Whatever President Clinton’s recent issues, he’s still a much-loved figure down in Puerto Rico, as Sen. Clinton’s large victory in the island territory today partially attests. (We’re at 68%-32%, with 98% reporting.) Too little, too late, of course — particularly as Puerto Rico currently doesn’t count in the general election — but at least Sen. Clinton got a chance to go out with a bang.
Update: Some interesting math via Rural Votes: “Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico, obviously, is a place where Limbaugh has no significant listenership, and this provides us a yardstick with which to measure Limbaugh’s actual impact on English-speaking state primaries. In Kentucky for example, on May 20, a full 19 percent of Clinton’s voters said they would not be satisfied with her nomination. On May 13, an equal number – 19 percent – of her own voters in West Virginia said they wouldn’t be satisfied with her nomination. But only five percent in Puerto Rico were in that category. This suggests that 14 percent of Clinton’s vote in recent mainland state primaries consisted of the Limbaugh ‘chaos’ voters.“
I think that the full homework was not done when using Kentucky as an example of Republicans trying to influence the Kentucky Democratic primary. Kentucky is a closed primary and its election law requires that one switch parties prior to January of the election year in order to participate in a particular party’s primary. My husband learned this the hard way when he switched from an Independent to a Democrat in March in order to vote for Obama and was later issued a letter that stated that he would not be able to participate in the Democratic primary because of this law.
That said, I highly doubt that Republicans (or Obama fans like my husband) would have anticipated pre-Iowa that the Democratic nomination would not have been decided by May of 2008. The only Republicans who could have influenced the Democratic primary in Kentucky would be those who registered as new voters. Although I hate to say this since I am a Kentuckian (but from Louisville), I would more likely attribute the dissatisfaction with Clinton as a nominee to those who just don’t like Clinton, but don’t want to vote for an African-American.
Hey Alysia…Great to hear from you. Steve mentioned the tight registration problems, and your analysis makes a lot of sense. It sounds like it might well have been a lesser-of-two-evils situations for a lot of Kentuckians.
But, hey, at least Louisville came correct. 🙂