Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Clinton strategy comes to fruition

Just before the Texas primaries, I speculated that the Clinton campaign would try to exploit the difference between primary and caucus results to argue that the caucus results were not representative.

Today, the strategy came to fruition. Here's the relevant paragraph from the report (PDF), which documents a nationwide pattern in primaries vs. caucuses.
Example 2: Texas held a primary & caucus on March 4 and once again widely different results were recorded. 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. Common sense begs the question if this result was truly in line with the will of the Texas voters.
My sense is that this is too little, too late. But you can see the argument coming down the pike: The general election will follow the same format as the primaries. This looks like an attempt to hold onto Clinton superdelegates and force a brokered convention.

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