What?
That’s what we are now hearing about the Texas reality. Of the 2.8 million voters in the Texas primary, based on exit polls about 252,000 were Republican and about 618,000 were self-identified as conservative, and many of them came out on Rush Limbaugh’s urgings to vote for Hillary Clinton. Did many of those voters actually prefer Hillary as president? Not likely. Many Republicans and a lot of conservatives, who voted for Hillary in the Texas primary (and Ohio as well), apparently took Limbaugh’s plea to heart.
Why Hillary? Because a Hillary nomination is believed to equate with a McCain win in November.
Is Karl Rove perhaps working behind the scene. This turn of events does not auger well for Hillary as nominee. What do the conservatives know that we don’t? In short, that Obama, if nominated, will beat McCain and will beat him by a greater margin, at least according to the latest national poll.
The article, Live from New York…Vote Hillary! by Adam McKay (Huffington Post) makes the case that Republicans prefer to run against Hillary and it is not because they expect to lose. And while it was both the Republican and conservative vote that made the day for Hillary, it is all part of a Republican drive to help Hillary win the nomination.
Let’s face it, the Republicans love Hillary Clinton. They quietly in their heart of hearts pine for her to win the democratic nomination. The Republican Governor of Florida is rolling out the red carpet for a second primary which will favor Clinton. Pat Buchanan can’t be quiet about how much he respects Hillary. Even Ann Coulter pal and SNL sketch writer Jim Downey has written several sketches portraying Hillary as picked on by the press. Downey is one of the all time great sketch writers but I know he’s no Hillary fan. Don’t get me wrong, I like Hillary and still think Bill Clinton is one of our great presidents. But it’s weird. Weird like….well, Pat Buchanan praising Hillary Clinton.
Now it’s possible the corporate right wants her to win in order to keep afloat the huge economy of Hillary hate bumper stickers that if my numbers are correct generates over 55 billion dollars in revenue for the south. They also could be supporting her because after over seven years of the absolute incompetence that is the Bush administration they finally get that corporate welfare and tax breaks for millionaires are not good for the economy. Or maybe they think she’s Hillary Swank.
(snip)
So put your bumper stickers on your cars Repubs: “Hillary in ’08, Up Until November, and then McCain!” If you drive an Excursion it’ll fit.
In the days running up to the Ohio and Texas primaries, Rush Limbaugh urged his conservative audience to vote in the Democratic race, and to vote for Hillary. “I want Hillary to stay in this,” he said.
David Weigel on Reason.Com (It’s Rush Wot Won It) analyzed the Tuesday primary results for the Limbaugh effect:
In the earlier Wisconsin primary, Republicans made up 9 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Obama won them 72-28 over Clinton. Just as tellingly, 14 percent of primary voters said they were “conservative,” and Obama won them 59-40, a bigger margin than he won with liberals or moderates. Tactical voters who said Obama stood a better chance of winning in November? They went for him 87-13.
Now, look at Ohio. Once again 9 percent of voters were Republicans, but Obama and Clinton split them evenly, 49-49. Once again, 14 percent of voters were “conservatives,” and Obama and Clinton split them 48-48. (Obama did better with them than he did with liberals and moderates.) Those tactical voters who thought Obama could win gave him a 80-18 victory, a margin twelve points smaller than the margin in Wisconsin.
It’s a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters, up from 15 percent in the Kerry-Edwards primary) went against Obama. For the first time since Super Tuesday, they were Clinton’s best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.
Ohio didn’t wind up being very close, but Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. (snip) Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.
In short, conservatives voted against Obama by a wide margin, while twice as many Republicans voted against him in Texas and Ohio than in the Wisconsin race that preceded Limbaugh’s call. It is not clear that the Limbaugh Republican/conservative vote would have made up for the 3% difference between candidates in Ohio.
If Democrats wish to win in November, it is smart to listen to the opposition and understand it. The Limbaugh Republican/conservative vote won the day for Hillary in Texas. But even before Limbaugh, there was McCain, who campaigned hard for Hillary. Thus, part of the Republican strategy is to get Hillary nominated and avoid a loss in November to Obama. Pretty slick.
Thank you for covering this topic, shergald.
I’ve been covering this topic since the Potomac primaries, although my postings have been scattered around on other threads.
One of the problems with open or semi-open primaries/caucuses is that it allows the opposing party to strategically crossover and vote for the weaker candidate. This is known as raiding.
