Democratic Primary

Katie Couric, on the media coverage of the 2008 Democratic Primary.

However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen.

Two thoughts:

For me, the most refreshing thing about this otherwise disappointing election season is the shocked realization by some Democrats (Clinton supporters, mostly) that the legacy media is absolutley politically biased and terribly monolithic, and that when they want to push their narrative, they will do so without shame and without relenting.  Republicans have been dealing with this for at least as long as I can remember, while getting a Democrat to admit to a left-wing media bias was difficult.  Now, maybe not so much, at least among Clinton's supporters.

Couric ain't seen nothing yet: I'm no McCain shill, but the media's treatment of McCain will be much, much more unfair than that of Clinton.

Is there any other reason for him to not give in to Hillary's demands on the Florida and Michigan delegates?  As it stands now, with the 50% deal that was struck yesterday, Obama is 66 delegates short of locking up the nomination.  In the last two months, I think he's far outpacing Clinton in super delegates, even though Clinton has had the best of Obama in the primary contests.  By appearances, Obama needs just to wait this thing out and he'll continue to rack up the super delegates necessary to get the nomination.

By my calculation, if you gave Florida and Michigan their full allotments, and gave Hillary the share that she demands in Michigan, then the new number for nomination would be 2198, and Obama would have 2112, putting him just 86 short of the nomination.  Wouldn't a magnanimous move by Obama to seat all those delegates take a legitimate argument away from Clinton?  There seems to be little doubt that the current Obama position will foster some hard feelings among some Clinton supporters, and perhaps some voters.  Why take that chance when it seems apparent that you're going to put the nomination away anyway?

Two more primaries, and two more relatively static results in the Democratic race for President.  The media meme about yesterday's results is that Obama beat expectations, so Hillary should drop out, but the racial breakdowns in IN and NC remained almost unchanged from earlier Primaries.

Obama won black voters overwhelmingly, getting 91 percent in NC and 90 percent in Indiana.  Clinton won white voters convincingly, getting 60 percent in NC and 61 percent in IN.

As race seems to have the most consistent correlation with vote preference in this primary, the actual results from state to state aren't varying that much from what can be predicted by the demographics and turnout projections.  FiveThirtyEight.com had some long predictions yesterday, using polling and some complicated statistical analysis, but they came very close to being right simply by using racial breakdowns and turnout predictions.

I'll also note the strange meme wondering whether Obama can collect enough votes from whites motivated by race, even while nobody is mentioning that black voters are consistently and overwhelmingly supporting the candidate who shares their skin color.

As I've said since Super Tuesday, the Dem race seems pretty static to me, despite the roller coaster of coverage.  The 2008 general election will likely hinge on whether the eventual Democratic nominee (still almost certainly Obama) can win over enough of Clinton's supporters, given the unprecedented length and vigor of the Democratic race.  Yesterday's exit polls indicated yet again that Democratic voters are becoming more attached to their candiate and more averse to the other candidate:

Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee -- that's (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they'd be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee -- I believe that's the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they'd choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they'd definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

The general election will be decided based on this.  Obama supporters are convinced that Democrats will come home, because they're motivated by issues and Obama is right on their issues.  I understand the importance of issues, as you've seen from criticisms of the GOP over the years, yet I still think many voters are motivated by personalities and biographies, and while I don't doubt that many Clinton supporters will eventually support Obama, I think a significant percentage (10 percent?  20 percent) will not, due to the animosities and attachments created during this Primary.

And those are the key questions for November:  How many Clinton supporters will not support Obama, and how well can Obama do with white voters, given his inability to win them in the recent Democratic Primaries?

cnn.com; politico.com

Tim Russert reports Hillary Clinton has cancelled all morning show appearances.  MSNBC reports Clinton has cancelled all events scheduled for tomorrow.  The folks on Ben Smith's blog at Politico are cheering for a Clinton concession and pull out of the race.  Allegedly, 7% of her votes in Indiana were from folks planning on voting for McCain in November.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Russert_Clinton_cancels_morning_show_appearances.html#comments

according to CNN, Obama picked up 4 more delegates than Clinton tonight. 

Terry McAuliffe refuses to answer any questions about another loan by HRC to her campaign.  Bill Clinton's face is said to be redder than a tomato. 

A shame I don't have cable; sounds like I'm missing a lot of fun.

(And is Monroe Co., Indiana where IU is?  It went 66% Obama-33% Clinton.  Lake County was a disappointing 55% Obama-45% Clinton.)

