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%.

Preparing for Puerto Rico, and the Michigan question

This Sunday, Puerto Rico will finally have a day in the national political spotlight by holding its Democratic primary. Of course, the contest is less important than Puerto Ricans were hoping just a few weeks ago. After all, countless scenarios were devised in which the island's vote was to be the last-minute decider, perhaps even allowing Clinton to regain the delegate lead; indeed, we believed for a long time that Puerto Rico would allocate its delegate on a winner-take-all basis before plans were clarified in favor of proportional allocation.

Hillary Clinton is widely held as the favorite of this contest given her lead among Hispanics. After all, it is because of the Latino vote that Clinton survived for so long, as they allowed her to win Texas and handily defeat Obama in California. But Puerto Rico voters are a very different voting group than Hispanics living in America and whose set of concerns and economic condition is very different, so it is important to not overstate Clinton's natural advantage. That said, the only poll released until today had Clinton leading by 13% (that was back in April). Today, we got another poll:

• This survey, conducted by Quinlan Rosner Research for Univision, shows her leading 51% to 38% in this race that will allocate 55 delegates. Among the most likely voters, Clinton leads 59% to 40%.
  

To overtake Obama in the popular vote (well, in a count that the press could hold as legitimate), Clinton will need a big win and a huge turnout. But Puerto Rico's vote now seems like an afterthought, which probably frustrates the press corps more than any one else.

Meanwhile, two general election polls were released by SUSA's ongoing series of testing vice-presidential match-ups:

• In Iowa, Obama leads McCain 47% to 38%. When VPs are added, John Edwards helps the ticket the most but Republicans lead in a number of scenarios. These are based mostly on name recognition so I will not spend more time detailing them.
  

• In Michigan, meanwhile, McCain is ahead 41% to 37%. Obama only gets 60% of the Democratic vote.
  
• SUSA only polled Mitt Romney as a Republican VP, as the former Massachusetts Governor can call Michigan as something of a homestate (which he won on January 15th, prolonging his candidacy). The McCain-Romney team lead all Democratic tickets, from a range of +3 if the Dem VP is Edwards to +19 if it is Webb or Kaine, two Virginians who are largely unknown in Michigan.

The Michigan question has to be troubling Democrats, as there have now been a series of polls showing the Arizona Senator edging the probable Democratic nominee. While the state featured tight contests in 2000 and 2004 (Al Gore and John Kerry both carried the state by less than 5%), the Democratic nominees posted a small lead throughout the campaign and Michigan was generally rated as a "lean Democratic" state. But with McCain's increasingly undeniable strength in the state, the likelihood of Michigan's 17 electoral votes being at the very center of the general election campaign -- replacing Florida as the third member of the holy trio, alongside Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This is obviously a dangerous development for Democrats, as two of the three largest battleground states would then be blue states -- and both are must-win states for them to recapture the White House. Michigan is too much a part of the Democratic electoral college base for the party to afford seeing the state joining the rank of toss-ups.

The delegate mess in which the Democratic Party is still stuck will not help Obama's cause, though the roots of the problem are obviously deeper. Michigan might be one of the only states in which voters partly blame Democrats for their worsening economic condition, as Governor Granholm's approval ratings have plummeted in the past few years. Furthermore, this is a state in which Obama's weakness among blue-collar voters could hurt him if he does not recapture that electorate by the fall, as the union vote is an important one (albeit a declining force) in the state.

Thursday polls: First numbers from Puerto Rico!

Two important primaries polls were released this morning -- including the very first ever from the potentially decisive contest in Puerto Rico. First, however, comes Pennsylvania and its April 22nd primary. It's become increasingly difficult to figure out where things stand in the Keystone state, with SUSA and Insider Advantage (and, to a lesser degree, PPP) showing Clinton on the rebound while other pollsters still find her lead declining:

• Today, TIME magazine released its own poll, finding Clinton ahead 44% to 38%, 49% to 41% once leaners are included.
• The poll's internals are expected: Clinton has a big lead among white voters (51%-30%) and particularly among white women; Obama is ahead among blacks 80% to 8% -- and he still has room to grow here, considering he was routinely reaching 90% of the African-American vote in late February and early March. Also, 26% of Clinton voters say they would be "more likely" to vote for McCain is Obama is the nominee.

