Daily Archives: February 6, 2008

California

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This is a rout right now.

51.4% reporting

Clinton 53.6%

Obama 38.3%

Edwards 6.3%

That’s Angelides-like numbers for Barack.  Maybe you CAN’T run a ground campaign with precinct captains in California.  Maybe it is too big.

Now, there’s a long way to go, and I do expect it to tighten, but not a lot.  Clinton SMOKED Obama in the hard-to-reach areas of SoCal and the Central Valley.

In some key districts, however, we’re seeing interesting stuff.  CA-01 is 9 points, CA-04 is 6, and CA-05 is 4.  All are trending to Obama late, and all are 5-delelgate districts.  2 out of 3 up there would be big.  CA-30 and CA-36, the Westside of LA and the South Bay, essentially, are 13 point leads for Clinton right now but it’s very early and there are a lot of votes to go, and they too are trending Obama.  San Diego is starting to trend that way too but he’s further behind.

Obama might “get a break on change” and bring this within 15-20 delegates, yet.

Oh, and on the props, the gaming compacts will pass, community college funding will lose, and Prop.93 is getting close to being a loss.  It’s 47.3%-52.7% with over half the votes in.

…Edwards is playing the Nader role in four districts right now, where his total is more than the margin of victory: CA-01, CA-04, CA-05, and CA-14.  Now, this isn’t a perfect analogy, since Edwards voters don’t all go to Obama.  But it’s certainly interesting.

CA-30 and CA-36 continue to tighten.  CA-30 will be a wash (3-3), but it’s something of a bellweather.

UPDATE: 63.9% reporting:

Clinton 53.2%

Obama 39.6%

Edwards 5.6%

Still 73% of CA-09 precincts in Alameda county outstanding.  This will tighten further.  I think Obama will come up just short in CA-01 and CA-04, however.

UPDATE FINAL: I’m friggin’ tired.

69.4% reporting

Clinton 53.0%

Obama 40.1%

Edwards 5.3%

A couple developments: Obama just took the lead in CA-14.  And he’s made it extremely close in CA-53, a 5-delegate district.  Also, the numbers are closing just enough in a few of those big spreads to mask the drubbing and maybe get to a 2-2 split.  Only 4 of those are lost causes right now.

We’ll see where this leads, but people might wake up tomorrow morning and see how big a victory this was for Hillary Clinton, and the narrative might change.

Prop. 93 lost.  Tomorrow is a whole new ballgame for the California Legislature, but that’s for another time.

UPDATE: OK, this is REALLY it this time.  Hillary Clinton will score between a 30-50 delegate victory depending on outlying districts, and it’ll probably move closer to Obama’s end because he’s gaining in all the late results.

CA-01 is really fun; about 100 votes separate the two.  CA-05, CA-50 and CA-53 are the other keys; Obama needs to win those.  CA-09, in Alameda County, has barely come in at all – that could have an effect on the overall numbers, and if Obama starts running up the score there he could get a 4-2 split.  In a bunch of other races, he needs to stay close enough to keep it 2-2 (CA-16, CA-18, CA-41, CA-43, CA-45).

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District-Level Thread

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(Let’s keep this up top for the time being. – promoted by Julia Rosen)

I’m back.  Hung out for a while at our Drinking Liberally event here in Santa Monica.  What I’m seeing nationally is essentially a draw on the Democratic side.  A good roundup here.  Hillary got California and that’s very big.  She won huge among Latinos and Asians.  I was in Little Tokyo in LA last weekend, and all of the signs were Hillary.  I didn’t know her strength in the Asian community was that great, but maybe I should have known.  The Asian community was completely forgotten in this talk about the state.

Obama won blacks and, apparently, whites, and lost the state.  All I can say is wow.

I’ve tried to delve a little bit into the district-level races to see what I can see.  Based on the big wins in the ethnic communities I can see Clinton getting a lot more 3-1 splits in the 4-delegate districts than I expected, but we’ll see.  It’s unclear where these votes are coming from thus far.  CA-01 looks to be going Clinton.  CA-05, Clinton.  CA-29 (Schiff’s district), Clinton but it’s early.  CA-50, Clinton but it’s early.  Obama is running well in those heavily African-American districts in SoCal, except for CA-36 (Long Beach).  

I should note that almost NOTHING is in from the Bay Area yet, so this will tighten.

UPDATE: Frank Russo:

The actual vote totals available on the California Secretary of State’s site as of 9:30 p.m. are not at all representative of the state and are skewed towards the smaller counties. With 15% of the California vote in, for instance, there are no votes at all from San Francisco and from Alameda County. Los Angeles has only 8% of precincts reporting, and it is virtually impossible to tell how many of the votes shown are from vote by mail ballots versus precinct day of election ballots.

Clinton will win, but the number will not be what you’re seeing right now.  10 points would be the high end.  5 points sounds more like it, when everything is counted.  I see hillary maybe getting 10-20 delegates more than Obama out of this.  But that won’t be known for days.

