The discussion thread for the 3 Democratic caucuses today in Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska. Easter weekend/Spring Break seems like a lousy time for a caucus and I suspect this plays into Sanders strength. Hillary needs to limit the damage in Washington state, but I believe Sanders wins all 3.
It’ll be interesting to see how obnoxious his supporters will be on social media tonight and tomorrow morning if they believe his campaign has been resurrected.
Bernie takes Alaska, which has 16 delegates. He’s winning big now, so he’ll get a good chunk of those.
I can confirm that my precinct was about 3-to-1 for Sanders.
Mine was almost exactly half & half (slightly more toward Hillary, but not significantly so). According to some of the volunteers, turnout was much higher than expected.
Mine was about 2-1 for Sanders, but, yeah, it sounds like he is winning huge in Washington. 70-75% of the vote.
I never caucused before today, but it certainly seemed like they weren’t prepared for the number of people who turned up. We had ten precincts meeting in a middle school cafeteria and it was nearly impossible to hear our own captain talking over everyone else at first.
As things started to calm down and the people who just wanted to cast their vote and leave did so, it got a little less hectic, but our precinct still ended up being the last one to finish electing delegates because there was so much confusion and people talking over one another.
(I ended up getting elected as an alternate delegate for Sanders, meaning I have to show up at the county convention, but I may not actually get to do anything unless one of the main delegates fails to show.)
Yeah, my tiny suburban Bellevue precinct was about 2-1 for Sanders. I would of happily volunteered as a delegate, but my preference didn’t align with an appropriate delegate choice.
Interesting experience. Our small table was fairly mellow, but there were some passionate larger tables too. It was nice to get out and chat to the neighbors. The whole event made me feel somewhat less cynical. I’ll have to watch some election news to cure me of that.
We had about 20 different precincts caucusing in various room s at the local high school. Looked like it was filled to capacity for the event. Don’t think ANYONE went for Hillary. (My county ended up going for Bernie about 70 to 30 percent.)
Amazing looking at how few people voted in the Alaska caucus. Bernie received 440 votes, Hillary received 99. I know Alaska is a sparsely populated highly Republican state but it’s ridiculous to have 539 people determine the results. Alaska needs a primary with early and absentee voting.
Interesting. Yes, one can and usually does win caucus states with fewer votes, but that few? Wow.
Total votes cast Saturday? About 60K. Margin of Clinton’s Arizona win? 72K. Her Florida win? A 531K margin.
Net result is that Clinton is ahead in the popular vote 58.2 to 41.8% (roughly 8.9 to 6.4 million votes) but now “only” ahead in the pledged delegate count (using 538 as the source) 55 to 45%.
But like the superdelegates, the rules are the rules.
While Alaska doesn’t have very many people and has even less Democrats, those are certainly not raw vote totals. Caucus results on the Dem side, at least, are reported in a state delegate manner, and we never know the actual voter totals. Compare to Iowa’s caucus results where the raw numbers would have you think about 1400 people showed up, which we know isn’t remotely true.
Edit to correct: Not all caucuses are reported this way, but many are, and Alaska is among them.
Yes, it actually clearly says on the cite linked to by dalej42 that “*Vote totals for the Alaska Democratic Party are state convention delegates won.”
And, if you read here, it states that there are a total of 539 state convention delegates to be apportioned in the Alaskan caucus–that total is a predetermined number irrespective of how many people show up to these things. Does nobody read the fine print and do any basic sanity checking anymore? Jeez. And I’m voting for Hillary, too, when the national election comes around.
State delegates not actual vote is correct. Raw vote totals not officially released but I can find some reports that just over 10K showed up.