Obama may have only won 9 counties in Indiana, but I'm almost tempted to say they were the right ones.  Same he couldn't have gotten one or two more big ones, or several of the smaller ones. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

"Mr. Wright seems to me to be part of the great "barbaric yawp," as Walt Whitman called the American people fighting, discussing, making things and living. I like the barbaric yawp. I don't enjoy it when it makes me wince, but at least when I am wincing, I know the yawp is working."

For several weeks, though the Rev. Wright and "bitter" stories, that I doubted they would have much impact among Democratic Primary voters (who I think mostly have made their decisions weeks or months ago), and that I wanted to see exit polling from Pennsylvania to see if those stories had any impact among Democratic Primary voters:

They didn't, as most of these figures are close echoes of the exit polling for other recent Democratic Primaries in midwestern states, and are eerily similar to Ohio's exit polling:

Clinton has now won white men in 12 states and Obama has done the same in 10 states.

Obama did win more than nine in 10 black voters, continuing his unbroken support of African-Americans. And Clinton continued her trend of winning white women in all but a couple of contests.

There are other breakdowns, among education level and income, which were also roughly as expected and as we've seen before.

To me, the great determining (and unanswered) question of the 2008 general election is who wins white voters, especially white male voters.  If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee (which I still think is a near certainty), can he convince white voters who haven't supported him in Democratic primaries in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania to support him in a general election?  Or, to put it another way, which factor will have a stronger correlation to candidate support in November - demographic factors like race, gender, income, etc. or partisan/issue factors?

UPDATE:  Here's another more explicit and detailed comparision between OH and PA exit polls.

And both Clinton and Obama can now make the case to superdelegates that they lead in the much-ballyhooed popular vote.

In the absence of anything new or interesting to say about tonight's Pennsylvania Primary, I wanted to share one of my new favorite polling/election analysis sites, fivethirtyeight.com.

About today/tonight:

Two things you should not pay attention to tomorrow without proper context:

(1) Leaked exit polls, which have been way off this cycle, and been slanted an average of 7 points in Obama's direction. A substantial Clinton lead in the exit polls might be taken modestly more seriously than, say, something that showed Obama three points ahead, but these things aren't designed for what you think they're designed for -- just ignore them.

(2) Very early returns, such as in the first hour after polls close. Because there are such profound regional differences in the way that Pennsylvania polls, the results will be almost entirely a function of where the numbers are coming in from. Odds are that rural areas will report their results before the cities, which means that the early numbers should favor Clinton (this may actually be a nontrivial advantage to her in terms of media narrative; the race could very easily be called for her when the ticker shows Clinton ahead by 14, but things could close to within 8 points once all votes were counted).

Good stuff.  If you're a junkie like me, you can just go there and keep reading.

UPDATE:  Question for discussion:  Why does Obama do better in exit polling than in actual results?  Or, to ask it another way, why does Obama do worse in actual voting than in exit polling?  And does that tell us anything about other polling for Obama?

Found this at opinionjournal.com (adjunct of the Wall St. Journal)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120873309012529689.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

David Brooks, in the cratering NY Times, has an Op-Ed in which he discusses Barack Obama's transformation during the Democratic Presidential primaries:

Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new — an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that.

But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.

I know it's the New York Times, and it's heretically critical of The One, but read the whole thing.

(As a matter of fact, yes, I do seem to remember someone writing something similar some time ago...)

Bill and Hillary Clinton have finally released their income tax returns for the years 2000-06.  In these years, they list an income of almost $109,000,000.  (Do all the blue collar voters supporting HRC feel like chumps yet, or will they quit voting for her when they learn she's been slow to pay the health ins. premiums for her campaign staff?  Remember, helath care issues are very important to her!)

It made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune.  I quickly scanned the News-Gazette and the Chicago Sun-Times,  but didn't see mention of this in either paper. 

I'm left wondering how late Friday this was released, and do they honestly hope people will have forgetten about this by Monday? 

Did either John Edwards or Mitt Romney make this much in the same time frame?  The Clintons are among the 14,500 richest people in the U.S.

Peggy Noonan has the week off at the WSJ; I can't wait to see what she writes about this next Saturday.

Sorry that I'm posting so much about Barack Obama lately.  There's just not very much else that has captured my attention.

About that popular vote margin which Obama's campaign is claiming as somehow nearly binding on Democratic superdelegates:

In the race for the most popular votes in the Democratic Party's presidential primary contests, Sen. Barack Obama's lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton is about 711,000 votes -- not including Florida or Michigan -- according to Real Clear Politics.

Of Sen. Obama's 711,000 popular-vote lead, 650,000 -- or more than 90% of the total margin -- comes from Sen. Obama's home state of Illinois, with 429,000 of that lead coming from his home base of Cook County.

That margin in Cook County represents almost 60% of Obama's total lead nationwide.