[UPDATE by Julia] 10:30 PM Speaking of Alameda, I hear they kept the polls open until 10 PM, because they ran out of ballots and had to print more.  But how is a voter to know.  That has to be really rich Obama territory given the demographics of the county.

[UPDATE by Dave] 10:50 PM People need to hold up.  There aren’t a lot of districts that have massive numbers yet.  A spot check showed that only CA-01, CA-03, CA-05 (Clinton) and CA-23 (Obama) could be called.  Without most of the Bay Area in, I think we have no clue what the delegate breakdown will be.  Clinton is doing better than I expected, and looks to be able to clear the 63% threshold in some of the Latino districts.  But CA-23, on the Central coast (Santa Barbara), is an interesting bellweather.  If some of those wine track districts break for Obama we could have a delegate draw.

[UPDATE by Dave] 10:59 PM There’s a little trick in statewide California politics that San Benito County is the bellweather for how the state will go.  It’s almost all in.  And Prop 93 is down by a couple percentage points, almost totally in line with the totals as it stands right now.

For your consideration.

[UPDATE by Dave] 11:29 PM The more I look at this, the more I think that Clinton may have had a far bigger night than expected.  We’re still seeing a lot more early votes than day-of-election votes, but the margins in Orange County and the Latino districts in LA and Riverside and San Bernardino are pretty darn big.

I still think it will tighten, but I’m going to go ahead and up the win to 20-30 delegates.  Of course, we shall see.  Obama’s holding in CA-33, CA-35 and CA-37, up in CA-23 and CA-06 and CA-08, and I expect a blowout in CA-09.  But almost everywhere else he has some catching up to do.

[UPDATE by Julia] 11:32 PM Following up on Dave’s point about the delegates.  Chuck Todd on the TeeVee tells me that Clinton is hoping for a 32 delegate lead based on the numbers they are seeing.  Obama says it is more like +18 lead for her.  That is right in Dave’s range.  National delegate lead for her will be less than 100, most likely around 60.  This is close big picture wise.

[UPDATE by Julia] 11:45 Facebook tells me that my friend “Debra Bowen says: if the SOS website is slow for you, close your browser and start it again. We solved the problem an hour ago, but you may have to restart your browser.”  Good to know.

[UPDATE by Dave] 11:55 Holy crap!  I hadn’t been looking in on this, and I don’t know if this is being reported on the teevee, but John McCain is winning EVERY Congressional district right now.  Every one, except the two in Alameda that haven’t been counted yet.  Only a few are even that close right now.

Every Congressional district on the Republican side is winner-take-all.  McCain may SWEEP California.  That should give him what he needs to take the nomination, no?

[UPDATE by Dave] 12:10 Obama is catching up in a lot of key districts.  Keep an eye on CA-04 (now an 8-point spread), CA-30, CA-36, and the San Diego County districts.  Obama is starting to move there, but he has a long way to go.  He’s still getting buried in those Latino districts in SoCal.

California

CA Results Thread

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The polls close in a half-hour.  Best results at the Secretary of State’s website here.  For you delegate junkies out there (and I know you’re out there), you can find the returns by Congressional district here.

I don’t know if the early returns tell us a lot.  I think it’s going to be a toss-up between Obama and Clinton, and the same with McCain and Romney.  If Romney loses here I expect him to drop out tomorrow.  For Obama, a win would be very significant for spin, but the delegate counts are where the action is on the Democratic side.  This race is going on, for a while, at least.

[UPDATE by Julia] 8:27 PM Bowers has the exit poll numbers at Clinton 50.7–44.4 Obama.  If that holds up with her absentee edge it could be a good night for her.  Then again it was only a few weeks ago that she was up here by 20 points.  She was expected to win handily all along.

[UPDATE by Julia] 8:45 PM MSNBC exit polling demographics: Obama won the white vote 49-43, Black vote 89-11, Clinton winning Latino vote 2-1 and the Asian vote about 3-1.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:12 PM CNN has more votes in than the SoS. 14.2% to 5.8% in.  CNN has it at 55% to 32%.  The SoS has it at 53.9 to 32.6%% .  looking at the counties LA, SF and Sacto don’t have any numbers in.  I see some in Marin, Fresno and a decent chunk from SD.  This is going to be a long night folks.  Absentees come in first.  LA typically comes in late, but they don’t have the same problems as other counties with counting the paper ballots.  They did not have to switch their machines.  Sacto has been warning for a while that they will be slow.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:16 No sooner do I update, but MSNBC calls it for California.  This feels premature based on the numbers coming from the registrar.  They do have experienced number crunchers on the TeeVee.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:30 14.8% in from the SoS: 54.8% to 31.8% Clinton over Obama.  Some LA numbers in.

[UPDATE by Lucas] 9:41 46 out of 53 congressional districts reporting, McCain with significant leads in every district (woah, wrong number: 15.2% of precincts total reporting).

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Clinton Campaign Response to LA County Double Bubble Trouble

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(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign)

Here is the short story, if you are just coming to it right now. Chron:

The Los Angeles system requires that decline-to-state voters not only ask specifically for a Democratic ballot – but also fill in a special bubble on the ballot specifically indicating their desire to vote on the Democratic presidential ticket. Failure to fill in the bubble voids their presidential ballot.

