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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

More Than You’ll Ever Want To Know About Last Night’s Primary

posted by on February 20 at 13:30 PM

Some minor observations while poring over the Secretary of State’s voting totals from yesterday’s Washington Primary:

The Republicans

• Candidate percentages by county were generally pretty uniform, and John McCain rarely dipped below 45% anywhere. For the most part, Eastern Washington voters didn’t respond to Huckabee any better than King County voters did.

• Mitt Romney finished the night with 19.75% of the vote, despite having suspended his campaign. That probably saddens the Huckabee camp just a little bit.

• Ron Paul took over 11% of Spokane County, his best percentage in a Washington county with a major city.

• Alan Keyes beat Fred Thompson in four counties, including Whatcom. In fact, 1,520 people in this state voted for Alan Keyes. That’s kind of… unnerving? Unnerving is probably the word I’m looking for.

The Democrats

• To start with, all numbers and meaning are totally suspect: with word circulating about the meaningless nature of the primary, it would be anyone’s guess over how this would have turned out if all sides had taken it seriously. While Eli noted that some of Hillary’s Washington surrogates were hoping to turn this into a referendum on whether the caucus is a fair way to hold an election, this effort was officially disavowed by the Clinton campaign itself.

• Of over 500,000 ballots cast, Obama’s victory margin was slightly under 16,000 votes.

• Unlike the caucus, which was an all-counties tsunami for Obama, Hillary held her own throughout the state. Eastern Washington was something of a patchwork, although Clinton narrowly won Spokane County.

• Obama’s victory margin came mostly from running up the score in King County (where he won by 11%), Whatcom County (where he won by 20%) and San Juan County (where he won by 38%).

• Clinton won Tacoma-dominated Pierce County (home of Clinton-endorser and superdelegate Rep. Norm Dicks) by 6%.

• Alan Keyes received more votes than Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, or Bill Richardson. I said unnerving, right? Totally unnerving.

RSS icon Comments

1

Poring, not pouring.

Posted by Pedant | February 20, 2008 1:35 PM
2

I was going to vote for Richardson or Dodd, but after hearing about the Clinton fake out to try to portray the primary vote as the "real" vote, I cast my Obama ballot instead.

But it won't be counted until Friday, since I dropped the sealed absentee ballot off at the polling place to save a stamp.

Interesting about the county observation ...

Posted by Will in Seattle | February 20, 2008 1:50 PM
3

*yawn*

All the stats are meaningless.

Next!

Posted by Reality Check | February 20, 2008 1:51 PM
4

that means within 46 square miles of you, a Keyes supporter prays.

Posted by cochise. | February 20, 2008 1:52 PM
5

HRC can't be loving these primary results. I mean, she can't even win among her hardcore supporters and the clueless fools who think the primary means something.

Posted by Gitai | February 20, 2008 2:10 PM
6

• Alan Keyes received more votes than...


Call me crazy.

When I first saw that line I thought it read "Alicia Keyes"...

Posted by David K. | February 20, 2008 2:16 PM
7

Any count of how many people submitted blank ballots? Or was that just me?

Posted by Greg | February 20, 2008 2:30 PM
8

sure as hell does mean something! It means that the people who couldn't/didn't make it to the ridiculous caucuses one Saturday afternoon were home supporting Hillary with their ballots, and that support here is more even than the Obamamaniacs who own these blogs would have you believe.

Posted by go superdelegates! | February 20, 2008 2:39 PM
9

No information can be discerned from the Democratic vote as it was, as you point out but seem to go ahead and ignore, completely meaningless.

As for the Republican vote, McCain did very poorly for a foregone conclusion nominee. He should have scored 90% of the vote. Not promising for him.

Posted by Daniel K | February 20, 2008 2:49 PM
10

go superdelegates! - If anything, the result shows that despite the fact the Clinton supporters tried to turn the meaningless primary into a chance to show their strength, and despite the fact Obama supporters had no meaningful reason to vote in the primary, Obama still beat Clinton.

So Clinton couldn't either the meaningful caucuses or the meaningless primary.

Posted by Daniel K | February 20, 2008 2:54 PM
11

@4 .. I think you meant to say: "that means within 46 square miles of you, a Keyes supporter preys."

Posted by Will in Seattle | February 20, 2008 3:28 PM
12

You odn't give the percentages for Obama and Clinton. It's running about 50% for Obama, a huge drop off in support from the caucus results.

silly to say over one million votes are meaningless. No one can explain why Obama supporters would be any less likely to vote than Clinton supporters anyway.

This means: there's no reason not to conclude that basically this state is split right down the middle.

And, caucuses overstate/overstated Obama's support. And, red flag for Obama supporters come November. He's not a 2:1 favorite he's like a 1.05:1 favorite, and he's only 4 points up over McCain.

Ignore this at our peril.

As for superdelegates, I guess Foley and Dicks get to be for Clinton because their areas are? Or, why not divide them about 50=47?

Most of all: caucuses suck at showing the will of the voters.

Posted by unPC | February 20, 2008 4:20 PM
13
• Ron Paul took over 11% of Spokane County, his best percentage in a Washington county with a major city.

Spokane County has a major city? I had no idea. What's it called?

Posted by Mahtli69 | February 20, 2008 4:30 PM
14
• Alan Keyes beat Fred Thompson in four counties, including Whatcom. In fact, 1,520 people in this state voted for Alan Keyes. That’s kind of… unnerving? Unnerving is probably the word I’m looking for.

Unless those voters were all Democrats with meaningless primary ballots. In that case "hifuckinlarious" is probably the word you're looking for.

Posted by Mahtli69 | February 20, 2008 4:37 PM
15

@12

So Caucuses suck, eh? And you're going to ignore the fact that she lost every district in WA because... you know better? This is precisely the reason Clinton lost my support. The whole "inevitable" thing turned me sour and now the hillbots claim that they know what the people "really" want is... very Republican.

In case you hadn't noticed, Obama is on an unbroken winning streak. And unless Clinton can find a picture of Barak giving Carl Rove a handjob, she's done.

Posted by montex | February 20, 2008 11:41 PM
16

The Keyes votes had to be democrats that didn't caucus trying to effect the republican primary.

I caucused for Obama but was going to vote for Edwards in the meaningless primary until I heard about Clinton supporters trying to use the primary.

Posted by Seatattle | February 20, 2008 11:50 PM
17

Does it occur to anybody trying to use the democratic numbers in the primary that maybe they are meaningless. Since everybody knew they didn't count, maybe the dog or cat voted, maybe they voted for $RANDOM_PERSON, maybe their kid filled it out, maybe they let the neighbor fill it out, who knows?

In other words, the numbers are useless. Please dont cite them for anything. Trying to use them as evidence a candidate has more or less support only discredits you and makes you look foolish.

Posted by crk on bellevue ave | February 21, 2008 8:11 AM

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