Congressman Chet Edwards (D-Waco) announced his endorsement for Senator Barack Obama today. From the Waco Tribune:
"As the father of two young sons, I care deeply about the future of our nation, and that is why I am endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president of the United States," Edwards said. "I believe Sen. Obama can bring about real change in Washington - change that will make a positive difference for average working Americans struggling to keep up with the high costs of health care, gasoline and education."...
Edwards, the second most senior member of Texas congressional delegation, has earned bipartisan respect as a champion of veterans and military troops and their families.
As chairman of the U.S. House subcommittee over military construction and veterans affairs, Edwards worked on a bipartisan basis to pass the largest increase in veterans' funding in the 77-year history of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. On March 4, he will receive the Veterans of Foreign Wars highest award given annually to only one member of Congress.
"As someone who has spent most of my adult life fighting for veterans and for military troops and their families, I am convinced that Sen. Obama will be a champion for better health care, housing and quality of life for those who have sacrificed so much for the American family," Edwards said. "He knows that standing up for our troops, our veterans and their families is the right thing to do - for them and for our nation's security."
Congressman Edwards counts among his constituents President George Bush. As I noted earlier, Charlie Cook (of the Cook Report) has said that his district is the most conservative district represented by a Democrat in the country. When Tom Delay ran his mid-decade redistricting through the State Legislature, the lines were drawn to defeat Edwards -- but he still won. An impressive endorsement, to be sure.
To learn about all the TX Superdelegate endorsements, follow this link below (which is also permanently linked in the top-right box of our site, where you can find all of our Texas Primary resources):
I'm also curious to see what our readers think about the remarks made today by Joel Ferguson, Co-Chair of Senator Clinton's Michigan campaign, as reported by The Politico:
"Superdelegates are not second-class delegates," says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. "The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic."
Fellow Texans -- what are your thoughts on that? Are you second-class delegates?
U.S. Rep Chet Edwards (D-Waco) will be announcing his endorsement in the race for the Democratic nomination at 1:30 today at the Waco Suspension Bridge.
Interesting that he's doing this on Presidents Day.
Congressman Edwards is a Superdelegate, so this is a big announcement. To see how other Texas Superdelegates have pledged, check out this post I did over the weekend.
Congressman Edwards represents President Bush's hometown of Crawford, and Charlie Cook (of the Cook Report) has said that his district is the reddest Congressional district occupied by a Democrat anywhere in the country.
We'll let you know what the announcement is as soon as we hear.
The Lone Star Project has really outdone itself this time. They've created their own interatctive Delegate Calculator -- you can enter in predictions for each Senate District, and see how many delegates each campaign can expect to get in each area of the state!
Visit their website and donate some money -- they helped us figure out the delegate count from the get-go, and their research is incredibly important to helping keep TX blue!
According to a report in today's Washington Post (thanks to our Kossack friends for the tip), Senator Clinton's campaign is worried about the Texas primary system, and apparently some are only now learning how it works. From the Washington Post article titled, "System Worries Clinton Backers":
Several top Clinton strategists and fundraisers became alarmed after learning of the state's unusual provisions during a closed-door strategy meeting this month, according to one person who attended.
What Clinton aides discovered is that in certain targeted districts, such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa's heavily Hispanic Senate district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates. At the same time, a win in the more urban districts where Sen. Barack Obama expects to receive significant support -- could yield three or four times as many delegates.
They're only learning about this this month??? They must not be regular readers of BOR.
The night of Super Tuesday, I spent several hours reading up about the TX primary system. The next day, I looked at the incredibly useful Lone Star Project report about the numbers, and asked a lot of questions about how it worked. On Thursday, I wrote these two long posts explaining the Texas primary and delegate system, and on Friday February 8 (ten days ago) these two posts were published on BOR:
I'm a 23-year old grad student who is not even living in Texas right now. KT is younger than I am, and just moved back to Texas a few months ago. How is it that Senator Clinton's campaign was not prepared for Texas?
The truth is, Senator Clinton's campaign never planned on having to run after Super Tuesday. They chose a handful of key states to focus on, and thought that would put them over the top. Meanwhile, Senator Obama worked in every state, picked up lots of little states to blunt Senator Clinton's California momentum, and has been racking up wins ever since.
