News from the VotemasterNew Mexico finally finished counting the provisional ballots. Hillary Clinton won the primary by 1709 votes. Prof. Alan Abramowitz, the Alben W. Barkley professor of political science at Emory University, has an interesting posting on Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball about The Enthusiasm Gap in this election. (You can consider yourself a REAL political junkie if you know who Alben W. Barkley is without asking Google. Here's a hint in the form of an old joke. A man had two brothers. One became a sea captain and went out to sea. The other became Vice President of the United States. Neither one was ever heard from again). Abramowitz cites a variety of data, from vote totals and fund raising to crowd size and caucus results to polls to make the point that the Democrats are far more energized than the Republicans this year. Energized voters are more likely to vote and even work for the nominee later in the year. While John McCain now has the nomination sewn up (especially after Mitt Romney endorsed him yesterday), he still has a lot of work to do getting Republicans excited about him. That doesn't mean he can't do it, but he will have to work at it. On the other end, if the Democratic nominee is ultimately chosen in some smokeless room in Denver by a margin of 10 votes, a lot of the Democratic enthusiasm will go up in smoke (well, er, in, uh, vapor). Really Major League Baseball has two new teams: the Donkeys and the Elephants. At the congressional hearing about whether baseball star Roger Clemens used (illegal) steroids to enhance his performance, the Democrats clearly believed Clemens' trainer, Brian McNamee, who testified that he gave Clemens' steroids. The Republicans clearly believed Clemens' testimony that he did not receive steroids. Now even baseball has become partisan. Is nothing sacred? What's next? If at Thanksgiving President Bush pardons some turkey maybe the Democrats will point this out as yet another misuse of the power of the pardon. It is not hard to understand the appeal of candidates like Barack Obama, who keeps saying he is "post partisan" and Sen. McCain, who is thinking of changing his name to Maverick J. McCain. Rasmussen's daily tracking poll now shows Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton 49% to 37%. This could be as a result of his winning eight primaries in a row, or it could be a statistical fluke. Clinton is still polling well in Ohio and Texas, so don't take Rasmussen's poll too seriously just yet. Here are today's new polls.
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. They 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, some sources try to count the PLEOs (Part 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. Delegates
Needed to win: Democrats 2025, Republicans 1191. -- The Votemaster |