Interestingly, Sen. Obama's 429,000-vote margin in Cook County alone is larger than the winning margin of either candidate in any state.

Interesting stuff.  First, congratulations to the Cook County Democrats.  They should be proud of carrying their hometown candidate to such an overwhelming margin, and their political operation may just be the best in America.

Second, some other interesting figures (Figures from Real Clear Politics as well.):  Clinton's margin in New York state was 317,000.  Her margin in California was 421,000. 

Using vote totals that include Florida and Michigan (giving Obama credit for Michigan's "uncommitted"), Obama's margin is about 87,000 out of some 27 million votes cast.

Mandate?

It's always strange to see names which are well-known only to Illinois politics (like Senate President Emil Jones) pop up in national politics.

From TalkLeft, which I assume is supporting Clinton (or at least the author of this post is):

Barack Obama frequently cites his impressive record as an Illinois state legislator as an indicator of his experience in running for President.

Turns out, according to former Chicago reporter Todd Spivak, all of his legislative accomplishments were in his final 7th year and were handed to him by his mentor, Ill. State Senate President Emil Jones.

The TalkLeft post is mostly quotes from a longer piece in the Houston Press, which is just brutal.  Our old local boogeyman, Chicago State University, also features prominently.

Last week, I received the Petition for Leave to Appeal on the Reynolds v. McGinty case.  I'm nott sure how the case will be decided, and when.  And I'm thinking that we'll have to wait until such leave is granted before we learn just what kind of relief will be requested (a big question considering that the election has already been held).

On the motion Wyman brings up interesting points.  As I noted in my post on the appeal, the decision of the Appellate Court really offered little in guidance and in some ways made things more confusing.  At the Electoral Board, we approached the two questions of mandatory vs. directory and noncompliance vs. substantial compliance as questions of law.  The Appellate Court implied that the question of compliance was a question of fact when it gave deference to the decision of the Electoral Board. 

The particular issue of what constitutes substantial compliance seems to be ripe for greater explication.  My reasoning for finding the petitions not substantially compliant was based on the idea that substantial compliance was not met if the petitioner could have met the standard without any effort to meet the standard.  So for example, in the McGinty case, the peitions were numbered 1,2,1,1.  If such numbering is accepted, then a petitioner could just go ahead and number all their petitions with either 1 or 2 prior to distrribution and then not need to worry about the numbering later.  It appears that the Appellate Court's reasoning is that in this particular instance because of the small number of petitions there is no question of identifying the petitions.  So, from the decision it seems likely that a statewide filing of a thousand petitions numbered with 1 and 2 would be stricken.  At what number of pages we cross from noncompliance to substantial compliance is still up in the air.

The Supreme Court could take on this case and clear up some of the loose ends of the 4th District decision.  If not, we'll be left with the opinion that clearly states that the page numbering provision is mandatory and that the way in which that provision is met is murky.

Here’s a look at the method that the Democratic Party is selecting their delegates with some observations and numbers that I think are pretty interesting.

First, the Democrats have a number of “superdelegates”.  These are chosen without direct input from the voters, although many of them are elected officials.  These individuals receive an automatic spot at the convention based on their position in the party.

Second, there are a number of party caucuses.  Generally, though not always, these are public votes of candidate preference held in a very restricted time-frame (a couple hours in an evening).  The Democrats have held 12 party caucuses so far.

Third, most states have a presidential primary like we do in Illinois  where voters are given secret ballots.  So far, the Democrats have held 30 party primaries in the 50 states and District of Columbia.

The superdelegates are about half committed at this point.  Hillary Clinton has a narrow lead there.

The caucuses have overwhelmingly gone for Barack Obama.  Clinton has only been able to win one caucus in Nevada, and even there Obama picked up more delegates.

In the primaries though, Hillary’s good day on Tuesday pulled her ahead in the popular vote count by 13,566,328 to 13,465,567.  She and Obama each have won 15 primaries, although one of Obama’s (Washington) and two of Clinton’s (Florida and Michigan) were non-binding.  Washington’s primary was merely a beauty contest and the Florida and Michigan primaries violated party rules so the delegates selected there don’t stand to be seated at the convention.

So in primaries, which feature the broadest cross section of the population, and which are more easy to participate in because of early and absentee voting and longer voting hours, Clinton is getting more votes than Obama.

Caucuses, by their nature, play to Obama’s strength, young voters.  The odds of getting a working class couple to show up at 7pm to vote in a caucus are not nearly as good as the odds for a young single person.  No one even knows when the caucus is going to end.  That’s a rush for a kid in college.  That’s a nightmare for parents who are shelling out money for babysitters and who need to get their kids in bed.  The average Obama voter doesn’t have the participation barriers that the average Clinton voter has.

