Proof of the "Limbaugh Effect"

[El Supremo]

Hillary Clinton suffered a huge defeat last night in Mississippi, and now faces an insurmountable pledged delegate lead by Barack Obama. But what most pundits missed was the fact that Obama's victory would have been even more overwhelming in Mississippi (and he might have won the popular vote in Texas) if not for the "Limbaugh effect": Republicans voting in the Democratic primary in order to undermine Barack Obama and help John McCain.

Approximately 25% of Clinton's voters in Mississippi were Republicans voting for a candidate they hate in order to try to undermine Barack Obama. Obama's 61-37 margin of victory in Mississippi would have been around 70-30 without Clinton's Republican voters, and Obama would have easily expanded his delegate win there from 19-14 to 24-9.

In the voting during January and February, Republicans were an average of 3.8% of the voters in the Democratic Primary, and they heavily supported Obama. But for the primaries in March, in Texas, Ohio, and Mississippi, Republicans have been 8% of the voters in the Democratic primary, and now they heavily support Hillary Clinton. This is definite proof of the "Limbaugh effect" coming through. Overall, 1.36% of the voters in the January and February primaries were Republicans who marked their ballot for Clinton; yet, 5.67% of the voters in the March primaries were Republicans voting for Clinton. Barack Obama's Republican numbers in the March primary showed only a modest increase, probably from moderate Republicans who shifted their support to Obama once John McCain's campaign was assured of victory.

In Ohio and Texas, 9% of the voters were Republicans, and they split almost evenly between Obama and Clinton. These votes, more than doubling the percentage of Republican voters in earlier primaries, gave Hillary Clinton a big advantage since Obama typically won more than twice as many voters as she did in previous primaries. In other words, about 3% of the voters in Ohio and Texas were Republicans newly voting for Hillary Clinton out of purely tactical reasons, to try to ruin the Democratic race....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k-wilson/mississippi-limbaugh-ef_b_91112.html

Time to close those elections to Republicans, boys!

[Qutzupalotl]

1. I hope the Dittoheads are stupid enough to do it again in November.

To vote for the Democrat, in hopes of... D'oh!

[bellasgrams]

2. I think you're confused, the cross-over votes were for BO.

[ingac70]

3. Not in Miss. n/t

[GarbagemanLB]

4. Not in TX

[unpossibles]

5. not in Ohio they weren't

have you seen the actual numbers?

Obama won all of the urban counties, which tend to be more Democratic than the rural areas, by a 12 point lead, but statewide lost by 10 points.

Two things to remember: this effect was most largely seen in Republican strongholds where it is doubtful that there was a sudden revolution to support someone they've spent years being told to hate and where Democrats are not very prevalent in the first place.

Also, the number of Democratic voters yesterday was more than twice what was expected.

Total votes for both Hillary and Obama in Ohio= 2,186,831
Total votes for both Mccain and Huckabee in Ohio= 961,837

In the 2004 Ohio Primaries, Kerry & Edwards totaled 1,048,694.
In the 2000 Ohio Primaries, 961,999 total for Gore & Bradley.

I do agree that for several reasons, this year had more allure for Democratic voters, and first time primary voters (such as myself), and far less for Republicans, so I am not trying to say it was all shenanigans, but it sure looks like a lot of it may have been to me. It's really hard to say until November.


Also, the Republican numbers went down:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/PCC/OH-R.html
in 2000, there were almost 1.4 million Republican voters in their primary.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P04/OH-R.phtml
In '04 there were 800,000, but they had an incumbent.

So in keeping with the idea that the number of voters should go up with population increase as well as through GOTV efforts, you'd think they'd at least be in a similar range. Maybe not though. I agree that their side was pretty much already decided at this point, so maybe that discouraged them. I'm not saying all, or even a majority of Hillary's votes were from Republicans, but they sure seemed to take her over the top, not only in Republican areas, but to the point that counties ran out of ballots.

[anigbrowl]

8. Wow...talk about a reading deficit /nt

[InsultComicDog]

6. PA is closed

but people can switch parties still for the next couple of weeks for the primary in six weeks.

I don't expect much of that. Never happened here before.

[El Supremo]

7. Should be longer than one month.

Especially since McCain has the nomination sewed up. If Penna. is always so late to hold its primary, then they should push back the registration even further. Here in Colo. it's two months. And I don't think thats long enough.

[InsultComicDog]

11. it's been about a month

for years and years.

I think it's fine.

I don't think there will be much crossover.

[anigbrowl]

9. There's a lot of it going on though

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g73v_gaMTeTWhOZQ8iJuo5NQTCzAD8VAR9IO0

'Dems surge by 65,000 in PA'

[InsultComicDog]

10. I don't think it's Republicans crossing over

These are mostly new Democrats intending to vote Democratic.

[guruoo]

12. You beat me to it. n/t

[starroute]

13. Or people like my husband

He's had no party registration since he got disgusted with Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam. Even though he almost always votes Democratic, he didn't want to be registered as one.

Now, for the first time in 40 years, his dislike of Hillary has motivated him to want to cast a vote in the primary. He sent the change of party form in just yesterday.