Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Exaggerating Caucuses
John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group raised an interesting point last week. He said that the way the Democrats award delegates favours the winner of the small caucuses. For example, McLaughlin illustrated how in Idaho, Obama won the caucuses by a margin of 13,000 votes, and as a result picked up a net gain of 13 delegates over Hillary Clinton. But in the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton won by a margin of 200,000 votes and only picked up a net gain of 10 delegates. So that 13,000 voter advantage resulted in more net delegates going to Obama than Hillary gained by winning Pennsylvania by 200,000. And that's just the tip of the iceberg regarding the conflated, bizarre and backwards caucuses. Let's not forget how the caucuses favour those voters who can spend 4 hours of their evening arguing and campaigning for their candidate. Have to work the night shift? Too bad! Sick and can't make it? Tough luck! Can't find a babysitter? Suck it up! The caucuses are overrun by the wealthy, the young and the activists who can afford to go and who live for such a partisan event. Caucuses thus result in strange outcomes. Washington state holds both a primary and a caucus: the caucus saw Obama win by 37 points, but the primary saw Obama win by just 5 points. Funny how when everyone is allowed to vote the results are incredibly different than when only those activist caucus-goers' votes are counted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Agreed!! Here is some additional data, posted on my blog:
Clinton wins Ohio by 203,851 votes and
wins 9 more delegates than Obama
Clinton wins Pennsylvania by 214,115 votes and wins 12 more delegates than Obama
Clinton wins Texas by 100,000 votes and
wins 5 LESS delegates than Obama
Obama wins Kansas by 17,710 votes and
wins 9 more delegates than Clinton
Obama wins Hawaii by 19,512 votes and
wins 8 more delegates than Clinton
Obama wins Minnesota by 73,115 votes and
wins 24 more delegates than Clinton
Obama won far more delegates than correspond to the votes he won by. This is not only unfair representation, it strongly suggests that Obama is the weaker general election candidate. Exit poll data from states like West Virginia and Kentucky also reveal that large blocks of Hillary's supporters will not vote for Obama if he is chosen as the nominee.
"This is not only unfair representation, it strongly suggests that Obama is the weaker general election candidate."
It suggests the exact opposite to me. Didn't Clinton have the exact same opportunity to win these caucuses as Obama did? Didn't they both go into this with the exact same knowledge of the rules and dynamics and fundraising ptools available?
She had exactly the same access and opportunity to do what he did. Yet her campaign was so poorly run that, even knowing that caucuses give you an "unfair" proportion of delegates, she chose to ignore them and focus on the primaries.
Now she wants to make up for a poorly run campaign by saying, "Hey, those rules we all knew about going in haven't really worked out for me. So I need to erase them now, and redefine them so that they point to me winning!"
Good luck with that. The rules ay be unfair. But they are the rules this time and you can't change them now. They should be looked at and changed before 2012. But not in the middle of a campaign based on them.
"Gaming" the system suggests that the Obama candidacy is under a cloud of illegitimacy. Any system that disenfranchises voters is in dire need of an overhaul and I think the consequences of this is having a profound and detrimental effect on the DNC.
Post a Comment