Welcome Leap-Year February!
C'mon, Iowa! Vermont has sent your two of our best. Don't screw it up this time!!
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1:00:00 AM
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Howard Dean and the Deaniacs were trailblazers. These things take time, but the balance can shift suddenly when it reaches a tipping point. I have hopes this will finally be the year the pendulum swings.
ReplyDeleteI left a number of links at the end of the previous thread. And now to bed.
--Alan
Hmmm....very mixed metaphors.....
ReplyDelete--Alan
Just in from politicalwire.com (as well as as several other interesting items).--Alan
ReplyDelete=====================
The final Quinnipiac poll in Iowa finds Donald Trump jumping to a solid lead over Ted Cruz, 31% to 24%, followed by Marco Rubio at 17% and Ben Carson at 8%. No other candidate gets more than 4%.
In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders holds a slight lead over Hillary Clinton, 49% to 46%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “The size of the turnout tonight will likely be the key factor, especially on the Democratic side. High turnouts with lots of new caucus participants likely would mean a good night for Sen. Bernie Sanders, and for Donald Trump.”
Blizzard heading for Iowa later tonight. Not clear whether before or after the caucuses. My read is that a blizzard around caucus time would be bad news for Hillary, as reports suggest many of her followers are less committed.
DeleteChicago is expected to get a few inches of snow tomorrow, but no real blizzard.
An article relevant to blizzards and caucuses:
DeleteUS Senator Disenfranchised by Iowa Caucus Rules - Click
Looking at the map on the NYT interactive caucus page,there's an awful lot of Clinton blue vs. Sanders green. Guess I should be grateful not to be an O'Malley supporter. He only has a smattering of squares. But it's still disheartening. I really don't want to have to vote for Hillary.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Cat. If we keep having to hold our nose when voting, some of us are going to pass out.
DeleteI have nothing against Hilary. It's just that I like Bernie better.
DeleteFrom Daily Kos' explanation:
ReplyDelete"That winds up giving a disadvantage to the counties where there are lots of college students (like Johnson County), who tend to not show up for midterms—meaning fewer delegates two years later for the presidential caucus. And that’s why some analysts are saying that even if a huge surge of unexpected voters for Bernie Sanders does show up on Monday, its impact will be somewhat blunted; his support is heavily concentrated in college towns, and with the number of delegates already fixed in place, dramatically expanded turnout won’t get him a dramatically expanded number of delegates in those places."
Discouraging.
Here's a link to the full piece:
Deletehttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/1/1477994/-The-Daily-Kos-Elections-county-by-county-guide-of-what-to-expect-in-Iowa-s-Democratic-caucuses
Current standing on HuffPost is 628 state convention delegates for Clinton, 625 for Sanders. That's about as close to a tie as I can imagine.
ReplyDeleteO'Malley has 7 and has officially dropped out of the race.
DeleteCohn
ReplyDelete10:42 pm ETInvalid Date
Not to interrupt the flow, but this Democratic race could not be much closer. Clinton leads by just six-tenths of a percent with 87 percent counted.
This is from the NYT interactive page. The interruption is to the flow of yammer about the Republican candidates. Huckaby has dropped out.
DeleteWow, it's a dead heat between Hillary and Bernie!! 50-50 with 89.7% of precincts reporting. Does anyone know the difference between a SDE and a DEL?
ReplyDeleteI'm referring to the righthand column on the Washington Post site.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-clinton-cautiously-optimistic-ahead-of-iowa-caucuses/2016/02/01/914388ae-c88a-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html
Wow! I hadn't heard that O'Malley has dropped out. Is he sending his delegators anywhere in particular?
Donno for sure but would assume del is a regular delegate and SDE is a super delegate.
DeleteNo, SDE is delegate to the state convention, which officially selects the delegates to the national convention. DEL is the expected distribution of national convention delegates based on split of state delegates.
DeleteThe AP is calling the republican side for Cruz .
ReplyDeleteCohn
ReplyDelete11:24 pm ETInvalid Date
Clinton's lead has expanded modestly. I'm not sure what just came in, but she's now ahead by nearly a percentage point. That's not much, but it's a lot more comfortable than her two-tenths-of-a-point lead from a few minutes ago.
SDE = State Delegate Equivalents. The caucuses elect delegates to the state convention, who elect delegates to the Democratic National Convention if memory serves me well. I think it was Rand Paul who took advantage of that a few years ago to end up with more convention delegates than anyone expected after the caucuses. Still virtually a dead heat, with both Sanders and Clinton winning quite a bit higher percentages than Obama did in 2008 (Edwards was in the running then).
