Jun. 02

Senate map and races Downloadable polling data Previous report Next report News: Updated Jun. 02   Primaries/caucuses Obama won Clinton won Clinton: won popular vote Obama: most delegates June

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News from the Votemaster

The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was discussed here at length yesterday.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory over Barack Obama in Puerto Rico, getting 68% of the vote to his 32%, a much better showing than expected. On the other hand, turnout was light, with only 380,000 people voting. Some people had predicted over 1 million voters. Clinton swept both men and women, all age groups, all education levels, everything. It was a dramatic win. far more than expected. She will probably net about 21 pledged delegates.

In the May 28 posting, we looked at how Montana's 16 pledged delegates are allocated. Now the final state, South Dakota, which gets to send 23 delegates to Denver as follows.

Most likely, Barack Obama will get 5 district-level delegates to Hillary Clinton's 4 and the at-large and PLEOs will split 50-50. So all in all, Obama is likely to pick up 8 pledged delegates to Clinton's 7.

Has the media treated the candidates fairly or have they play favorites? A study from Harvard University analyzed thousands of stories from newspapers, radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, and the Internet. They also charted how the media's views changed over time. One conclusion: Up until March 9, the media were equally positive about Obama and Clinton and somewhat more negative about McCain. The report has many other conclusions, of course.

It looks like we have candidates for NY-13. In case you have forgotten, this is the Staten Island district currently represented by Vito Fossella (R), who supports family values so much he has two families, one on the Island and one in Virginia. When he was stopped for running a red light--while drunk--this little tidbit came out and as the tabloids put it: Vito finito. Talking Points Memo has a story claiming that the Democrats have settled on city councilman Michael McMahon. The Republicans couldn't get any of their top prospects to run and finally settled on a businessman, Frank Powers, who is able to self fund the race. The district is D+1, New York City is a pretty liberal place generally, this is going to be a Democratic year for congressional races, and historically, rich businessmen rarely beat elected politicians in closely fought races. Undoubtedly DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen is whipping out his checkbook (he has $46 million to spend on House races). New York state is going to host a surprisingly large number of top-tier House races, including NY-19, NY-20, NY-25, NY-26, and NY-29 besides this one.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noted the opening of the hurricane season yesterday by predicting a 65% chance of a stronger than usual season and only a 10% chance of a weaker than usual season. So what has that to do with the elections? A hurricane along the Gulf Coast could drive gas prices to $5 or even $6 a gallon. Such a development would focus the voters' attention on the economy. All the polls show that more voters have faith in the Democrats than in the Republicans to handle the economy well. Consequently, a big hurricane could help the Democratic Party. On the other hand, if the administration can respond to it really well, it might undo people's memories of how the aftermath of hurricane Katrina was bungled.

No primary polls today but we have some general election polls as follows.

The polling data base was double checked today and some errors were found. These have been corrected.

The polling results for all primaries and caucuses are available as a Web page and in .csv format.

The delegate situation is quite different now than in was Friday. On Saturday, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee decided to seat the delegates elected in the Florida primary each with half a vote. It also decided to accept a compromise for Michigan proposed by the Michigan Democratic party. The compromise took into account the fact that nearly all the votes for "uncommitted" were probably for Obama as well as 5% of the voters who wrote in Obama's name. On Sunday, Clinton won a massive victory in Puerto Rico and netted over 20 delegates. All in all, she closed the delegate gap by about 45 delegates. If we average all the numbers below, Clinton has 1913 delegates to Obama's 2070 with 252 delegates yet to be determined. Tuesday Montana will choose 16 pledged delegates and South Dakota will choose 15. A likely breakdown is 14 for Clinton and 17 for Obama, bringing the totals to 1927 for Clinton and 2087 for Obama. With 221 supers still sitting on the fence, Clinton will need 191 of these (86%) and Obama will need 31 of these (14%). Some supers may endorse today as a result of the RBC decision and many more may get off the fence later this week.

Delegates

Needed to win: 2118

Here is another source for delegate totals.

WWW www.electoral-vote.com