Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Clinton-Obama Count Continues
By Jeff Jones and Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writers
Fewer than 120 votes separated Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in New Mexico's Democratic presidential caucus early this morning and the race will be decided by thousands of provisional ballots being tallied beginning today.
Clinton had 65,845 votes to Obama's 65,728 votes with complete but unofficial results from 31 counties and incomplete tallies from two counties at 1 a.m. today.
The totals did not include more than 16,000 provisional ballots that state Democratic Party workers will begin going through one at a time today.
Provisional ballots are ballots given to people who did not vote at their designated caucus sites and whose names could not be located on polling rolls in the Democratic Party-run presidential caucus. Clinton won most of the counties, but Obama took Santa Fe County by a large margin and won Bernalillo County.
The vote count came slowly in part because the
turnout took party officials by surprise. About 50 Clinton supporters gathered at the Garduño's on the Green near Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque on Tuesday, but the party ended without a winner.
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish decided to leave around 11:15 p.m., predicting that the results were "going to trickle in."
"I'm heartened by the fact she's done well in the smaller areas," said Denish, chairwoman of Clinton's New Mexico campaign.
The Obama party at the Santa Fe Hilton broke up about 10:30 p.m. It wasn't because of the delay in vote totals; it was because the campaign had to return rented audiovisual equipment it was using to show results on a big screen.
"It's a good night for Sen. Obama," Rep. Al Park of Albuquerque said, nonetheless.
Long waits
There were still voters in line in some polling places at 9 p.m. in New Mexico's Democratic presidential caucus— two hours after the polls were to close— and vote counts were just beginning to trickle in at 10 p.m.
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Exceeding expectations
State Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colón said the party was overwhelmed with its voter turnout Tuesday.
Although he had earlier predicted a turnout of 30,000 to 40,000, he said the party prepared "to have 150,000 people participate in this caucus— and it appears we might have exceeded that."
If 150,000 ballots were cast, it would be a 50 percent increase from the party's 2004 Democratic presidential caucus, when 104,000 votes were cast.
All across the state Tuesday, Democrats braved snow, cold and long lines to vote."
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/283001nm02-06-08.htm