Search
RSS Feed
Archives
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
Blogs Eric Reads
The Puerto Rico Effect
CNN called Puerto Rico for Clinton as soon as the polls closed (3:00pm Eastern) and is projecting a huge win. Will it matter, though? Doesn’t look like it:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed a convincing win over Sen. Barack Obama in today’s Puerto Rico primary, a victory that may well be her last in her fading bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Also:
Election officials expect to see a low vote count — perhaps just 400,000 out of nearly 3 million registered voters — as the polls are about to close here. Such a number would be far lower than turnout usually is for local elections.
(On a separate note, I got to meet NBC’s Chuck Todd yesterday at the RBC meeting. Cool!)
Should Puerto Rico Pick the Nominee?
In yet another sign that the Democratic primary will never be over, polling has started for Puerto Rico’s June 1 primary (español). MyDD’s Jonathan Singer translates that Hillary Clinton leads by 13 points, with 50 percent to Barack Obama’s 37.
What surprised me, though, was to learn that Puerto Rico has 55 pledged delegates to the DNC. I do think Puerto Rico should have a role in picking their next president, but I think 55 representatives is too many for a group of people who have voted three times to not become a state.
The NYT’s delegate chart helps put things in perspective. Of the ten remaining primaries (assuming no revotes Florida or Michigan), Puerto Rico has the fourth-highest number of delegates, after Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. They have almost twice as many as West Virginia and more than four times what Montana and South Dakota get. Now, I admit that Puerto Rico also has four times more residents than either Montana or South Dakota and I don’t think that we should be going in now to change the rules of the primary, but when the DNC sits down to make the rules for 2012, they should ask themselves: does it really make sense that a commonwealth with no electoral votes and which has voted three times against having electoral votes get to pick the Democratic nominee?