Many state elected officials are complaining that the Texas primary process isn't fair -- that the formulas unfairly hurt the Hispanic districts (a process that they voted to ratify at the 2006 state convention). Well, the truth is, the formula rewards the Democrats that have been showing up to the polls consistently over the past couple of years in the general election to support our presidential and statewide candidates. As TDP Chair Boyd Richie explained in the Post article:
The higher the turnout in each district in those years, the more delegates the district will get to select this year, explained Boyd Richie, the state party chairman.
"It's not that anyone's trying to penalize anyone," Richie said. "That's the last thing I want to do. What I want to do is encourage people to come back and vote. We want to have everybody participate."
The party rules are established to promote those who come out to vote regularly for Democrats in the general election. This year, on March 4, in the Democratic primary, the areas of the state that vote Democratic when it's most needed (the general election) will have a larger delegate strength.
The truth is, many South Texas Hispanics only vote in primaries (as Sen. Mario Gallegos mentioned in the article) and don't vote in the general elections. South Texas Hispanics didn't vote for John Kerry in large numbers in 2004, and they didn't vote for Chris Bell in large numbers in 2006. The urban areas of Austin, Dallas, and Houston did. Instead, many South Texas Hispanics have voted for Republicans in the general election (for President Bush or Governor Perry) believing that the Republican Party provided an answer. Ironically, their leanings towards the Republican party may prevent them from having as big a voice in the TX Presidential primary as their fellow Democrats in Austin, Dallas, and Houston.
Oops.
Senator Clinton's strategy -- based on the Washington Post article -- seemed to be: Latino = Texas = Clinton. Senator Obama, meanwhile, has been focused on a positive campaign for change across the state. As State Rep. Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas) wrote in an op-ed last week:
Our main focus should not be on who can appeal to which racial or ethnic group more than another, but which candidate can unite all races, ethnicities, age groups, faiths and economic classes as a nation to address our common challenges and to restore our historic position as a respected leader of the free world.
I am the Latino son of immigrants, but, rather than engaging in the contrived politics of division, I want Barack Obama, a black man of mixed ethnicity, to be my president. How's that for the politics of hope?
When we endorsed Senator Obama, we did so because his politics aims to include everyone. He isn't dismissing caucus states, as Senator Clinton has. He doesn't look at a state and say, "I will win there because of the ethnic make-up of that state." Senator Obama believes every voice from every region and every background of this country should be heard.
That's why we endorsed him. And that's why he will do very, very well in Texas.
First and foremost, I want to thank the Lone Star Project for their incredible report and analysis. Without their numbers, we'd be starting from scratch. For those who may not be familiar with the Lone Star Project, they are one of the best research-based groups in the country. Their research on the Texas Congressional Redistricting fiasco, for example, informed every media story you ever read about Tom Delay's insane power grab into the Republican-run Texas Legislature. So hat's off to them -- and feel free to drop them some change if you'd like.
With that out of the way, here's how it all breaks down:
How Texas' 228 Delegates are Allocated
Texas has a mixed primary-caucus way of selecting delegates, in addition to "super delegates" -- but the process works well because it rewards the candidate that gets voters to the polls on election day.
193 "pledged" delegates decided by the primary-caucus system
35 "unpledged" or "super" delegates
The "super" delegates are self explanatory -- so let's see if we can't help you make sense of the primary-caucus mix of "pledged" delegates. Again, thanks to the Lone Star Project for doing a lot of our work for us.
How Texas' 193 "Pledged" Delegates Are Allocated -- Primary/Caucus Hybrid
126 delegates are "primary-chosen" delegates, allocated based on the results of votes cast on March 4. The 126 delegates that are allocated by the "regular" primary system will be the only ones that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama can add to their tally after March 4. These 126 delegates are divided based on the voting strength of each candidate in the 31 State Senate Districts across Texas.
Later today, I will have an exhaustively extensive post that looks at each of those 31 State Senate Districts to try and see where either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama may hope to play strongly.
67 delegates are "caucus-chosen" delegates, allocated at the state convention.
Overall, the vast majority of delegates that can be won in Texas are based on the voting totals -- because the "caucus-chosen" delegates are only assigned based on who shows up to the local precinct conventions the day of the election. We explain below.
