Trailhead : Nevada caucus

So, About Those At-Large Caucuses ...

Christopher Beam — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:22:00 GMT

You may have noticed our slight obsession with Nevada’s electoral wild card, the at-large precincts. These special caucuses, held in nine of the largest Las Vegas casinos, were supposed to give Obama an edge; people figured the culinary workers who worked there (and who endorsed him) would put down their spatulas and turn out for Obama in droves.

Well, consider this the latest death blow to the conventional wisdom. (A phrase that, after this election cycle, should probably be retired. It’s been that wrong.) Just look at the results from the casinos:

The Bellagio – Clinton: 58.06% Obama: 41.94%
Luxor – Clinton: 44.16% Obama: 55.84%
Mirage – Clinton: 53.62% Obama: 46.38%
Rio – Clinton: 64.29% Obama: 35.71%
Caesar’s Palace – Clinton: 48.48% Obama: 51.52%
Paris – Clinton: 68.85% Obama: 31.15%
Flamingo – Clinton: 51.02% Obama: 48.98%
Wynn – Clinton: 50.63% Obama: 49.37%
New York, New York – Clinton: 58.82% Obama: 41.18%

As you can see, Clinton won in seven of the nine at-large precincts. So much for Bill’s blubbering. And good thing that lawsuit failed, right?

So what happened? As usual, the explanation is as unsatisfying as the prediction. Here’s one possibility: The turnout at the casinos was much, much lower than expected. (Only about 160 people showed up to the Caesar’s Palace caucus; the Wynn, which was expected to draw 1,000 people, had less than 400.) And those who did turn out didn’t swing toward Obama any more than the rest of the state.

Ironically, this means the at-large precincts helped Hillary more than they helped Obama—and for the very reason the NSEA filed its lawsuit. The one scenario in which individuals at the casino caucuses would have disproportionate influence—super high statewide turnout, coupled with super low at-large turnout—turned out to be the case. But instead of helping Obama, as predicted, it gave Hillary a boost.

In other news, down is up, the sky is green, and a school of fish just cycled past my window.

Edwards Has a PR Problem

Chadwick Matlin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:49:00 GMT

Thanks to the caucuses' arcane viability rules, John Edwards appears to have finished with only 4 percent of the vote in Nevada, but that's probably not the case. Edwards actually has 4 percent of the delegates assigned, not 4 percent of the popular vote. Edwards probably ended up with 10-15 percent of the popular vote, but that doesn't matter. The number that gets broadcast all over the country is that nasty and brutish number four. The same thing happened to Bill Richardson and Joe Biden in Iowa.

Edwards' campaign has to figure out how to spin a 4-percent finish into momentum for South Carolina's native son primary. It won't be easy. Edwards doesn't have much traction in the polls, nor much money to counteract dead-man-walking talk. Plus, Obama continues to dominate the anti-lobby, Americans-want-change vote.

Here's what Edwards can try to do: make a last stand in South Carolina's primary on Jan. 26. This sounds like common sense, but Edwards doesn't seem to be paying attention to that these days. He just gave his I-finished-in-third-but-I'm-not-giving-up speech in Georgia, not South Carolina. Georgia votes Feb. 5, which is more than 2 weeks away. Plus, it has a large black population, a demographic in which Obama trounces Edwards. Edwards needs a good-news peg before then, and the only place to get it is South Carolina.

We know Edwards is comfortable talking about mills, his daddy, and that he grew up in the Palmetto State. Plus, he won there in 2004. Just because Obama and Clinton look like they have the black and establishment Democrat vote locked up, respectively, doesn't mean Edwards should stop fighting in South Carolina. After all, he's best at that.

Union Be Damned

Chadwick Matlin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton's projected win in the Nevada caucuses is a big deal. Not because she won—polls had her in the lead going into the caucus--but because the culinary union failed.

After Barack Obama's win in Iowa and his defeat in New Hampshire, Nevada's culinary workers' union endorsed Barack Obama—a move that pundits, aides, and staffers all said greatly boosted Obama's chances and maybe even guaranteed a win. But something seems to have gone wrong.

