Posted on March 7th, 2008
So the race is over and the result are in for the primary portion of the Democratic election here in Texas. Election leaders are still counting the votes from the caucuses, which could take a while given that the voting process was entirely on paper with hand-written candidate preferences. Still, we can we learn a lot from this process:
The Vote
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in Texas, but because of the way the state allocates its delegates she only picked up a net of four. That’s because Texas does not assign delegates by state-wide popular vote, but rather by state Senate district. Electoral-Vote has the breakdown, where it’s pretty easy to see the problem for both candidates: you can’t divide people into parts.
Take the Senate district from where I grew up: SD-1. Senator Clinton won by 17%, but there are an even number of delegates for that district (4 delegates). Because you can’t divide one of them into a fractional delegate, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both received two delegates for their troubles. The situation happened in reverse in my current home district: SD-25. Senator Obama won by 9%, but the district’s six delegates were once again divided by two giving each candidate three delegates. In fact, the only places where either candidate picked up anything were where there were odd numbers of delegates or where one candidate truly defeated the other (ex: SD-20 and SD-23).
Barack Obama has performed much better in the caucuses, however the results from these are arriving slowly. Slate has a nice article explaining why the caucus results are taking so long to total, but the upshot is that Texas has a ridiculous snail-mail based system that takes forever for any kind of communication to get done. Slate compares Texas to Iowa where the results are known right away because Iowa is used to having important primaries where people actually care.
Still, early indications suggest that Senator Obama will likely pick up three to four delegates from the caucuses, possibly giving him a delegate advantage over Senator Clinton by the time the counting is finished. This will undoubtedly unhinge someone, although whether it will be the Clinton campaign, the Texas Democratic Party, or the American media, I’m not sure.
Oh yeah, and John McCain won the Republican primary or something. There was huge excitement here for that contest. Yeah.
The Campaign
Of course, the campaign in Texas was completely unusual compared to most elections. Candidates actually visited and campaigned, although no serious attention was paid to issues important to the state. Both of the Democratic candidates were circumspect about NAFTA while visiting Texas, but openly blasted it in Ohio. Why? Because NAFTA makes Texas a heck of a lot of money. We like it, thank you very much. Ohio can suck it.
Much was made of Obama’s ground organization, but the reality was curiously not what I expected. If the media was to be believed, I thought we would see armies of Obama supporters flooding across the state carrying his message of “Change” everywhere they went. However, no such mass ever materialized. Instead, I saw exactly the opposite: Hillary supporters out in droves with signs, buttons, and stickers everywhere they went.
Case in point, at my precinct’s polling place, there were several Hillary supporters out front who were well dressed, had nicely printed flyers, and carried large signs. On the other hand, there were only two Obama supporters, both of whom were more poorly dressed, and neither carried a large Obama sign. I had to see the stickers on their jackets to realize they weren’t actually part of the Hillary group.
Much has been said about Howards Dean’s 50 state strategy and how Obama has more deftly executed on it than Clinton, however Texas was almost the reverse. Take this graphic from the New York Times which shows where the Obamas and Clintons campaigned and opened offices. Both candidates paid attention to the major metropolitan areas, but only the Clintons branched out to other smaller cities. Meanwhile, both candidates had offices all over the state, but the Obama campaign chose to open multiple (redundant?) offices in the more major population centers while ignoring smaller rural cities, especially in West Texas. What baffles me is why there was not an Obama office in Lubbock, home of Texas Tech University and a source of much of the college student enthusiasm that has supported his campaign.
Many have wondered if the Clinton campaign did well in Texas because of Rush Limbaugh who told Republicans to vote for her to stretch out the Democratic campaign process. And it’s true, the most Republican districts favored Hillary Clinton. However, as I pointed out in my earlier post, many Republicans were voting against her as well, leading me to believe the Limbaugh effect probably didn’t materialize.
I actually believe that Obama lost the Texas vote because of sloppy campaigning. Hillary Clinton kicked his ass in the polls because she got her act together at the last minute, built a real ground organization, and at least conveyed the appearance of a successful campaign. Obama won the caucuses because of the raw enthusiasm he can create from thin air, but to continue his success against the Clinton campaign he needs to get his act together before the next primaries or else he’s a loser for the rest of the campaign.
For anyone who watches 
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