The possibility of raiding is discussed during legislative debate on opening the electoral process, but the rewards for involving previously not affiliated voters — predominantly on the Democratic side — are usually considered greater than the risks. Apathy is still considered one of the biggest problems for modern democratic states, and the solution to that problem is often to remove impediments to voting.
Recent US elections have been nearly free of raiding, because both major parties settled on a nominee relatively early. Also, the incentive to crossover has to outweigh the incentive to participate in one’s own primary/caucus. Another factor is the legal requirement of registering with the opposing party, which around thirty days in most states. Voters whose own nomination contest has been settled may find the prospect of raiding attractive, but they need to have the foresight to re-register thirty days in advance. The 2008 election is unusual in that the Democratic contest has lasted much longer than the Republican one, which has made the incentive for raiding far greater than normal.
One of the confounding effects in determining whether raiding is occurring is the sincere crossover voter, and the Obama campaign has drawn many of these. Polling provides a fairly accurate way of determining levels of sincere crossovers, since respondents have little strategic incentive for affecting the result of the poll. Anecdotal evidence also corroborates the existence of raiding, but the level of raiding has to be gauged by statistical evidence.
Reports of raiding surfaced during the Potomac primaries, when Republican strategist Amy Holmes reported that there were discussions of the strategy among Republicans. There is little empirical evidence that raiding was occurring at more than negligible levels at that point.
Although I haven’t thoroughly researched the election rules for Ohio and Texas, both are semi-open. This generally means that a voter only needs to request a ballot from the opposing party in order to crossover. And both anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that raiding has become a factor. David Weigel’s analysis is particularly good, since the exit poll question about “who stands a better chance of winning in November?” provides a way of distinguishing sincere voters from raiders. Although the theory that Obama’s results suffered from negative campaigning by the Clinton campaign (which is true), this would depress his results in all groups. The movement of a single demographic group, especially conservatives, is highly unusual absent any specific cause, and strongly indicates raiding when combined with other evidence.
Additionally, one of the results that few people have thought of is Vermont, where Republican crossover voting elevated from 2% in 2004 to 10% this year. Even though the 60% share of the vote that Obama received sounded fairly high, the polling indicated he would do even better. Since Vermont is an open primary, there was very little deterrence to raiding.
Thanks colinski”:
You said it better and more knowledgeably than I ever could. With Hillary stumping for McCain in the latter part of the run up to Texas and Ohio, I can’t help but believe that the Hillary Camp factored in the cross-over phenomenon. In Texas at least, it help her numbers rise above Obama’s.
I don’t think there’s much doubt that collusion — albeit perhaps passive — is involved. After all, Bill Clinton went on Limbaugh’s show with guest host Mark Davis the day before the election.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125327.html
http://www.wbap.com/Article.asp?id=606119&spid=6051
Clinton was appearing on right-wing talk radio for a reason.
I’m hampered by a slow connection so I can’t check the program in the above link. However, I can see it’s a interview with Clinton, and presumably by Rush’s guest host — assuming that Weigel is correct. Considering how unusual it is for Clinton to appear on right-wing talk radio, we can safely assume that his appearance at that time was hardly a coincidence.
I also have my suspicions about why the Clintons have frequently appeared on Fox. Strategically speaking, Hillary has very little appeal with Fox’s viewers, so her appearance on their programs makes very little sense, and her appearance, and appearances of her surrogates, doesn’t make much sense if she’s genuinely trying to garner sincere support. However, looking at the strategy from game-theoretic perspective, it would be quite easy to convince conservatives to cast anti-Obama votes for Clinton.
The problem with calling attention to this tactic is that it only advertises the strategy to potential raiders. I expect we’ll be seeing more raiding in Mississippi, Indiana and Montana, since all have election rules that are open or semi-open (I don’t have all the details on them at this point).
Just a few more links on this topic:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/wtf-bill-clinton-on-rush-limba.php
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/freefair/articles.php?ID=367
http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2008/03/gop_voters_crossing_over_in_la.html
http://blog.dispatch.com/primary/2008/03/republicans_crossing_over_to_a.shtml
Just a little update from Mississippi, on election day March 11, according to exit polls from CNN.
13% of the voters in the Democratic Primary were Republicans, who voted:
77% for Clinton.
As I expected.