Clinton triumphs in Puerto Rico

Update: With 98% reporting, Hillary Clinton won Puerto Rico more than 2:1, 68% to 32%. She won each of the 8 districts with margins ranging form 65% to 72%. The delegate split will be very favorable to Clinton: 38 to 17, which means that she got almost as much out of Puerto Rico than out of Michigan and Florida combined. As for the popular vote, there are still ballots to be counted but it looks like Hillary fell just short of her bid to get 166 thousand more votes today as she is ahead by roughly 140,000. The turnout, which looks to be somewhere around 10% of all registered voters, was not high enough to allow Clinton to get a big enough raw vote margin (though 10% turnout for a late primary in a territory which little involvement in continental politics is not that weak).

Original post: The networks wasted no time calling Puerto Rico for Hillary Clinton in what was an anticlimactic day for an island that, just a few months ago, was hoping it would play a decisive role in the fight for the Democratic nomination. The exit polls show a Clinton triumph beyond expectations as they project that she will obtain about 68.5% of the vote. Depending on turnout, this might put Clinton on top of the popular vote count without counting Michigan, a shift that her campaign would surely boast about in the coming days.

A few months ago, everyone suddenly realized that Puerto Rico, which was scheduled to hold the last primary on June 7th and perhaps allocate its delegate winner-take-all, could play a huge role in the Democratic fight. With the two candidates looking to be locked in a tight race with no end in sight, the 55 delegates of Puerto Rico looked like the prize that might put the Clinton campaign ahead. Instead, Obama built an advantage early, negating much of the influence Puerto Rico might have had on the process and making today's vote more of a formality.

But the Clinton campaign looked to today's vote as a crucial means to catch up in the popular vote. Up until today, they did claim to be ahead in that count but that required them to count Florida and Michigan without giving Obama any vote in the latter. That, however, does not appear as a legitimate count to most people, especially after yesterday RBC decision to count the Michigan uncommitted as if they were Obama voters. Real Clear Politics puts Obama's popular vote margin without Michigan but with Florida at 166,186 votes, so we will see whether Clinton can open that big a margin in Puerto Rico. She will need a decent-sized turnout of the island's 2.4 million registered voters to accomplish that. Note that the island's two main parties (which are not Democratic and Republican) were not organizing today's vote and were not encouraging voters to participate; a third independentatist party was calling for a boycott of today's vote.

Naturally, I am not saying that Clinton's emerging ahead in this count of the popular vote or getting a delegate boost in Puerto Rico will at all improve her chances to win the nomination.
But the important question the next 6 days will answer is whether Clinton will drop out without a fight or whether she will press on, perhaps even until the convention. If she
gets within 100 pledged delegates or if she gets what she considers to be a legitimate popular vote lead, it could make it that much tougher for the Obama campaign to convince her to give up her quest for the nomination and would heighten Clinton's demands.

A note also on the Puerto Rico exit polls, for it is remarkable how different they look than what we are accustomed to. For one, this could very well be the first Democratic contest this year in which there are more male voters than female voters -- and the exit poll shows Clinton performing better among the former! Also, there is very little difference in voting patterns across class and education-level. An interesting measure, finally, is the proportion of Puerto Ricans (79%) who say they have family members who work in New York. Of those, the New York Senator wins 70%; of those who do not, she is at 63%.