Just got back from the caucus — the turnout was YUUUUGE. Long lines snaking into the meeting place, crowds of people everywhere. We voted and left instead of staying for all the politicking just because it was standing room only and we felt we had to leave to give more people a chance to come in.
Now we just wait for the returns.
You should watch the election returns on the Guardian. Not so much for the quality coverage, but for the mesmerizing little cartoon candidates zipping back and forth to paint in the county results.
Early results showing trump with a large majority of electoral vote wins is giving me major anxiety. Is it time to get the passport in order?
The Illinois primary is 3/15. The vote by mail ballots are ready to be marked. I hope to get them mailed at the end of the week.
I hope you’re joking.
There are many things that might cause one to flee one’s country (see Syria), but some buffoon winning a party’s nomination doesn’t seem to rise up to that level…does it?
The nomination, no. The presidency…Maybe? It opens the door for progressively worse candidates. To be surrounded by people that think trump is the best person to lead a country is less than ideal.
I was thrilled to see so many people out caucusing. The process seems to work best when it actually reflects demographics. The increase in young voters 18-30 was especially noticeable, and they are for Bernie. Voting just ended,
Wow, even cutesy animated Trump is a wanker.
Oklahoma is 52% for Bernie!
I’m almost proud to be from Oklahoma
I’d be curious to find out what the actual turnout was. I keep seeing stories about turnout records being shattered, high turnout, but when I do find the number of eligible voters it hardly seems that impressive. From what I found on fivethirtyeight.com, the GOP turnout in a few of the primaries this year were 8% of the voting-eligible population turned out to vote in the Iowa caucuses, 20% in South Carolina, and 27% in New Hampshire. 27% might be higher than previous years, but it means a large number of people are not turning out.
Just came back from the Colorado caucus. My precinct was an even split.
I know this doesn’t say much with regard to turnout, but I went out to vote in my little precinct early in the day and already some of the folks running things were already remarking on the huge turnout.
I also got to watch my precinct (as well as the rest of MA) switch from a projected win for Bernie to Hillary in real time. Fun times! Also a much closer race than I thought it’d be given fivethirtyeight’s polling predictions.
Nerd of Redhead @2:
Vote by mail is great, isn’t it? No going to long lines at the polling places and no bullshit about needing IDs in case of “voter fraud.”
Looks like Trump had his worst result so far in Minnesota. One could be led to think that you’re living in an almost reasonable place PZ. :D
Colorado looks to have gone for Sanders 60/40. In my precinct it was 75/25.
I occasionally feel a bit of pride in being Minnesotan and the part of the local culture where social democracy and education are things we all tend to agree are important regardless of political affiliations. It’s not that we don’t have racism, and sexism and other social issues,but this state was founded by various Northern European populations that were fleeing authoritarianism in Europe. Our religious conservative GOP tend to be quite humanist, truly interested in effective governance, and don’t tolerate overt bigotry in their fellow party members. Michele Bachmann and Jesse Ventura are not sources of pride for the local GOP.
I know a few Trump supporters, but none who went and participated in the caucus process. I know multiple people who generally have never bothered to vote, who turned out to caucus for Bernie.
Get, yes. Use (for anything other than a vacation jaunt), no. There are plenty of chances still for the country to come to its senses and not elect Trump. Heck, he hasn’t won the majority of the primary votes yet and as unstable as he is he could just implode one day and fail to pick up a single further delegate. (Yeah, I know, I’m in denial.)
The best case is for Trump to win the Republican nominations. He has the lowest chance to win against Hillary or Bernie and also he is probably going to be less worse than religious nutjob Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is as dishonest and disgusting as Donald Trump with the extra quality of being a religious nutjob which will ensure that all the supreme court nominees by him will be complete disappointments.
The worst case is going to be Ted Cruz vs Hillary, at least according to the current polls. That match up is very very scary.
I’m really no longer convinced that this is the case. Trump seems to have a lot of a appeal to the biggest single block of (non-)voters in the US: people who hate the entire political establishment. Sanders could potentially counter that (although he’d have difficulty), but Clinton in particular is the perfect avatar of the establishment. The mistake that everybody’s been making is looking at the contest through the lens of politics-as-normal, while Trump represents the complete repudiation of that. That makes him incredibly dangerous, and it also means that every attack that has been levelled against him (from either side of the aisle) only serves to re-enforce his appeal. I’m now very, very worried about how this is going to turn out.
Follow the results at The Guardian – I like the little candidates whizzing about to update the results!
MInnesota has voted heavily for Sanders – over 60% at present, with most of the vote in.
@Dunc:
There are lots of polls that show Trump does badly in face to face match up against any of two democrats, even Hillary Clinton. The latest one is from CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-poll/
I agree that Trump vs Hillary can get scary:
At the moment Clinton has a relatively small margin and the polling is only among registered voters, which means Trump can potentially do better. However, Trump has no chance of getting much of the minority votes so in overall his chances are rather low.
