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Exit polls: Most Clinton voters think superdelegates should follow results of primaries and caucuses
According to March 4 exit polls, 57% of Clinton voters and 73% of Obama voters agreed with proposition that superdelegates should support the results of primaries and caucuses.
Details at The Jed Report.
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Also Greg Sargent notes Newsweek's new poll suggesting Democrats are split on the question of superdelegates.
Should neither Clinton nor Obama secure enough delegates to win the nomination (a scenario that looks increasingly likely), 43 percent of Democrats said they would prefer that the candidate trailing in the delegate count concede the nomination, while 42 percent think superdelegates should choose the nominee. Should the ball end up in the superdelegates' court, most respondents (42 percent) think they should choose the best-qualified nominee in their judgment, while 38 percent believe they should choose the person with the popular vote lead.
Neither question appears to get at the real issue at hand.
The first does not address what voters think superdelegates should, it addresses what voters think candidates should do.
The second question asks whether superdelegates should follow "the popular vote" writ large -- but that's not the issue. The issue is whether superdelegates should support the results of primaries and caucuses.
That may sound like splitting hairs, but it's not. Hillary Clinton claims a different popular vote total than Barack Obama. The only thing everybody agrees on his how many pledged delegates you have. I'm not sure how I would have answered the Newsweek question; I certainly would have said no if I felt they were asking if superdelegates should consider look at the beauty contests in Michigan and Florida, for example.
Comments (5)
This is an important reason to use delegate totals. Caucuses are not counted in the popular vote totals, and especially this year, where caucuses have had huge turnouts, that makes a huge difference - something like 100,000 votes difference (Texas doesn't count because all the caucus votes are exclusively a subset of the primary voters, so they can't be counted as two popular votes).
March 8, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
JedReport, respectfully, the analysis is oversimplified and does not anticipate the permutations available to the candidates to make a numbers-based argument to the SDs. If HRC loses the popular vote (granting the speciousness of representing that we can ever know the real popular vote, as noted by Furion), she can also suggest that the SDs count how many congressional districts each candidate won (I don't know what the numbers are to date, but strongly suspect HRC leads O on that count). OR, HRC could suggest that all the SDs who are members of Congress vote in accordance with how their state voted, which might also favor her. The bottom line is that the survey itself was too simplistic to genuinely ascertain whether voters would be open to systematically counting SDs based on something other than popular vote, as opposed to the simple "judgment" method.
In the end, I have to think the SDs, most of whom are career elected officials, will be reluctant to vote against the pledged delegate winner. But, as I've noted elsewhere, should HRC pull in enough pledged delegates to come close to O's total, her influence in the party may be sufficient to bring enough SDs over to give her the nomination. I'd personally like to see a survey that plays out the contingencies more thoroughly and see what voters think of a scenario like the last one I described.
March 8, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I respect your thoughts but I don't think I've oversimplified.
In this posting I was citing an exit poll survey and giving reasons why I think the Newsweek poll seems to have flawed questions.
If I were making a broad argument, you might make the same assertion, however.
One thing that is important to note is that because John Edwards has 26 delegates, anyone who wins a majority of PDs will have at least a 27 PD lead (or 26 if we figure out how to get MI and FL involved which I support).
There is no such thing as a tie; beyond a major scandal, I can't imagine any reason that would justify reversing one candidate's lead on behalf of the other.
March 8, 2008 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the Texas Dem primary exit poll (62-33 in favor of voting based on the results of the primaries and caucuses):
If the Democratic nomination were to be decided by superdelegates, they should
Vote for who would have the best chance in November
Total 33%
Clinton 61%
Obama 38%
Vote based on results of the primaries and caucuses
Total 62%
Clinton 45%
Obama 54%
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21226009/
March 8, 2008 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to make sure everybody understands these numbers, the clinton obama numbers ohiomeister cites are subtotals; i.e., of the 33% who say "best chance in november", 61% are clinton suppoters and 38% are obama supporters.
In other words, overall (.61*.33) of primary voters there supported both clinton and the november argument. (.62*.45 ) of primary voters supported both clinton and the results argument.
Do the math and you find that 58% of clinton supporters favored the results argument.
The thing that may confuse some people is that most of the people who support the results argument are obama supporters, and vice versa. However, most clinton supporters still support the results argumetn.
It's the same reason why Obama has received more support from women than he has from men even though Clinton has received mroe support from women than Obama has from women...
March 8, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
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