Latest Politics Blog
Watching California? Watch Edwards.
Posted by Josh Gerstein
Wed, 6 Feb 2008 at 12:29 AM
updated 2:02 AM
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T |
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While a lot of news outlets are dropping the vote count for John Edwards from their graphics, that tally is critical to knowing how Senator Clinton is faring there.
In early returns, Mr. Edwards had 10% to 15% of the vote. That signals that those early votes were almost entirely absentee ballots.
As more of today's votes come in, the Mr. Edwards's percentage should drop and Senator Obama's will likely come up. Probably not enough to catch Mrs. Clinton, but it will be a lot closer than it looks now.
It's also worth noting that the networks and others calling the state for Mrs. Clinton did so when polls were still being held open by a judge in the Oakland-Berkeley area, an Obama stronghold.
The exit poll results are suggesting a solid win for Mrs. Clinton in California, but the numbers showing her prevailing or tying in all age groups, including 18-29 year olds, are surprising and might suggest something is a bit off in the exit poll sample.
More evidence the CA exit poll could be off: it shows African Americans at 6% of total Democratic turnout, Latinos at 29%, Asians at 8%.
These numbers track with the overall California population, but substantially understate the role blacks play in Democratic politics in California. This could suggest the California exit poll skews inaccurately against Mr. Obama.
This exit poll issue also being discussed here and here.
EARLY MORNING UPDATE: Numbers are still being tallied out in California, but it looks like absentee ballots accounted for more than 50% of the total vote, which favored Mrs. Clinton since her numbers seemed to be fading a bit towards the end. Also explains Mr. Edwards racking up 6% of the results so far.
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