Mississippi:
'Limbaugh Effect' Softens Blow For Hillary Clinton
John K. Wilson
Posted March 12, 2008 | 09:33 AM (EST)
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.
The "HillPublicans" (insincere Republicans voting for
Hillary) became a much larger force in the Mississippi
election. Fully 9% of the people voting in the
Democratic primary were Republicans voting for Clinton.
That means that almost one-quarter of Clinton's votes in
Mississippi came from Republicans, nearly all of whom
hate Clinton but wanted to distort the results of the
Democratic primary. By contrast, Obama's Republican
vote, at 3%, was similar to his historical average
throughout the primaries.
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