An Explanation of the 67 "Caucus-Chosen" Delegates
There is a four-page document provided by the Texas Democratic Party that explains how the 67 "caucus-chosen" delegates are picked and allocated. If you really, really want to know how this works, you can read it by clicking here. Here's the most important points, though:
This process rewards whichever candidate organizes its voters to attend the precinct conventions after the polls close.
Delegates that work their way through the precinct and county/district conventions are free to switch their candidate support at any time until the state convention -- but normally (and especially if the race is still undecided at the time of the state convention in June) -- delegates won't switch.
Here, now -- for those true political junkies out there -- is a summary of how the Texas caucus system works:
42 at-Large delegates allocated by the "caucus" system. The allocation of these 42 delegates (by candidate preference) is based on the presidential preference expressed state convention delegates (who are chosen at their precinct and county conventions) when they sign in at the state convention June 6.
Let's do an example: 100 people attend a precinct convention (which is held 15 minutes after the polls close). 80 of those attending the precinct convention support Obama, and 20 support Clinton. Let's assume your precinct gets to select 5 delegates to the County Convention. 4 of those Delegates would be "pledged" to Obama, and 1 would be "pledged" to Clinton. Those 5 people go to the County Convention.
At the County Convention, the same process is repeated. Let's say there are 100 people at the County Convention -- these are the 100 delegates that were chosen at all of the precinct conventions around the County. At the County Convention, let's say 75 are "Obama precinct convention" delegates and 25 are "Clinton precinct convention" delegates. Based on the county strength -- the percentage of statewide Democratic votes that came from your county -- let's say your County gets to send 4 delegates to the State Convention. 3 of those delegates would be "pledged" to Obama, and 1 would be "pledged" to Clinton.
The identical process is followed at the State convention. Let's say 100 delegates go to the State Convention -- these are the 100 delegates that were chosen to represent their candidate at the County Convention. Of these 100 delegates at the State Convention, 66 (2/3) vote for Obama and 34 (1/3) vote for Clinton. The 42 at-large delegates are split along this percentage division -- so Obama would have an additional 28 delegates (2/3 of 42) attend the DNC Convention, while Clinton would have 14 delegates (1/3 of 42) attend the DNC Convention.
I grossly under-represented the numbers at every convention level for illustrative purposes; if you can follow this logic (and I've tried as best I could to help you), you'll understand the main point: this process awards whichever campaign has the best grassroots effort to get their voters to stay after the polls close and attend the precinct convention. This is truly a process where the numbers build up -- and yes, it's crazy. But we're Texas -- what would we be if we weren't at least a little crazy.
Also, 25 pledged "super delegates" allocated by the caucus system. The 25 pledged "party delegates" are party leaders, Democratic Mayors and Legislators. They are all allocated along the same lines as the delegates attending the State convention. Using the 2/3 to 1/3 split I described above, 17 of the 25 delegates (2/3) would be for Obama, and 8 delegates (1/3) would be for Clinton. As a note, only a candidate receiving a 15 percent threshold may receive votes.
A Look Back: An Overview of Where Those 228 Delegates Come From
126 "primary-chosen" delegates, allocated based on the results of votes cast on March 4.
42 at-large, "caucus-chosen" delegates that come up through the primary and county convention.
25 pledged "party delegates" allocated by the presidential preference of delegates attending the State convention.
35 unpledged "super delegates"
I love Texas. If you enjoyed that, be sure to read my detailed analysis of how the 128 Senate District delegates could vote later today.
(This is some fantastic analysis! - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Trying to predict who's ahead in the Democratic primary right now is about as hard a job as there is in the world of punditry. Hillary has enjoyed a solid lead in most of the Febrary 5 states since the race began, but Obama is surging following his win in South Carolina. John Edwards' exit introduces the problem of how his supports will disperse (or not) to the remaining candidates. To further complicate matters, the party's complex method of allocating delegates ensures that only organizations with a full research staff on salary can even hope issue an accurate prediction (actually, even those organizations are clueless). It may be the case that the best strategy for the aspiring pundit is to punt until February 6, then join the rest of the hacks doing post-mortem analysis.
But what would be the fun in that?
This post is an attempt to use what we have now, polls and rules, to project the answers to several important February 5 questions. Who will "win"? Will the outcome determine the results of the election? And most importantly for those of us on this blog, will Texas matter?
