Mar. 22

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News from the Votemaster

A CBS poll on Barack Obama's "race" speech shows that 69% thought he did a good job. Six in 10 agreed with what he said about the state of race relations, but only four in 10 Republicans agreed. It is important to remember that the daily fodder for the great maw of the news cycle tends to be long forgotten by election day. By then it is going to be: Jeremiah who? Geraldine who? Yeah, I remember somebody looked at somebody's passport, but I forget who looked and whose passport. For the Democratic primary, it matters a bit more, but not so much. It will probably be decided by the PLEOs, who are either career politicians or long-time party activists (like the DNC members) and they have their own interests.

As we all know, money is the mother's milk of politics. The NY Times has a good recap of where the Presidential candidates are now in terms of cold hard cash. The long and the short of it is that Obama has $31 million in available cash for the primaries; Hillary Clinton has about $3 million. However, except maybe Pennsylvania, there are not a lot of expensive state primaries and caucuses left. Besides, Obama outspent Clinton at least 4 to 1 in Ohio and she won a huge victory there. John McCain's fundraising has been extremely modest. He has raised $58 million total since the beginning (compare this to the $55 million Obama raised in February alone). We have never had an election in which the Democrats raised more than the Republicans. The one bright light for the GOP is that the RNC has much more cash on hand than the DNC, in part due to Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, where he is spending money to run offices in places like Wyoming and Idaho instead of hoarding it for the Presidential race, as the RNC is doing.

Speaking of Idaho, Idaho voters who are "pro life" will get a chance to vote directly for their beliefs this year. One of the candidates running for Larry "Wide Stance" Craig's Senate seat has legally changed his name to "Pro-Life" (it was formerly Marvin Richardson). He is running as an independent. The other candidates for the seat are Larry LaRocco (D) and probably Lt. Gov. Larry Risch (R), although Risch has some primary opponents to dispose of first. Also running as an independent is Idaho elk rancher Rex Rammel. When voters see the list of Senate candidates as

some of them are going to be confused and think Pro-Life is a position, not a candidate, and choose him. While he has no choice of being elected to the Senate, the Republican vote might end up being split three ways, giving LaRocco a small chance of actually coming in first with perhaps 33% (what Craig's opponent, Alan Blinken, got in 2002).

I am testing software to make Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain maps. Hopefully ready next week.

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 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 2025, Republicans 1191.

Here is another source for delegate totals.

WWW www.electoral-vote.com