Latinos make up a large but undetermined portion of the culinary union, yet they favored Clinton over Obama 2.5 to 1, a loss that is foreboding for Obama as he moves forward and may have doomed him in Nevada. Moreover, Obama lost to Clinton in Clark County, where a large majority of Nevadans live and where the union has especially large sway because of its epicenter in Las Vegas. Even the controversial at-large caucus sites couldn't help Obama beat Clinton. Clinton's camp said that the at-large sites may give Obama a 5-point jump in the results, but it doesn't seem that ended up happening. If it did, then Obama has even bigger problems than he thought.

Clinton may have Harry Reid's son to thank for overcoming the union's power. Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid endorsed Clinton early on and seems to have delivered enough establishment support to sap the union's strength. With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Clark County chose Clinton over Obama 54 percent to 44 percent.

One last tidbit: Clinton had more than twice the number of Nevada unions supporting her as either Obama or John Edwards. They weren't as large as Obama's, but union members may have fallen in line with the leadership's wishes more resolutely. Exit polls show that she was tied with Obama among union members.

Obama struggled to grab union support in the early primary states, so the culinary union was thought to be a major breakthrough. Instead, it may have just allowed him to save face.

Photograph of Hillary Clinton on Slate's home page by Elise Amendola/AP Photo.

Obama's Entrance Poll Woes

Chadwick Matlin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:46:00 GMT

If the entrance polls are suggestive of real votes in Nevada, Barack Obama has a big problem on his hands. Ms. Clinton, meanwhile, has reason to celebrate and wonder why all the hoopla over unions and caucus sites was necesasry. According to CNN:

Seventy-two percent of voters surveyed were older than 45, and they favored Clinton over Obama.
More female voters than male. Both genders favored Clinton over Obama, but women especially so (52 percent to 30 percent).
Sixty-five percent of voters say this week's debate in Nevada played into their decision, and Clinton leads among those voters by considerable margins.
Eighty-three percent of voters were Democrats, 52 percent of whom chose Clinton and 33 percent of whom chose Obama.
The silver lining for Obama is the 12 percent of voters who said they were supporting John Edwards. Reason follows that they would go to Obama as a second-choice candidate, not Hillary, because of the two candidates' change messages.

We must caution that these are entrance polls, so they aren't the most reliable metric in the race.

Preparing for Romney's Spin

Chadwick Matlin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:32:00 GMT

In a caucus that nobody cared about, Mitt Romney is the predicted winner of the Republican contest in Nevada today. Yay for Mitt.

Romney and Ron Paul were the only two candidates who paid any attention to Nevada, which lost its importance when South Carolina Republicans scheduled their own primary for today. Leading up to Romney's win, the GOP candidates were given a choice. They could either make a statement down South or out West. All of them chose South Carolina, including Romney.

But after a heavy ad presence and campaign schedule, Romney couldn't find traction in South Carolina, so he decided to pull out and switch focus to Nevada, where CNN reports 25 percent of cacus-goers were Mormons.

So, not to be rude, but Mitt's win means very little. But Romney's campaign won't paint it that way. Here's a guide to some possible narratives that Romney's camp will spin, and why they're all hogwash.

Expected spin: Nevada win bodes well for California! Spinback: When Nevada originally entered the hallowed early primary-state club, the parties thought Nevada could be the bellwether for the rest of the region. That meant it was going to take California's delegate-rich temperature and give the Nevada winner a head start to win in Reagan-land. But because only Paul and Romney paid attention, Nevada's result won't carry much sway in California, where all the remaining Republicans will compete.
Expected spin: We're the delegate leader! Spinback: Romney is now guaranteed to be the delegate leader, regardless of what happens in South Carolina. But only Romney's campaign will think that's important. Of Romney's three wins, only one has come in a contested state (Michigan), while the other two have been in states the rest of the field has left alone (Wyoming and Nevada). Romney has yet to prove he can win when it counts and ran away from South Carolina when the going gets tough. He has to earn his delegates to have a delegate lead carry any import. Plus, even though the campaign is becoming less and less about momentum as Super Tuesday approaches, South Carolina's winner is going to be the real newsmaker today.
Expected spin: Even evangelicals likes us! Spinback: CNN is reporting that outside of Romney's near-unanimous Mormon support, he also beat Mike Huckabee among evangelicals. Perhaps, but Huckabee never went to Nevada nor did he have any ads running, so Romney was essentially competing against Huckabee's media persona.

