North vs. South?

It certainly isn't my goal to start a war between Northern and Southern California, but this is sure to roil some feathers come next Tuesday.

The state as a whole stands to play a pivotal role in deciding who our next President will be. There are a whopping 441 Democratic delegates up for grabs and 173 delegates at stake to be distributed amongst the winning GOP candidates. For once, California counts.

But for the Dems: the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Matier and Andy Ross point out in their column, it may come down to the "beer-drinking Democrats" versus its "wine and cheese" liberals to decide whether it'll be Hillary or Barack.

They write:

Pollster Mark DiCamillo, who has been taking the state's political pulse for 30 years, describes the beer vote as mostly blue-collar workers, the elderly and ethnic Democrats, especially Latinos, in the Los Angeles area and rural parts of the state.

The more liberal, more educated, wine-and-cheese crowd congregates here in the Bay Area, where more than a quarter of the ballots will be cast in the Democratic primary Feb. 5, he says.

And as DiCamillo sees it, the blue-collar group likes Clinton and the wine-and-cheesers go more for Obama.

"If Obama has any chance of winning California, we should see it here in the Bay Area," DiCamillo said. "And he'll have to be winning here by double digits" - no easy task, considering the Clintons' long popularity in the area.

So the voters that'll probably decide who will get the state's hundreds of delegate votes will most likely live in the heavily Democratic San Francisco Bay Area -- where, there is virtually no evidence of a Republican campaign anywhere. There aren't any campaign offices for any of the major candidates, and the TV airwaves are strangely void of any Presidential hopeful ads other than those for the Democratic candidates.

Chris Lehane, a surrogate for the Clinton campaign in California, is already predicting that "the crazy Bay Area is going to pick the next president."

Stay tuned.

-- Tim Jue, NBC News Reporter