It is a slowish day so let’s jump into the fun subject of caucuses.
Bernie Sanders had a monster day yesterday, topping an overall monster week--all because of caucuses. Sanders has now won 10 out of 12 causes with two more to go in North Dakota and Wyoming. Additionally, he’s won 322 delegates in caucuses compared to Clinton’s 180 delegates. Without caucuses, he would trail by over 360 delegates and we wouldn’t be talking about the race even the small amount we are.
At the same time, the number of Democrats participating in caucuses this year, compared to the number of people voting for Obama in 2012 (a decent measure of “Democrats” voting) has been terrible in every single state. Take Washington State. In 2012, Obama got 1,755,000 votes while just 250,000 people showed up for the 2016 caucus, or around 15%.
This is typical of the caucus process, particularly once you leave the early-state drama of the Iowa and Nevada caucuses. It is easy to understand why people don’t flock to them. Caucusing is time consuming. Plus, there have been long lines and problems in almost all of them. In short, caucuses do a lousy job of reflecting what the average Democratic voter thinks.
They are also clearly important. In 2008, caucuses provided then Senator Obama with almost his entire margin of victory. (The confusion over the 2008 process in Florida and Michigan make exact comparisons iffy.) And it’s understandable that Sanders supporters are making much of his caucus victories. Obviously, they prefer winning to losing. However, It is worth contemplating what the Sanders supporters’ reaction would be if Sanders was winning huge voter majorities but Clinton was using smaller turnout events to win. Presumably they’d be going crazy at the undemocratic, and thus unfair, nature of the process.
Caucuses do have some party building advantages. And, in some states, they are almost required because the state does not want to spring for the cost of primaries. We saw the alternative in Arizona where the state skimped on the primaries and caused long lines and other horrible, unforgiveable problems. Still, caucuses clearly are not the best possible way to pick a president.
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The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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