The Backwards Ways of the Primaries
Posted by Mike Merrill on January 9, 2008
As a start, let me just say that after 3 years of media coverage leading into this primary season, the media obviously still doesn’t have a clue. So when they speculate on the air from now on, I’m changing the channel until the results are in.
Moving on…
So in Primaries, each party votes for their candidates with the addition of Independents. In the last two primaries/caucuses Barack Obama has received more independent votes than Hillary Clinton and that is largely the reason for his success. However, Clinton has owned the votes of the registered Democrats. Which is better?
Well that all depends. When the majority of the voters in these things are Democrats and part of the base, Hillary has to be loving this. That means when she gets to a state where there aren’t as many independents, she will win hands down, while Obama will fall behind relying on the swing voters. This means that Clinton will most likely win the primaries and ultimately the nomination.
However, in a general election, the swing vote is what counts. That’s why people spend so much time in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states that could go either way. Registered Democrats will vote for their parties candidate 90% of the time and the same goes for Republicans. Where things get interesting is the swing vote.
Now we’ve already seen that Obama can pull in that swing vote with no problem while Clinton is struggling with it. So the scenario is going to break down where Clinton wins the nomination but can’t pull in the swing vote. She gets the Democrat vote because, well, she’s a democrat and they’ll vote for a monkey if he was on the ticket. However, because she is such a polarizing individual due to her last name, many independents shy away from her or just don’t vote at all. She loses the swing states because of this and Dem’s lose the election.
If Obama gets the nomination, which he won’t because he doesn’t have as much of the base behind him, he would still get those Democrat votes that Clinton got, but would also be able to get those independent votes in the swing states and win those.
So Obama can’t get the nomination because he can’t control the base, but this doesn’t matter in the general election.
Clinton will get the nomination because she owns the Democratic base, but can’t get the swing states in the general election.
Does this seem backwards to anyone?
