From reader Michael Simon:
I have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that the fact that 45% of Michigan Democrats voted for Uncommitted over Hillary Clinton "is not all that significant." It completely blew expectations out of the water, shocked the organizers of the Uncommitted movement, which sprung up in only about two weeks, and disappointed the Hillary folks in Michigan, who were extremely nervous about getting less than 60% of the vote.A long series of articles over the course of the past week have talked
about the low-end 60% bar for Hillary, and pollsters, political
scientists, and pundits in Michigan said that anything less than 60%
for Hillary would be shocking. For example, see:*Detroit News: "Pollsters say N.Y. senator may face embarrassment if
she falls below 60% against 'uncommitted' on Dems' ballot."
http://detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080114/POLITICS/801140354/1022*Huffington Post: "[Political Science Professor Stewart] French, who
specializes in political parties and elections, considers 60 percent
to be the threshold for declaring a Clinton victory. But such a win
will be hollow."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/hillary-clinton-michigan-campaign*NPR: "Election experts have said that if Clinton doesn't get at least
60 percent of the votes cast, it would be a black eye for her
campaign."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/01/michigan_democrats_want_uncomm.html*The Jackson Citizen Patriot: "The impact of this vote is limited,
but...[w]hat if she wins Michigan with only 60 percent of the vote?
How will the pundits -- and more, important, donors to her and Obama's
campaign -- react?"
http://www.mlive.com/elections/index.ssf/2008/01/democratic_primary_still_worth_1.htmlYou get the point...
Additionally, to say that the exit polls show that Hillary still would
have won with a double-digit margin isn't quite accurate. A vote for
Hillary in the Michigan Primary should not be given the same weight as
an Uncommitted vote. Clearly asking someone to turn out and vote for
an actual living, breathing candidate is radically different from
asking them to turn out and vote for Uncommitted. Given how difficult
the concept of the delegate race, seating at the convention, etc.,
etc., is to even people who are political geeks like you and I, you
can imagine how this just doesn't translate to your average voter.Thus, the sample of voters that showed up to vote in the Caucus is
extraordinarily skewed towards Hillary -- she was the only candidate
of any significance on the ballot, and I can't think of any other
incident in recent political history where something like this
happened (and Ben Smith at Politico seems to agree, saying "[t]here's
no real precedent for this vote."
[http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Michigan_results.html]) I
know that the folks involved in the "Uncommitted" effort were shocked
by the result. Certainly they had no money to do any polling, but
didn't expect to even clear the 15% viability threshold in all but a
couple of Congressional Districts. In the end, were Michigan's
delegates to be seated, they would be almost evenly split between
Hillary and Uncommitted.
| 
How weird!
We now have Michael Simon quoting pollsters' opinions as if they were facts.
Whew.
We all have our own brains. Let's do the math.
The "uncommitted" crew broadcast their desire to turn a meaningless vote into an opportunity to publicly humiliate Hillary Clinton.
But, what we all discovered instead was:
Obama PLUS Edwards DOES NOT EQUAL Hillary!
Pushing this line of reasoning (it's called "spin") -- be you pollster, Obama supporter, Edwards supporter, whatever...
Well, it makes you sound like Karl Rove (in other words, like an idiot).
Posted by Jan | January 16, 2008 9:43 PM