Biden Won't Make Second-Choice Deals

I asked Joe Biden's spokesman, Mark Paustenbach, whether reports that Biden is encouraging his second-choice caucus goers to pick Obama were true.

"We do not have a deal with any other candidate," he said.

"The staff meeting was to coordinate caucus strategy. We have no offers to do a deal and we have not reached out to others."

Comments

Ah well. It is getting kinda late for that sort of thing.

Hey, where's all the aggressive, nasty last-minute push-polling? I remember following Iowa four years ago and there was some pretty nasty stuff coming at Dean, presumably from Kerry, according to a wide variety of postings on Kos.

Posted by lampwick | January 2, 2008 7:08 PM

Is it just me, or is there a little wiggle room there? People have been distinguishing between Edwards/Kucinich in '04, which was really a 'deal' in that it was reciprocal, and Kucinich's support of Obama in '08, which is more of a not-quite endorsement. It's pretty clear that there's no deal between Biden and Obama, but I think Huffington Post was talking about something less formal.

Posted by RL | January 2, 2008 7:33 PM

Apparently Marc Ambinder is a retard. Would Biden kill any chances (no matter how small) in NH or elsewhere by cutting deals now? How about cutting deals with both sides of the table and crossing over to the person actually leading in entrance polls tommorrow?
All these so called pundits are at best mediocres with laptops. I can imagine scenes of university students press meeting. Bleah.

Posted by TVo OXy | January 2, 2008 8:32 PM

Fun trivia about second-choices and turn-out.
It is generally assumed high-turnout is good for Obama. BUT high turn-out means the treshold for viability is higher and that means the second-choices become all the more important. And since the number of delegates per precinct is limited, it may end up taking delegates off of the candidates who has the stronger group !

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 8:34 PM

Benjamin: Why would high-turnout not just mean it's more people coming out in the same statistical breakdown as the current polls. As in 25% for Clinton with 140,000 vs. 25% for Clinton with 160,000? Are you implying that if its high turnout all the voters over 140,000 are only for the top tier and that is why it would start to dilute the lower tier even more?

Posted by Ben | January 2, 2008 9:04 PM

The number of delegates per precinct is decided in advance and has nothing to do with turn-out or the demographics of the place, rather with their votes in previous pres and gov elections.

Let's imagine you have a precinct where 100 people show up. The 15% viability treshold means, say, Biden needs 15 people to form a group.
Let's imagine he has 22 people.
If 100 people (treshold is 15) show up, then he is viable and gets a delegate.
If 150 show up, treshold is 22 so he is still viable.
If 200 show up, treshold is 30. Boom. Biden is not viable and his supporters are free to go wherever.

It is too long and complicated to go into caucus math right here in the comments but try to imagine what happens with the ACTUAL scores of candidates after that. Remember the number of delegates are limited, the fact second-choices are going to be attracted to someone that can potentially not be Barry AND the fact that precinct captains are smart and can play games.
See, they can deprive Barry of a delegate by sending some of their supporters to a candidate that barely makes it for instance. Since a viable candidate gets a delegate it will have to go from somewhere, and it generally comes from the higher one because there is more wiggle room than with candidates with narrower score/delegate ratio.

So just as if a political bell curve, the advantage of bringing an extra person is generally exponential at the beginning, slows down after a while because of the limited number of delegates per precinct that have to be shared and may turn NEGATIVE after a certain treshold is reached in the precinct.

Following me ?

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 9:21 PM

PS: In my example, I keep Biden at the same level. Obviously it is not going to be so in the real-world but we are talking about the *theory* of whether it is really in Obama's advantage of having a high turnout of people we assume for the sake of the exercise are going to support him and him only. Obviously real-life is a little bit more fluid.

But that's clearly why people always say it s better to have steady support all over the state than pockets of very high support than is localized. There are only so many delegates to go around and they are not granted by force of the demographics of the district.

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 9:24 PM

Benjamin, the problem with your logic is that you're assuming the high turn-out won't skew particularly strong to any particular top tier Dem.

What you're missing is that if there's a huge turn-out, then that means there's an enormous amount of 1st time caucus-goers, where Obama is far and away stronger than Clinton and Edwards. The gains he gets from that are tangible and immediate, whereas the "2nd choicers" you're talking about could go to any candidate, Obama included.

So in your example. By my quick back-of-the-envelope calculations from the DMR cross-tabs, Obama's support among first-time caucus-goers almost doubles that of Hillary and Edwards. In a pool of 100, by their breakdown, he'd get 46% to Clinton's 28 and Edwards' 26.

So he gains a net 20 votes on Edwards and 18 on Clinton.

Now Biden's 22 disband. Say 60% go to Edwards (which is very high), 20% to Obama, and 15% to Clinton. That means Edwards gets 13 of those voters, Obama say 4, and Clinton 3. the other 2 say go home, or go to Richardson, or some such thing.

Now, with the influx of new voters and disbanding of Biden voters, Obama gets an extra 50 votes, Clinton an extra 31, and Edwards an extra 39.

Which suggests, in your example, that Edwards would benefit over Clinton, but neither over Obama.

There's the rub.

The way I got my #s, btw, was to calculate rough total "Obama votes" & "Clinton votes" etc in a given population based on DMR numbers, then calculate the % that's based on 1st timers, and then compare ratios to get a breakdown of how 1st timers separate out between the 3 candidates. Not the most accurate method in the world, of course, but it serves to illustrate the point.

