News from the VotemasterNevada has a three-step caucus process for choosing its delegates to the DNC. The first round was on Jan. 19 but there was pandemonium during the second round on Feb. 23. So many people turned out in Clark County (Las Vegas) that the convention was canceled. The convention was held again yesterday under tighter controls. Hillary Clinton won Clark County, getting 1330 delegates to Barack Obama's 1133. However, Obama won the state outside Clark County, reducing her total lead statewide to 1718 to 1645. These delegates will meet at the state convention May 17 and choose the people who will go to the DNC. Clinton is expected to get a small edge in the number of national delegates. CQ Politics has the story. What would happen if a relatively inexperienced young man of color were facing a battle-tested older woman in a bitterly contested Democratic primary? Well, if the battle were for the MN-03 House seat being vacated by the retiring Jim Ramstad (R), the young man, Ashwin Madia, would defeat state senator Terri Bonoff on the 8th ballot, as happened at the district DFL convention yesterday. Madia was born in Mumbai (Bombay) and came to the U.S. with his family with $19. He later graduated from the University of Minnesota and NYU law school and then served in the Marine Corps in Iraq. Now he is running for Congress. He is one of an extremely small number of Indian-Americans in politics, which is surprising given how succesful Indian-Americans have been in other professional fields such as engineering and medicine. The only other one who comes to mind is Bobby Jindal (R-LA), who was in Congress and is now governor of Louisiana. The Republican candidate in MN-03 is Erik Paulsen, former speaker of the state house. Due to the extremely even split of this district (PVI R+1) we are going to see a huge battle here, possibly the top House race in the whole country. NRCC chairman Tom Cole and DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen are opening their checkbooks at this very moment. More about the Madia win here. No primary polls today, but we have one general election poll from Rasmussen. In North Carolina, McCain and Obama tie at 47% each, whereas McCain beats Clinton 51% to 40%. The polling results for all primaries and caucuses 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 so there is some guesswork involved. Furthermore, some of the unpledged delegates are elected at state conventions in May or June. Finally, the PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) sometimes waver and may tell different reporters slightly different stories that they interpret differently. Delegates
Needed to win: Democrats 2024, Republicans 1191. Here is another source for delegate totals. -- The Votemaster |