What happened at the Washington State Republican Caucuses?

A lot of the so-called scandals this year in voting have really been people looking hard for the first time at procedures that have been in place for decades. For example, some were accusing the New Hampshire voting authorities of malicious intent for storing votes in reused boxes from fish packing and the like. The reality is, that is how it had been done for a long time, and no one had questioned the penny-pinching practice before.

But then, there are a few cases that make you wonder how serious election officials really are about accuracy. Consider this case from Washington State.

For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner...

But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain's lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn't have a chance and he'd shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

Apparently, the Huckabee campaign is furious and trying to get access to see the rest of the votes counted. Have any of our Mod-Bloggers on-site in Washington heard anything more about this?

Obama wins every state on Saturday

Pundits have been saying that the remaining primary and caucus states favor Obama, but I am not sure any of them truly expected him to sweep every state awarding delegates this weekend! This has got to be scary for Senator Clinton who has spent every waking moment since leaving the White House, trying to prepare her party for a return.

Obama's winning margins ranged from substantial to crushing.

He won roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington state and Nebraska, and almost 90 percent in the Virgin Islands.

Nearly complete Louisiana returns showed Obama with 57 percent of the vote, to 36 percent for the former first lady. As in his earlier Southern triumphs in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Obama, a black man, rode a wave of African-American support to victory in Louisiana. Clinton won the white vote overwhelmingly.

In all, the Democrats scrapped for 161 delegates in the night's contests.

In incomplete allocations, Obama won 72, Clinton 40.

On the GOP side, Huckabee took Kansas and Lousiana (though he won no delates from LA, since he did not cross the 50% threshhold). The battle for the nomination may be essentially over, but the battle for the heart of the Party of Lincoln is just heating up.

Romney wins Maine Caucuses

The choice of many Mod-Bloggers appears to have won the Pine Tree State rather handily. Of course, not many Republicans bothered to campaign there, not because of allergies to Lobster or New England wit, but because they focussed on the lucrative Super Tuesday states. Still, this win may produce some momentum going into next week.

The only big news is that Ron Paul supporters had been pushing Maine as "the one state that Ron Paul will definitely win." Too bad for America's OB-GYN.

Winners and Losers

The results are in!

• Romney won Nevada with 51%
• Clinton won Nevada with 51% (but Obama gets the same number of delegates)
• McCain wins South Carolina with 33%
• Fred Thompson is widely expected to announce his departure from the race today or tomorrow.

Next up, Florida.

Star Wars Guide to the 2008 Primaries

When I first saw the Star Wars Guide to the candidates, I thought it was a cheap attempt at bad humor. Turns out I was both right and wrong. I found myself quickly transitioning from skepticism to unwilling laughter. Click on thru for the whole thing.

Grand Moff Giuliani

We need a president who has experience running a large, unwieldy government. Like the Empire. "Hey, they said it was unmanageable, ungovernable... a large majority wanted to leave and live somewhere else," his campaign ads say. Well, Giuliani certainly turned things around... he built the Death Star! "By the time I left office," he continues, "the Death Star was the best example of conservative government in the galaxy!" Some folks might disagree with his foreign policy, though, consisting as it does of pretty much blasting whole planets into rubble.

I honestly believe if this list were to appear in local newspapers, it might actually sway some voters in South Carolina and Nevada.

Romney wins Wyoming Caucus

CRChair's favorite candidate racked up a win today in Wyoming. Mitt Romney has won at least 6 of the 12 delegates from the state leaving Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter each one delegate. The rest will be decided later tonight.

Obama and Huckabee Victory Speeches from Iowa

I did not stay up to watch the returns come in. If you also chose sleep over political curiosity, then you may be interested to see the victory speeches below.

Barack Obama

I will admit that even though I am *not* a supporter, Obama's speech did give me chills.

Mike Huckabee

I will admit the only thing that really went through my mind during Huckabee's speech is, "I hope if he wins it all he doesn't float the idea of Chuck Norris for VP."

Oh, and apparently Chris Dodd and Joe Biden dropped out of the race last night as well. No word of any Republicans dropping prior to New Hampshire.

Huckaee, Obama win Iowa

The night is over and the big winners are Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. This is a huge win for both of them, as it catapults them - at least for the moment - from underdogs into front-runners. Next up is New Hampshire, where it is still anyone's game.

My own prediction is that Huckabee loses New Hampshire, now that the Religious Right has made their statement, but that Obama probably will take it for the Democratic side. The question of the night will be "Can Hillary remain in the race after two major losses?" The answer will be yes.

What do our Mod-Blog readers think? Did the right men win? Or did short-term thinking make Iowans choose wrongly?

The caucusing process

My wife has asked on several occasions over the past couple months what's the difference between a primary and a caucus. Typically we all know how a primary works - it's just like any other election - while a caucus is different. I was sent this link to a fun, clear description of how the Iowa caucus works - it's from hillaryclinton.com. If you want a less biased version of basically the same information here's Wikipedia's explanation.