Legal Commentary

All Four Caucus-Primary States Show Same Trend

By Jeralyn

The Idaho primary was last night. In the Feb. 5, caucuses, Barack Obama won 79% of the vote to Hillary's 17%. A total of 21,224 Idahoans participated.

In last night's primary, Obama won 56% to 38%, with 42,000 voting.

Twice as many people voted in the primary as the caucus and Obama got 23% fewer votes.

The same thing happened in Nebraska, Washington and Texas, the other three states that have held both primaries and caucuses.

DaveOinSF at MyDD has a new graphic up showing the trends. [More...]

And from P. Cronin's Caucus-Primary report (pdf):

Turnout was 30 to 40% higher in Washington and Nebraska at the primaries:

• Washington (34%)
  238,000 Caucus turnout
  691,381 Feb 19 2008 State Primary

At the caucuses, Obama beat Hillary 67.5% to 31.2%. At the primary, his lead was down to 51.2% to 45.7%.

• Nebraska (41%)
  38,571 Caucus Turnout
  94,905 May 20 2008 State Primary

At the caucuses, Obama beat Hillary 68% to 32%.
At the primary, Obama led Hillary 49.4% to 46.6%.
Obama's lead dropped from 36% to 2.8%.

In Texas,

Over 2.8 million Texans voted in the primary and gave Clinton a 100,000 vote margin over Obama, a 52% to 48% win. However, just hours later, the Texas caucus registered an Obama win over Clinton of 56% to 44% [with 41% of the precincts reporting, total caucus participation has not been released].

Allocation of the 126 primary pledged delegates were Clinton 65 and Obama 61. Allocation of the 68 caucus pledged delegates were Obama 38 and Clinton 29. Bottom line: Obama actually won 5 more pledged delegates than Clinton in Texas.

33.9 million people have voted to date. Only 1.1 million of them voted in caucuses.

In primaries, including Florida but excluding Michigan, Hillary leads in both votes and delegates. But the caucuses with their 1.1 million voters resulted in Obama getting 300,000 more votes and 193 more delegates.

The 13 caucus states count for only 74 of the total 538 Electoral Votes.

There are 187.5 million voters in the 47 states that have voted so far (not including MI or FL.) Hillary has won states with 104.9 million eligible voters and Obama has won states with 80.8 million.

Florida and Michigan have a combined 44
electoral votes and nearly 20 million eligible voters that cast a cumulative 2,345,000 votes -- that's twice the number of all caucus votes and roughly 7% of total votes.

If Florida and Michigan are added to the 47 state elections already concluded [34 primaries + 13 caucus states]there are 205.5 million total eligible voters [VEP]. Clinton has won states with 124.7 million eligible voters and Obama has
won states with 80.8 million. In this instance, Clinton would have won 19 primaries versus 17 for Obama.

What this means for Democrats: The pledged delegate total is not the end-all. Due to the skewed importance of the overrepresented caucus votes, many more factors need to go into choosing our nominee.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 29, 2008 (boomark / email).