Both campaigns are now battling in a ferocious game of expectations; the Clinton campaign claims it is a miracle she is even ahead given how massively she is being outspent, an argument they already used in the run-up to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Obama's camp laughs that off and explains that a single-digit loss would be a great victory. Unfortunately for Hillary, Obama is right to say that this is too late in the game for "just a victory" to help Clinton much. She needs to both get a meaningful pledged delegate lead out of the state and trounce Obama by enough of a margin to instill doubts about his candidacy. The good news for the Clinton campaign is that polls suggest she has room to grow back to the kind of lead she needs (just like in Ohio) -- and the seemingly constant stream of bad Pennsylvania polls has been interrupted.

Meanwhile, the first poll from Puerto Rico was released today! The primary is being held on June 1st and will award a large number of delegates that could be decisive if Clinton is hoping to cut Obama's lead. More importantly, Puerto Rico will almost close voting season (there will be two small votes on June 3rd) and the result could very well determine which campaign heads into the "off-season" with the most momentum:

• This new poll shows Hillary ahead 50% to 37% against Obama. The conventional wisdom is that this is Clinton's contest to lose and this margin might even look a bit underwhelming.

Puerto Rico could become an organization battle -- if the race goes that late. Bill Clinton already visited Puerto Rico this past month, and the state's establishment is mostly backing Clinton. In fact, Obama's main support in the state was Governor Acevedo Villa who was indicted last month of 19 counts of campaign finance violations, limiting the influence he could have had on the vote.

And you can bet the exhausted campaign and the media would love to spend a few weeks in Puerto covering the primary.

Update, in response to a comment by Jason: The "seemingly constant stream of bad PA polls" being interrupted has nothing to do with weekend polling versus weekday polling. Practically every poll over more than a week showed Obama rising and a number of institutes no longer see such a trend this week: SUSA, Insider Advantage and PPP all had Obama catching up last week and show the reverse movement this week. Also, most polling institutes go on the field week-to-week (say Monday to Wednesday; or Friday to Sunday) and they use the same turnout model. This is why so much is made of trends between the two last polls of one institute. The study you refer (I had mentioned it here) was only applicable to the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls which are in the field every single day, leading to comparison problems if one candidate polls better on a weekend.

Why North Carolina is dangerous ground for Clinton, and why Puerto Rico gets trickier for Obama

The only primary survey these past 2 days is Insider Advantage's North Carolina survey, and it comes to confirm PPP's finding on Wednesday. Obama can hope to strike a deathly blow to the Clinton campaign right here on May on 6th:

• Obama is leading 49% to Clinton's 34%.
• The pollster points out that there is a slight movement among white voters away from Hillary and towards the undecided vote.

North Carolina has become almost more crucial to the nomination fight than Pennsylvania at this point. This contest resembles the series of primaries in the second half of February (Virginia, Washington, ...) in that Obama is favored to win; but the way in which he wins could be decisive. Clinton's only path to the nomination is to build such momentum throughout May and early June that she gives the remaining uncommitted superdelegates pause. This requires her:

• not losing any state by a significant margin, as that would automatically undermine any momentum-setting argument; and her
• handily winning the demographics that have been reluctant to support Obama, namely white men and downscale voters.