ReplyDelete--Alan
Clinton is claiming victory and yammering on. Blah, blah.
DeleteNext stop, New Hampshire. Go get 'em, Bernie!
With 93% of caucuses reporting, Clinton leads Sanders by 0.2%. I like the trend.
ReplyDeleteAlan
I saw a few minutes ago it was a full percentage point. Hope that was wrong and she has to eat here victory speech.
DeleteLive results here, from Iowa Democratic Party, I think. [Click] With 94% of precincts counted, Clinton surges ahead to a lead of 0.3%.
ReplyDelete--Alan
LOL That's quite a surge.
DeleteSanders comes roaring back cutting Clinton's lead by a third! (To 0.2%.) I will research SDE's--I saw that someplace.
ReplyDeleteAlan
From Wikipedia about the Democratic caucuses:
ReplyDelete"When the voting is closed, a final head count is conducted, and each precinct apportions delegates to the county convention. These numbers are reported to the state party, which counts the total number of delegates for each candidate and reports the results to the media. Most of the participants go home, leaving a few to finish the business of the caucus: each preference group elects its delegates, and then the groups reconvene to elect local party officers and discuss the platform. The delegates chosen by the precinct then go to a later caucus, the county convention, to choose delegates to the district convention and state convention. Most of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are selected at the district convention, with the remaining ones selected at the state convention. Delegates to each level of convention are initially bound to support their chosen candidate but can later switch in a process very similar to what goes on at the precinct level; however, as major shifts in delegate support are rare, the media declares the candidate with the most delegates on the precinct caucus night the winner, and relatively little attention is paid to the later caucuses."
News Flash
ReplyDeleteMy YouTube channel has one thousand, seventy-six subscribers and over one million views! WHOOHOO!
Wow!
Delete--Alan
Here we are from Huffington Post:
ReplyDelete" The Iowa Democratic Party doesn't report vote counts. It reports State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs), predictions of who will attend the state-wide party convention."
--Alan
Ah. Thanks, Alan. Even after reading he Daily Kos explanation of the Iowa caucus system, I'm still confused. A primary would be a whole lot simpler!
DeleteWith things so close, we may not know the winner at the local caucus level until tomorrow--and then look at the sort of things that can happen:
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia about the 2012 Republican Caucus in Iowa:
"The 2012 Iowa caucuses took place on Tuesday, January 3, starting at 7 p.m. CST. Incumbent president Barack Obama only faced minor opposition in the Democratic caucus and received 98% of the vote, but the Republican caucus was heavily contested between several challengers. Initial results reported that Mitt Romney beat out Rick Santorum by just 8 votes, but when the final results came out two weeks later Rick Santorum secured the victory over Romney by a margin of 34 votes with Ron Paul in a strong 3rd. Results were certified by the Caucus but not by the Republican party who declared it a split decision due to missing reports from 8 precincts, but who later certified the caucus as a win for Santorum. The caucus winner changed yet again when the Iowa delegate totals were finally determined giving Ron Paul the win along with several other states that same weekend."
--Alan
The reporters were talking about that on the NYT interactive page. We'll have to wait and see. I still think Clinton was premature, to put it delicately, to give what sounded from the live tweeting like a victory speech. May she live to eat her words!
DeleteGreat graphics and live count (updates every 30 seconds) here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/2016-election-results/iowa/
With fewer than 30 precincts left to report, it looks like:
ReplyDelete1) It will be a photo finish between Sanders and Clinton;
2) O'Malley's SDE's will be more than the difference between the two leaders;
3) Given all the log rolling at the next two levels, the final decision could go either way.
4) It is, as Bernie said, a virtual tie.
But how the news media will play it, I don't know. I think that Bernie's take on it--a virtual tie--seems a good deal more convincing than HRC's claim she won. I hope it is close enough that the news media present it as a tie.
--Alan
With 14 precincts left to report, for a moment there it was Clinton = Sanders = 49.7%. Now C/S = 49.8/49.7
ReplyDelete--Alan
Some of the precincts are being decided by the flip of a coin! So far Hillary has won them all, so it is said (on the Guardian web site).
ReplyDelete--Alan
Here [Click] is the coin-toss story.
ReplyDelete--Alan
I was just reading the coin toss story. Argh! Absurd way to assign delegates!
DeleteAlso here's one about alleged Clinton voter fraud. I wonder how that will pan out.
Deletehttp://www.c-span.org/video/?c4578575/clinton-voter-fraud-polk-county-iowa-caucus