The extra 100 people who show up say skew

Posted by Michael | January 2, 2008 9:38 PM

Do we ever get the actual number of votes breakdown from the caucus? What's going to happen if the entrance poll shows someone winning by a decent amount other than the official "delegated" winner?

Posted by Ben | January 2, 2008 9:41 PM

I acknowledged in my Post Scriptum that my theory relied on the idea that Obama took all of the new caucus-goers and the idea that second-choicers would not pick him.
I also said I concur that it will be way more fluid in reality.

My point is just that gaining 50 votes (in your calculation) may not mean as much in terms of ratio if the number of supporters he has is already high. I'd like to be intelligent enough to give you a concrete example with math but it would take so much time for something that in the end is pure theory.

But I stand by curve bell theory. I will try to see if I can come up with a good example how it *might* work.

PS: For the record, I am for Barack all the way. I am just taking the next 24 hours to drive myself crazy with all the what ifs LOL

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 10:03 PM

@ Ben.
No. We will never know what the actual vote count is. We will only get entrance polls and the final delegate count, which once again is distorted by the fact delegates are approportioned in weird and sometimes unfair ways.
Which is another reason polls are hard to assess. If the support of a candidate is very strong in a precinct, it may boost his numbers but not get him as many delegates.

Simple example. A precinct has 5 delegates. A candidates gets 55% of the votes and three others get just 15%. The three viable candidates are guaranteed a delegate so that's three delegates out (one per candidate) and two for the winner of the precinct. Except that numerically, his 55% of the votes should have gotten him slightly more than that. In math class, we were taught that 2.75 (55% of 5 delegates) should be rounded UP at 3 delegates, not down.
One delegate lost ! And so on ...

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 10:08 PM

Another (reverse example) of how caucus shenanigans and second-choicers can mess up the math of a caucus.

(from a brilliant diary from desmoinesdem talking about the 1988 caucus)

"When voters divided into preference groups, Simon had a plurality in my precinct. Michael Dukakis was second, and Bruce Babbitt was third. No other candidate was viable. My precinct assigns 6 Polk County delegates. It looked as though Simon would end up with 3 delegates, Dukakis 2, and Babbitt 1.

Then the Dukakis and Babbitt people got together and realized that if enough Dukakis supporters switched to Babbitt, it would affect the caucus math. (The Dukakis supporters knew that Babbitt was not a threat to finish ahead of their candidate in Iowa, but Simon was.) When people were given the chance to make their second choice, Babbitt gained enough supporters to get a second delegate from my precinct.

Since caucus math is a zero-sum game, Simon, Dukakis and Babbitt all ended up with 2 delegates from my precinct, even though no one defected from our Simon group."

In other words, numerical superiority at the very least didn't help because the marginal value of each voter showing up diminishes with time (thats for Ben).
It is harder for me to prove the second part of my theory about the negative impact. But I am trying to think !

Posted by Benjamin | January 2, 2008 10:13 PM

Marc, just wanted to note, in case you missed it, that Biden's spokesman didn't actually answer your question. Rather, he answered the question he wanted you to ask--whether there was a deal between the two campaigns, which no one is alleging. It's important to realize that he did not, in any way, deny the report that, during these meetings, the campaign chose (informally) to direct second-choice votes to Obama.

Posted by JEM | January 3, 2008 12:21 AM

I just do NOT understand any enthusiasm over the candidacy of Obama. He's had several months now to actually SAY something that connects at all. Instead he runs his events like dumb-ass pep rallies. It seems clear that nobody is actually listening to a thing he is saying, they are just starstruck by the cloud of positive media he has achieved for no concrete reason.

Obama is all about beginning a war with Iran if he found it necessary. Frankly I heartily support Hillary over Obama as her involvement with corporate interests is at least a known quantity. Who is really BEHIND obama? it isn't just thousands of naive college students - it feels like a conspiracy theory to me, perhaps Karl Rove. Who gave this clown the idea he should even run? And what makes him SO INANE with respect to the content of his candidacy?

Only gullible fools support B.O. These fools think it is so very cool to go for someone who isn't white - perhaps out of guilt or something? Well let me tell you that I'm not white, and I feel no such guilt, and voting for B.O. will not accomplish a damn thing for this nation, insofar as his ability to articulate anything other than "Change! Yeah! Oooh! I'm BLACK!" goes.

-j

Posted by jef wallace | January 3, 2008 10:49 AM

About precinct captains and gamesplaying. Desmoinesdem had a great series of articles about this on myDD, but one thing to note is that at best, there's a 90% chance for a precinct to have an Edwards precinct captain, since the other campaigns won't say, that number is lower (and I imagine Clinton the lowest% because she came to the state late). So the chance there are at least two campaigns with people there smart enough and organized enough to play the games is probably a coin toss. It is very likely however, that there will be one person there like that (someone who is an Edwards precinct captain). So some games will be played, but only to the extent that the 1 or 2 games players have something to win.

Posted by Jeff Winchell | January 3, 2008 1:27 PM

A local Iowa paper quotes Biden's campaign manager saying there is no deal:

http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2008/01/03/news/politics/doc477d38b9d9417601505231.txt

However, the Washington Post's anonymous sources in the campaigns say that discussions have indeed taken place:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/03/a_bidenobama_deal_1.html

What were the negotiations about? Biden clearly wanted something. VP slot, if Obama wins the nomination? If so, Obama was wise to say no, he's strong enough on his own and a VP from a big Southern state would help him more than Biden, from Delaware.

Posted by Johnny | January 3, 2008 3:11 PM