The Courage Campaign has contacted Los Angeles County election officials “demanding that they count the votes and that they inform voters of this ‘bubble trouble,”‘ said Jacobs. “They finally agreed they didn’t know how to count the votes.”

Our lawyer Steve Reyes caught this over the weekend.  This problem has existed for several cycles and was caught late.  The Obama campaign held a conference call with reporters about this earlier today and one of our lawyers Steve Kauffman was on it.  They are very much concerned, as we are that voter intent will not be determined.  The law is pretty clear on this.

The Clinton Campaign on the other hand…

But Averell “Ace” Smith, campaign manager for California campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he is mystified by the Election Day complaints from the Obama team, since the rules for decline to state voters – specifically the requirement that request Democratic ballots – have been a matter of public record posted on the California Secretary of State’s web site for months.

“Every California campaign has known the ground rules on this for three months,” he said. “I can’t imagine why they waited until 2 pm. on Election Day to wake up … it strikes me as strange. If you wait until the last minute to complain, they must really be worried we’re going to win.”

“We’ve certainly worked with our voters for months and months” to educate them on the process, he said. “They’re blaming other people for not having done their homework…this is nothing more than a cynical attempt to create confusion.”

 

This is extremely disappointing.  All the Courage Campaign has been asking for all along is that the Los Angeles County ROV finds a way to limit this from happening in the first place and then to make sure these votes are counted, if the word does not get out.  That is all the Obama campaign is doing at this point.  This is a localized problem to Los Angeles, but there are a lot of voters there who may have been effected.

This is all about determining voter intent.  It is pretty clear when someone asks for a Democratic ballot and then votes for that person that they intended to vote for a Democrat.  The second bubble is not necessary to determine intent.  The ballot was designed this way to make vote tabulation faster, but the side effect is that voters are disenfranchised.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Federation, a nonpartisan voter watchdog organization, said she believed that the LA County procedures represent “an unnecessary extra step” for voters.

“I understand why LA County does is, but I think there is the possibility that some voters will be unwittingly disenfranchised,” though the county has chosen the system because it is more economical and enables them to count ballots faster, Alexander said.

And she said it could have major implications.

“It is a big deal in this election because California voters finally have a say in a presidential primary and LA is the state’s largest voting district” encompassing all or parts of 12 Congressional Districts, she said. In California delegates are awarded to the candidates based on how well they do in the popular vote in a congressional district, and “if there is a big undercount, it could change the delegate count.”

They need to count all of the votes.

California

California Democratic Primary — Bring Your Own Ballot

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The biggest story of the day is the meltdown with DTS voters in LA. It is so bad that the Obama campaign had to drop an “URGENT” email with phone numbers for their Election Protection lawyers (while Hillary’s campaign is issuing statements that there is nothing to be seen, move along…these are not the droids your looking for). But that isn’t the only place, the huge DTS surge for Democrats has hit Silicon Valley with another problem. From the Registrar (pdf, h/t to Silence in the comments):

Due to higher-than-expected turnout in today’s Presidential Primary Election, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters is implementing backup voting procedures to help mitigate potential ballot shortages. The shortage is largely attributed to an unanticipated surge in the number of Decline-to-State (nonpartisan) voters who are choosing to vote a Democratic Party ballot.

Can’t quite see how this was “unanticipated” but it is clear that there are lots of people in full C.Y.A. mode today. How are they dealing with it? BYOB, of course!

Precincts that experience ballot shortages will be provided plain paper copies of the affected ballot types to ensure the continuation of voting. Voters can also choose to cast their ballot on electronic voting machines or use the ballot pages from their Sample Ballot and Voter Information Pamphlet.

[…]

The Registrar’s Office is asking that voters who are registered with a political party, particularly Democratic voters, bring their Sample Ballot and Voter Information Pamphlets with them to the polls in case backup voting procedures are necessary. The Registrar’s Office is also asking nonpartisan Vote by Mail voters who want to crossover to a partisan ballot to bring their original ballot with them to the polls to avoid having to vote provisionally.

UPDATE: And don’t forget about Contra Costa County:

In some precincts in Contra Costa County, independent voters showed up to the polls and poll workers told them erroneously that they could not get a nonpartisan ballot, a Democrat Party ballot or American Independent party ballot. The county sent workers out into the field trying to fix the situation, and called the precincts to explain that they needed to give those voters ballots.

Steve Weir, Contra Costa County registrar of voters, said he had heard of three or four reports of decline-to-state voters not getting the ballots they requested. He said he was at a loss to explain it because poll workers were trained in the legalities of who can get which type of ballot.

Weir encouraged voters who encounter this problem to request a provisional ballot.

On top of everything, the Registrar gives crap advice. Don’t ask for a provisional, demand a Democratic ballot if you are DTS. Steve Weir should be immediately shitcanned if he doesn’t resign in shame.