Obama could put an end to Clinton's comeback in North Carolina by preventing her from satisfying those two requirements. If he wins the state big, Clinton would be hard pressed to portray herself as the candidate voters have come to settle on by the end of the campaign. Also, if he stays close or even wins among North Carolina whites (in other words Southern whites, among which he has come in at disastrous numbers in states like Mississippi and South Carolina), Clinton will find it that much more difficult to agree to superdelegates that Obama cannot be trusted to win the general election.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico made news today as the Governor, Anibal Acevedo Vila, was indicted of 19 counts of campaign finance violations. If the nomination is still in play by June 1st, Puerto Rico is expected to play a major role in deciding how the race proceeds since it has many delegates to offer to the winner. Most of Puerto Rico's establishment is expected to rally behind Hillary Clinton. In fact, Governor Vila, who had endorsed Obama, was the Illinois Senator's main hope to contest the state by helping him with his own political machine and networks.

Besides the fact that Vila is a superdelegate and that Obama would lose a vote if Vila has to resign before the end of August, it is evident that an indicted politician has much less time and ability to move votes and use a machine, and this will make Obama's Puerto Rico climb that much steeper. Puerto Rico is the last major contest to be held (Montana and South Dakota vote on June 3rd, but they do not award many delegates), and Clinton would love to go out on a bang. However, it woud be hard for her to use the results her to convince superdelegates that she is more electable given that Puerto Rico cannot vote in the general election.

Calendar watch: Michigan and Puerto Rico

With most primary contests already over, it is incredible that we are still talking about the voting calendar and changing rules. In fact, with Florida and Michigan's fate still in suspense, much of the political chatter in the coming weeks will likely be devoted to process questions and to the quest of a fair solution to the "rogue state" problem.

Florida and Michigan's governors were pushing the DNC yesterday to seat the January delegates, but that is looking to be an unlikely scenario and all interested parties appear to slowly be readying themselves with do-over votes. But questions remain: (1) Who will fund? (2) Primary or caucus? The two questions are obviously related, and the DNC is refusing to spend money on re-votes to help state parties that it holds broke rules in full awareness of what they were doing. Howard Dean told Florida Senator Nelson today that he would not pay for any make-over caucus or primary (to be fair, the DNC doesn't have that much money in the bank, and is already trailing the RNC's fundraising).

The New Republican broke the news last night that the Michigan Democratic Party was strongly leaning towards calling new caucuses -- which was the party's original plan before some Democrats pushed for an early primary. This would create a fierce competition and the most important caucuses of the year. It would also raise the number of delegates each campaign has to amass to get the nomination, and offer Clinton a chance to catch up Obama's number.

The Clinton campaign is sure to complain, however, that it is unfair to hold a caucus: The original contest was a primary, and a do-over, they are sure to point out, should be the same type of election. They know that a win would be very difficult in a caucus system (witness the 36% differential in Washington between the caucus and the primary, and it appears that there is also a substantial gap in Texas between the two), and that a large victory -- of the size they would need to cut into Obama's delegate lead -- would be very unlikely.

If anything, a new Michigan caucus could allow Obama the opportunity of a large victory (considering the size of his wins in other caucus states) AND give him his first win in a 100+ delegate state other than Illinois, which right now is the big hole in his resume. So a re-vote would help Obama here?

The second calendar item concerns... Puerto Rico! The contest there could be pivotal since it will award 63 delegates total. Up until yesterday, Puerto Rico had scheduled a caucus on June 7th, and there was speculation that its delegates could be awarded winner-take-all (setting up yet another showdown with the DNC). It goes without saying that 63 delegates suddenly going to one candidate in early June could have dramatically altered the race.

Yesterday, Puerto Rico changed its rules: (1) It will hold a primary, not a caucus, because of the expected high turnout (we saw in Texas and -- to a lesser extent -- in Nevada how chaotic caucuses can be if authorities don't know how to organize them). (2) It will hold its contest on June 1st rather than June 7th -- so the new end-date of the primary season will be June 3rd (Montana and South Dakota).

More importantly, the Washington Post debunks speculation that Puerto Rico's delegates will be awarded winner-take-all and explains that officials are planning on a proportional allocation, much as we have seen everywhere else. So the scenarios many of us were contemplating of a last minute Puerto Rico victory allowing Clinton to catch up 63 delegates at once will not come to pass -- though Hillary could certainly still benefit from this contest, particularly with it being a primary.