Interesting tidbit from tomorrow’s New York Times. Barack Obama may have an edge over Hillary Clinton in the Texas primary next month for the following reason:
In Texas, Mr. Penn said Mrs. Clinton would be helped by the Latino vote — which he said could ultimately be as much as 40 percent of the electorate.
But Mrs. Clinton faces another problem there in the form of that state’s unusual delegation allocation rules. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic voter turn-out in the last election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that in the last election, turnout was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban African-American districts.
That means more delegates will be available in districts that, based on the results so far, could be expected to go heavily for Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton, Dr. Buchanan said, “has got her work cut out for her.â€
To be honest, this doesn’t seem fair.
At any rate, I don’t think Hillary can be counted out yet at all. There are two more debates coming up. Hillary’s good at debates; Obama’s not usually at his best during them.
As the primary season has shown so far, anything can happen.
How many people actually watch the debates? My guess, not many.
Homer,
The people in the states where the debate take place are generally the most influenced, or those whose elections are quickly approaching.
I think the best thing to come of this clusterfuck of a primary will be the party sitting down and realizing their system is ridiculously contrived and come up with a cleaner, simpler and easier-to-run system standard across all the states.