I am using data from the last several days of polls (the rapid movement in this race makes any data before Sunday obsolete -- Actually, anything before next Sunday is probably obsolete, but we do the best we can). Polling data is compiled from RealClearPolitics.com. I took the delegate breakdown for each state from wikipedia, also verified on a few other sites. Because there is no polling data at the Congressional District level, I am basically treating all pledged delegates as proportional at-large delegates. Of course, this will introduce a level of error into the results -- hopefully, it will balance out for both sides.
Without further ado, here's the current delegate status:
HRC
Obama
Pledged Delegates:
48
63
Super Delegates:
208
118
Total:
256
181
And here's the current polling data:
Upcoming Super Tuesday States
State
Delegates
Date
Current Polling
Total
Pledged
HRC
Obama
Edwards
California
441
370
1-31 (RASS)
43
40
9
1-29 (SUSA)
49
38
9
1-29 (CNN/)
49
32
14
1-28 (GALL)
47
35
10
New York
281
232
1-28 (GALL)
56
28
10
Illinois
185
153
1-26 (R2000)
22
51
15
New Jersey
127
107
1-22 (QUIN)
49
32
10
Massachusetts
121
93
2-1 (SUSA)
57
33
1-31 (RASS)
43
37
11
1-31(W.NE)
43
15
8
Georgia
103
87
1-31 (IA)
36
52
Minnesota
88
72
1-31 (MPR)
40
33
12
Missouri
88
72
1-26 (RASS)
43
24
18
Tennessee
85
68
1-31 (IA)
59
26
Colorado
71
53
1-28 (DP)
32
34
17
Arizona
67
56
1-26 (BRC)
37
27
15
Connecticut
60
50
1-30 (RASS)
40
40
11
Alabama
60
52
1-31(AEA)
35
40
Arkansas
47
35
Oklahoma
47
38
1-29 (SUSA)
44
19
27
Kansas
41
32
New Mexico
38
29
Utah
29
23
Delaware
23
15
Idaho
23
18
North Dakota
21
13
Alaska
18
13
Democrats Abroad
7
7
American Samoa
3
3
For the sake of calculation purposes, I will assume that Edwards does not achieve the 15% viability and that his votes (and those of undecideds) are distributed equally between Hillary and Obama. I also used the arithmetic mean of the multiple polls for California and Massachusetts. Yep, more error.
Using my simplified formula, I get the following breakdowns for states we have polling data for:
State
total
HRC
Obama
California
370
209
161
New York
232
155
77
Illinois
153
46
107
New Jersey
107
65
42
Massachusetts
93
58
35
Georgia
87
36
51
Minnesota
72
39
33
Missouri
72
46
26
Tennessee
68
47
21
Colorado
53
26
27
Arizona
56
32
24
Connecticut
50
25
25
Alabama
52
24
28
Oklahoma
38
27
11
Total
1503
835
668
That gives the following cumulative totals:
HRC
Obama
Pledged Delegates:
883
731
Super Delegates:
208
118
Total:
1091
849
There are 188 Feb. 5 delegates left in states we don't have polling data for. I believe Hillary will win a marginal majority of these delegates, however, for arguments sake I'll split them 50/50. That gives us:
HRC
Obama
Pledged Delegates:
977
825
Super Delegates:
208
118
Total:
1185
943
If the above analysis holds true, Hillary would have a 242 delegate edge with 1,378 pledged delegates and 543 super delegates left in play. She would need to win 840 of those remaining 1921 delegates to clinch the nomination (43.7%).
Now it's time to answer our questions.
Who won? Hillary, not by a landslide, but decisively.
Will the outcome determine the results of the election? This outcome would not determine the election, but would put severe pressure on the Obama camp to sweep the remaining elections. The three biggest prizes left, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, would have to be won.
Will Texas Matter? In addition to the above delegates, another 447 delegates will have been won by the time we vote. Assuming 50/50, there is still a chance that the race will not be clinched by then.
In conclusion, my analysis makes a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily true. It also relies on polling data that has partially been obsoleted by Edward's exit from the race, tonight's debate, and the momentum that Obama has been riding lately. Still, it gives an interesting snapshot of what might happen if Superduperpooper Tuesday was held today. I will update this data on Monday to see if the weekend's polling data changes anything and then again on Wednesday to see how wrong I was.