Obama will no doubt talk about the caucuses as having equal value, but they certainly are a less democratic way of selecting delegates.  And the participation rates demonstrate that.  There have been over 27 million people vote in the Democratic primary contests in states that gave a total of about 45 million votes to John Kerry.  There have been just about half a million people vote in Democratic caucuses in states that gave Kerry about 6 million votes.  Participation in primaries is about 7 times as high as in caucuses.

Washington state, which held both a party caucus and a non-binding presidential primary shows clearly just how badly the caucus system hurts Clinton.  About 30,000 people participated in the caucuses, while over 660,000 particpated in the primary.  In the caucuses, Clinton got beaten by a margin of more than 2 to 1, while in the primary she received 46% of the vote, a difference of 15% from one method to the other.  If Washington’s delegates were distributed based on the primary results, Clinton would gain thirteen delegates and Obama would lose thirteen.

Much has been made by Obama about his lead in the popular vote at this point, but that lead may evaporate.  Furthermore, I wouldn’t consider caucus votes which are not secret and which are not open to many people because of work and other circumstances, to be a “popular vote”.  Although it is proof of excellent organization, certainly a valid factor to consider when deciding who your candidate should be.

One other interesting note.  If each state received as many delegates as they have electoral votes and it was winner take all, Hillary would have 263 votes right now, and Obama 193 (270 to win).

I used Wikipedia for much of my numbers.  I didn’t use Iowa in the caucus calculations, because they don’t report votes for candidates.  I didn’t include other candidates in the various calculations, so that will throw things off a bit, but not much.

I don't have the energy to do (laughably bad) predictions of tonight's Democratic Primaries, so I'll just point to polling aggregators for each state.

• Ohio
• Rhode Island
• Texas
• Vermont

I must say that I hope the Democratic race doesn't end tonight.  Not because I favor Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton as an easier matchup for Republicans, but because this whole process (superdelegates, proportional representation, etc.) has been incredibly entertaining for a "process junkie" like myself, and I think these all-too-rare discussions of electoral rules and such are good for our national discourse every now and then as well.

I'll be getting most of my news fix tonight from Politico.com, for what little that's worth.

UPDATE:  Heh.  Matt says that my predictions are a "failsafe."  Indeed.

There are primaries today in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.  Latest polling data is here:

• GOP:  MD, VA
• Dems:  MD, VA

If Hillary loses all three by 15+ points, as the conventional wisdom is projecting, will she be able to survive, momentumless, until Ohio and Texas vote in early March?

If McCain wins winner-take-all Virginia, will Huckabee drop out?

This is for anyone wondering about Illinois' Democratic Superdelegates, and endorsements of the same.

Apparently, Clinton campaign manager Patty Solis Doyle will be replaced by Clinton's former chief of staff, Maggie Williams.  Solis Doyle will continue working with the campaign as a "senior advisor".

The cynic wishes to ask:  Why hasn't chief strategist Mark Penn, who has probably done more to lead this campaign down its poorly thought-out path, been fired?  Will Solis Doyle be paid the salary she has not received while she was being a good soldier and helping the campaign conserve cash?  How much lower will William's salary be than Solis Doyle's?

The Appellate Court today denied the petition for rehearing in the Brendan McGinty petition challenge court case, meaning that the Appellate Court is allowing McGinty's victory in Tuesday's Democratic Primary in District 9 to stand.

Other appeals to the Illinois Supreme Court are possible, I suppose.

UPDATE:  Ruling is here.

Tom Kacich's normally excellent Wednesday NG columns are usually not available online.  However, today's column, discussing yesterday's results, is here:

It's the first time Democratic voters have outnumbered Republican voters in a primary election in the county in at least 70 years, if ever. Eight years ago, in the last presidential primary where there was no incumbent president on the ballot, Republican voters outnumbered Democrats, 21,308 to 11,762. The previous peak for Democratic primary voters was 17,110 in 1992. The Republican record is 21,308 in 2000.

Tuesday's overall turnout of 39,055 voters, including 173 Green Party voters, also was a record, improving on the previous high of nearly 34,000 voters in 2000.

Several precincts in the county ran short of Democratic ballots, and freshly printed sheets had to be rushed to the polls. A precinct in Savoy where four years ago Republicans outnumbered Democrats, 272-161, had the tables turned Tuesday. Democrats this time outpolled Republicans, 353-271.

The numbers he highlights point to the conclusion I drew here:  yesterday's record Democratic turnout wasn't a result of Republicans pulling Democratic ballots as much as it was independents pulling Democratic ballots.  Of course, that's still not much comfort to Republicans.

Kacich also touches on the Urbana Parks referendum and some other topics.  Read the whole thing.