Photograph of Mitt Romney on Slate's home page by LM Otero/AP.

Bill's Caucus Beef

Christopher Beam — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:07:00 GMT

It’s no secret that union endorsements are more powerful in states with caucuses than in those with primaries. Without the privacy of the voting booth, you’re much less likely to flout your union’s preference. But that’s exactly what Bill Clinton is asking Nevadans to do.

The former president told an audience in Sparks, Nev., yesterday that he had spoken with members of the Culinary Workers union who said they would ignore the union's endorsement and caucus for Hillary. “They think they're better than you are at identifying and physically getting people to their caucus sites,” he said. “And I bet they're wrong.”

The Clintons have made their disdain for caucuses plenty clear. “You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard,” Hillary said last week after Obama won Iowa and the Culinary endorsement. “That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time—they're disenfranchised.”

But then, when it became clear that otherwise-disenfranchised culinary workers would likely dominate the at-large precincts set up in Vegas hotels, the Clintons opposed that, too. The Nevada State Education Association, whose leadership largely supports Clinton, filed a suit protesting (legitimately, it seems) that the at-large precincts give caucus-goers disproportionate influence. Bill agreed with the complaint: “I think the rules oughta be the same for everybody.” Of course, there was no objection to the process before Obama won the union's backing.

This argument—that caucuses are inherently unfair and undemocratic—has merit. It doesn't allow everyone to vote. It weights some votes more than others. There's no secret ballot. But somehow these points only come up in the statements of the losing (or handicapped to lose) party. Watch them resurface if Hillary doesn’t win Nevada. If she does … well, then maybe the system isn’t so bad after all.

UPDATE 4:22 p.m.: The Culinary Workers union weighs in on Bill's statements. “I think if we had endorsed Hillary Clinton, they probably wouldn’t be saying that,” spokesman Chris Bohner tells me. “I think they would be urging members to follow the union leadership.”

Nevada Caucus Chaos

Christopher Beam — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:19:00 GMT

The lawsuit filed by a Nevada teachers’ union on Friday to keep Vegas Strip workers (the place, not the profession) from caucusing in their workplaces is making a lot of people look and sound crazy. But hey, that’s a caucus.

The main reason for the rage: The lawsuit is transparently political. The Nevada State Education Association hasn’t endorsed a candidate yet, but many of its leaders openly support Hillary Clinton. Now that the Culinary Workers union has endorsed Barack Obama, the nine new “At-Large” precincts set up in Vegas hotels—where a vast number of culinary workers will likely turn out—threaten Clinton’s prospects. The plaintiffs claim that these caucus-goers would have disproportionate influence compared to Nevadans who caucus in their home districts. But seeing as they never complained about this fact until the Culinary Workers endorsed Obama, their last-minute objection looks suspect.

Obama practically turned it into a civil rights issue: “Are we going to let a bunch of lawyers try to prevent us from bringing about change in America?” A group of Nevada teachers agreed with him, firing off an angry letter to their own union asking it to drop the suit.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton weighed in in the name of fairness: “I think the rules ought to be the same for everyone. I question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and limit to a certain kind of workers.”

But even if the lawsuit is political, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The plaintiffs’ main contention—that voters in at-large precincts will have more influence than other Nevadans—may well be accurate. All Nevada precincts allocate one delegate per 50 registered voters; the at-large precincts would likely allocate more than that, according to the lawsuit (PDF here).

But then again, caucus math is arbitrary in the first place. Who came up with the 15 percent viability requirement? Why hold the caucus at 11 a.m., instead of after dinner? Why not create at-large precincts all over the state, not just on the Strip? The whole system is so random that this deviation from sanity seems no more offensive than any of the others. And seeing as this is Nevada's maiden voyage with the caucus system, there's no precedent. Bon voyage!