Posted by Jed Lewison on Sat Mar 8, 2008 at 12:27 PM Pacific
March 4 exit polls: Most Clinton voters think superdelegates should follow results of primaries and caucuses
As you know, given the Democratic Party's arcane rules, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will need support from superdelegates to actually win the Democratic nomination in 2008.
The question is whether the superdelegates should support the results of primaries and caucuses or whether they should vote their conscience, irrespective of who actually wins more pledged delegates.
Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton believes that superdelegates should vote their conscience, picking the candidate they think is most electable -- even if that means overturning the judgment of Democratic primary voters and caucus goers.
Barack Obama believes that superdelegates should respect our decision. (Maybe he'd think differently if he were losing, but that's immaterial because he's not losing. He's winning.)
It turns out that most of Hillary Clinton's own supporters agree with Barack Obama.
We know this from exit polls taken during Tuesday's primaries which posed the following question:
If the Democratic nomination were to be decided by superdelegates, they should: - Vote for who would have the best chance in November (Clinton's view) - Vote based on results of the primaries and caucuses (Obama's view)
The exit poll shows that not only do most Democratic primary voters agree with Barack Obama's position, but most Hillary Clinton voters agree with Obama as well.
A weighted average of each state shows that overall, 62% of Democratic primary voters on Tuesday agreed with Obama and just 34% agreed with Clinton.
57% of Clinton voters agreed with Obama and 73% of Obama voters agreed with their preferred candidate.
Hillary Clinton's view did not generate majority support among her voters in any of the four states. The closest she came was Rhode Island, where support was evenly split. (Why is it not surprising that Rhode Islanders would be more comfortable with overturning the popular vote than people from other states?)
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The moral of the story: the idea that superdelegates will be able to overthrow the results of primaries and caucuses is a fantasy.
Even Hillary Clinton's own supporters would oppose such a move.
The only way Hillary Clinton will be able to secure the nomination while maintaining legitimacy is by winning the overall battle for pledged delegates in Democratic primaries voters and caucuses.
Even her own supporters don't want to win it any other way.
She's got a tough challenge ahead of her, and probably won't succeed.
But she's got every right to try -- just as long as she doesn't attempt to steal the nomination should she fall short.
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Update:
After I wrote this entry, but before I posted it, Newsweek (via Greg Sargent) released a poll suggesting Democrats are split on the question of superdelegates.
Should neither Clinton nor Obama secure enough delegates to win the nomination (a scenario that looks increasingly likely), 43 percent of Democrats said they would prefer that the candidate trailing in the delegate count concede the nomination, while 42 percent think superdelegates should choose the nominee. Should the ball end up in the superdelegates' court, most respondents (42 percent) think they should choose the best-qualified nominee in their judgment, while 38 percent believe they should choose the person with the popular vote lead.
Neither question appears to get at the real issue at hand.
The first does not address what voters think superdelegates should, it addresses what voters think candidates should do.
The second question asks whether superdelegates should follow "the popular vote" writ large -- but that's not the issue. The issue is whether superdelegates should support the results of primaries and caucuses.
That may sound like splitting hairs, but it's not. Hillary Clinton claims a different popular vote total than Barack Obama. The only thing everybody agrees on his how many pledged delegates you have. I'm not sure how I would have answered the Newsweek question; I certainly would have said no if I felt they were asking if superdelegates should consider look at the beauty contests in Michigan and Florida, for example.