of this election cycle. The Rust Belt states of Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri will be voting along with North Carolina and Florida, while the territory of the Mariana Islands will hold a closed, winner-take-all caucus for their nine GOP delegates. This has been one of the most controversial elections in a generation, and how these next states vote will help set expectations for the upcoming Western primaries and caucuses later on this month. Regardless of whether you have access to cable, here's how to watch the March 15 primary results in real time.

Checking out whichever of the three big cable news networks you prefer — CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News — is one of the easiest ways to keep up to date with the election results; you don't even have to be constantly looking down at your screen or squinting to see which counties have released their results yet. However, if you're looking to pinpoint specific counties or screencap results live for your Twitter fanbase, you're better off having one (or more) of the following tabs open on your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

One good resource is The New York Times' live election results section, which has a map that is set to auto-refresh every 30 seconds as results are coming in. It is also set up to keep track of delegates earned on the day of the election, as well as the total number that a candidate has to their name so far. Detailed national maps show winners on a county-by-county basis.

If the Grey Lady isn't your cup of tea, Politico has a detailed interactive interface which you can use to watch vote tallies and percentages, as well as track the delegates awarded to each candidate. Clicking on the "Detailed Results" tab will take you to an interactive map, along with county-level breakdowns of the results.

Rounding out the best three online election news interfaces is CNN's election center, which works relatively well, despite a few bugs, and provides a clean, minimal interface for screen-shotting interesting or important results as they happen. You can also check out the results organized by days, and see how many delegates were awarded to each candidate on a day-by-day basis, which can be an important indicator of momentum.

Finally, there's always social media. If you're following at least one political junkie in your feed, chances are they'll be posting almost concurrently with the big news networks; when covering live events on social media, speed is everything.

No matter how you choose to keep abreast of the results coming out of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and the Marinara Islands on Mar. 15, don't forget to make sure you're registered to vote in your own primary or caucus. If your state has already voted in the primaries, you can still register to vote in the general election in November. Remember, democracy isn't a spectator sport!

Image: The New York Times