News from the VotemasterThe multistage Iowa caucuses advanced another step yesterday and Barack Obama picked up 52% of the delegates compared to 32% for Hillary Clinton. The rest stuck with John Edwards, even though he has dropped out of the race. A story about yesterday's county caucuses can be found here. The mostly like result of yesterday's caucuses is that Obama will get a net gain of seven Iowa delegates. Stuff is also going on in Texas under the radar. The Clinton camp is demanding that all the signatures of people who came to the Texas caucus be verified before being finalized in two weeks. This could be the first step before a lawsuit. Whatever the legal merits of the case are (1) Texas has been operating like this for decades and Bill Clinton did fine under these rules in 1992 and didn't complain and (2) suing your own party over procedural matters makes you look like a sore loser, which in politics is not a good thing. In California, the delegate totals from the Feb. 5 primary were revised. Obama picked by 5 delegates and Clinton got two more. The NY Times has a good story on Vice Presidents today. Bottom line: they matter. About 1/3 of them have gone on to become President. Given John McCain's age and repeated bouts with malignant melanoma, his choice will undergo special scrutiny. With a woman or black man heading the Democratic ticket, that person's choice for #2 will undoubtedly be seen as indicating something important about how #1 would govern. No new polls today. The polling results for all states are available as a Web page and in .csv format. Here are the delegate totals from various news sources rounded to integers (Democrats Abroad has 22 delegates, each with 1/2 vote). The sources differ because in most caucus states, no delegates to the national conventions have been chosen yet, just delegates to the district, county, or state convention. Also, all sources try to count the PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) and unpledged delegates, who also get to vote at the convention. When different reporters call a PLEO and hear "Well, I like Hillary, but Barack has his charms too" they may score it differently. None of the news outlets have reflected the Iowa and California results in their totals yet. Delegates
Needed to win: Democrats 2025, Republicans 1191. Here is another source for delegate totals. -- The Votemaster |