My blog has moved!

You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit
http://madamab.wordpress.com
and update your bookmarks.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

The Final Primaries Are Today.

As we know, Hillary trounced Obama in Puerto Rico over the weekend. Many Obama bloggers instantly tried to diminish the 68%-32% margin of victory by sneering that Puerto Ricans have no votes in November.

They don't get out much, do they?

Here's a clue for them: On page 3 of the exit polls, the voters were asked if they had relatives in New York, and/or in the United States, and/or if they had lived here recently. A huge percentage had positive responses to these questions. 79% said they had relatives in New York, for example.

But I guess Latino voters aren't important in the New Plutocratic Obama Coalition.

In any case, Montana and South Dakota vote today. For some reason, we have not been able to get a lot of estimates on how they'll vote. Perhaps it's because the estimate from Puerto Rico was that Hillary would win by 13%! But tomorrow, I'll do By the Numbers for those two states.

As to what happens after the primaries end, the only thing I know for sure is that Hillary herself has said she is going to the SuperDelegates to make her case as the nominee. The case is based on electability and popular vote totals rather than delegates, as she is unlikely to catch up to Obama's delegate count.

Senator Clinton claims she has won the popular vote. As for electability, it's obvious from poll results that she is much stronger. However, if polls aren't your thing, take a look at Jeralyn Merritt's summary of an excellent study by Peniel Cronin comparing caucuses to primaries.

Bottom line: Clinton’s lead is from 34.5 million voters (97%) in Primaries. Obama’s lead is from 1.1 million voters (3%) in caucuses. [More...]

Out of the 50 state elections so far, Clinton has won 20 primaries and Obama has won 17. In comparison, Obama has dominated the Caucus contests by winning 12 of 13, plus the Texas caucus. 42% of his wins are caucus states.

...After 50 election contests to date, Obama leads Clinton by 113 pledged delegates. 97.4% of the difference – 110 delegates – is directly attributable to lopsided victories in caucus contests.

One other note - the rules that allowed Obama to win so many delegates from red caucus states were put into place in 2006. Things that make you go hmmmmm....

What will happen tonight? Will Obama claim victory - for the 375,000th time? Will Hillary turn it around and claim victory herself? Will she concede or suspend her campaign? What will the SuperDelegates do?

Tune in tomorrow for yet another episode of: As the Democrats Turn!

No comments: