Wampum

Wa do for the link. Doesn't this suggest, then, that contrary to first impressions, it wasn't a huge influx of Republicans everywhere who pumped up the Hillary vote? Why would Republican infiltrators bother to vote in downballot races? On the other hand, if your sole motivation for turning out was to vote for Obama or Hillary, I could see maybe skipping the rest of the ballot, given that there weren't too many contested Democratic races (I think three or four statewide, besides presidential). I wonder if there is any exit polling on this?

Good point, Eric, but this calculation will change from county to county. For example, in El Paso, probably the best organized county from either campaign, we flipped a few lower-level Obama supporters, including a well known county commissioner because it was clear Obama had negative coat tails.

There is some weird nuance to this, too. We had around 90% of elected officials all the way down to precinct chairs behind us, so I don't think there was very much down-ticket fall-off. BUT, even though Hillary is good for Democrats in working class and Hispanic TX counties, I'm sure this support will disintegrate if she is not on the ticket in the fall. Many of these Hillary voters are casual Dems and swing voters who are not invested in the party, and would flip a coin if the choice is Obama or a pro-immigration South Westerner. If there is less upside to Obama's TX coattails, there is also a big downside if Hillary is not the nominee. Will this change the delegate calculation? Only if it becomes clearer that Hillary's voters, the alleged base and future of our party, will be alienated in Nov.

The Local Crank: there was no Limbaugh effect. I've reviewed hundreds of names on caucus sign in sheets, and have not seen one Hillary voter who was not previously registered as a Dem in the TX voter database. Not even one.

Funny quip: I took a call from a ditto head around Thursday before the election, with the caller passing on Rush's line that TX HRC offices had "long faces," and that since we were going to lose, his listeners should screw things up by voting for Hillary. From my side of the call, half the heads in the phone bank snapped around to see what the hell we were talking about. I assured the McCain voter that Rush didn't know what was going on, we looked great, and I dismissed the call. By the next afternoon, when early voting results showed that three of the top four counties were ours, any Limbaugh effect was hopelessly neutered.

I think that if this election has proven anything so far it is the utter and complete irrelevancy of Limbaugh and other members of the Right Wing Howler Monkey Media Chorus to the electoral process, as even Republican voters refused to follow orders to vote agains McCain. The only question is, has the RWHMMC just recently become impotent or was it never as powerful as it, and its detractors, believed?