Anybody pay close attention to the California Democratic Primary?
California provides more than one-fifth of the Democratic delegates needed for the nomination. Recent tracking polls by Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby showed Obama polling into a 13-point lead, but Clinton won by 10 percentage points and will be claiming almost two-thirds of the delegates.
In yesterday’s press release, pollster John Zogby said, “What has happened here is that in addition to building leads among almost every part of his base of support, he has dramatically cut into Clinton’s lead among Hispanic voters.”
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll of 895 likely voters in the California Democratic Primary
| 2/3-4 | 2/1-2/3 | 1/31-2/2 |
Obama | 49% | 46% | 45% |
Clinton | 36% | 40% | 41% |
Gravel | 1% | <1% | <1% |
Someone else | 5% | 5% | 6% |
Undecided | 9% | 9% | 9% |
From their report: “Obama has built a sturdy lead here, among both Democrats and independents. He leads Clinton big among both men (55% to her 29%) and women (45% to her 42%). He leads among all age groups except among those age 65 and older, where Clinton holds a slim edge. He leads among both moderates and progressives, but those mainline liberal Democrats still favor Clinton by a very narrow margin. This two-day tracking survey included 895 likely voters and carried a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points.”
This is a flip of even greater proportion than in New Hampshire, where Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby projected Clinton losing by 13 percentage points, but she won by 2.6. In NH, however, there were many pollsters, all of whom projected a decisive Clinton defeat; in California, only three other pollsters completed surveys in the final three days before the election with bizarrely divergent results.
In New Hampshire, we have tracked down differences between machine counts and hand counts, systematically analyzed the pre-election polls, learned a great deal about who does the count, and documented wide breaches in protocols for the count and recount (I’ll be publishing my account soon, building on great work done by Blackboxvoting, Bradblog, Democracy for New Hampshire and USCountVotes). Please let me know of any ongoing efforts to systematically track down what may have happened in California, or even just interest in doing so. Thanks, Steve