But compare this when Hillary is polled against Cruz or Rubio:
Rubio is pretty much out so we can just ignore him. But still the fact remains that Hillary can lose to Cruz more easily than versus Trump. And I still believe Cruz is at least as bad as Trump and probably even worse. So yeah, this election can get scary but still it is better that Trump wins the nomination rather than Cruz.
Bernie seems to be more electable though, so really, I don’t get why people call Hillary more electable than Bernie:
@lotharloo:
Yeah, but who are they polling? They’re only polling registered voters, and it’s everybody else that I’m worried about.
@Dunc:
Yeah, I totally agree. But assuming Rubio is out, I personally rank all the four possible match up in the following order, from the least scary to the most scary:
Trump vs Bernie
Cruz vs Bernie
Trump vs Hillary
Cruz vs Hillary
In a country where 30% of people aren’t sure whether or not Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer, it is too soon to how he would fare against Clinton in the general election. Most people haven’t been paying enough attention to decide yet.
Fancy making Bernie paint all those enormous Minnesota districts at his age. You lot are terrible.
I was mesmerized by Chris Christie’s fawning, basset hound face as he stared at the back of the Trumpinator’s head. Was that creepy or what? It looked like he was fantasizing about something naughty (yee-gads, I can’t get the images out my head!)
@25: Thank you for sharing that image. A Trump/Christie lust fest. I can’t even noun, that’s so awful.
Cthulhu, eat me now! There’s simply not enough brain bleach in the world to remove the horror!
@22: Kasich is still in this thing– if he wins Ohio he could blow the whole thing wide open again, and frankly he’d be a much better general election candidate than the other Trump, Cruz or Rubio.
In the unlikely event Rubio wins Florida, he’s taking it to the convention, regardless of how many states he loses. He’s already started pitching donors on a floor fight strategy and how he’s the only candidate that can unite the factions (heh). A lot of pressure’s going to come on him to drop out after he loses Florida, though.
Cruz is going to stick it out no matter what, even though a lot of Republicans hate him and think he’s a guaranteed loser, if he won the nomination it would at least forestall the party from splitting in half.
I think it’s pretty much assured at this point it’s going to Cleveland; even if Trump wins a majority of the delegates he lacks legitimacy, and the establishment’s going to try every trick in the book to decertify his delegates, whereupon Trump will run third party. Even if he doesn’t win the plurality, the damage to the Reagan coalition is already done. Republicans will win future elections but the three-legged stool of military, commerce and religion is broken.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Looking at election results in terms of delegates:
Trump, 316
Cruz, 226
Rubio, 106
Kasich, 25
Carson, 8
Clinton, 1001
Sanders, 371
Looking at the Super Tuesday results in terms of states won:
Trump, 7 states: Massachusetts, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Vermont
Cruz, 3 states: Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas
Rubio, 1 state: Minnesota
Clinton, 8 states:Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia
Sanders, 4 states: Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Vermont
We voted in Texas where Hillary got over 60% of the female vote and almost 70% of the Hispanic vote and I think 80% of the Black vote. My husband’s hispanic family all voted for Hillary and remarked that 25 years of Republicans smearing her has made them love her even more and know she can withstand the coming onslaught of the Republicans against her in the general. As a white female I stood with them, proudly. I and they will vote for Bernie if he wins, but we are so enthusiastically voting for her now and again in the general!
Whoops. I made a mistake in comment 28. I listed Oklahoma twice; as a win for both Clinton and Sanders. Sanders won in Oklahoma, not Clinton.
I can’t wait to hear… so I’ll say it first:
Bern won Colorado cuz that’s where the potheads are. They would naturally vote for the guy from the state that makes all their (preferred) ice scream [sic].
[/tongue in cheek]
ugh
seriously, just glad to see Bernie take a state here and there. He got Bern’d in my state of MA. Wasn’t until 2am or so that it was called for Hil. Being “too close to call” all night. At least my part of MA went Bernie (Worc. County) while all the “inside 128” went Hil.
Amusing to see that Trumpster came in very low in MN, with Bernie taking the Dem side of MN. Trumpper only took the twin cities according to The Guardian animation. The problem is the Repubs provide worse alternatives than Trump being the worst. (yeah, “worser than worst”)
re 25:
I prefer to go body shaming on Christie’s creepy shadowing of Trumpster.
meaning, licking his chops at the feast such a tomato would be with all the tasty bilge that flows from his mouth. Christie is fawning over Trumper, waiting to devour him. (as appeizer before taking on the whole buffet of Rethuglican candidate).
ugh
I find Christie disgusting in everything he does or says so I have to insult him however possible.
I’ll stop now…
Those animations are far more endearing than almost all of the actual candidates.