Why Obama Wins Caucuses
Feb 7th, 2008 by nick
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my theory that Hillary Clinton performs worse in caucuses, which require a public display of support, than in primaries, in which voting is private. The recent results from Super Tuesday corroborate this theory far more strikingly than I would have predicted. Of the 22 states in play for the Democrats on February 5, six held caucuses and 16 held direct primaries. Barack Obama won every single caucus state, mostly by wide margins! He also won seven out of 16 primary states, showing that the primary format doesn’t favor Clinton as much as the caucus format favors Obama.
That said, the outcomes in Nevada and South Carolina last month were the opposite of what I would expect based on this theory, with Clinton winning the Nevada caucuses and Obama winning the South Carolina primary. However, I think the demographics of those states and the specific campaigning that occurred overcame the biases of the formats. Based on the Super Tuesday showings, I think it’s clear that Obama has a general baseline advantage in caucuses.
So why does Hillary Clinton perform worse in caucuses than does Barack Obama? Here are a few possibilities:
- As I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, Clinton is polarizing, controversial, and not well-liked by the anti-war faction of the Democratic party. Thus, it’s more difficult for people to support her publicly. If this theory is correct, then the same should hold for John McCain, who for unfathomable reasons is not liked by the religious right and other extreme conservatives. And in fact, the Super Tuesday results show that McCain lost every single caucus state that was in play for the Republicans. Romney won most of them, though Huckabee took West Virginia.
- Barack Obama currently has momentum as the “exciting” candidate, while Clinton is perceived as the establishment candidate. In my caucus (about which I’ll write more later), at least two thirds of the voters were wearing Obama stickers, pins, or T-shirts, whereas I didn’t see a single piece of Clinton paraphernalia. It’s difficult to vote publicly against that kind of momentum. I ended up voting for Clinton, but felt almost uncomfortable to do so when the vast majority of the voters in my precinct favored Obama.
- Finally, the caucus format itself, which disenfranchises much of the population, favors the higher income demographic currently supporting Obama.
I like your analysis, and I think all of your theories are probably contributing factors. I’m curious to hear more about what the caucus was like, since I myself was disenfranchised and not able to participate in one.
Also, I love your choice of words here: “John McCain, who for unfathomable reasons is not liked by the religious right and other extreme conservatives”. Unfathomable, indeed.
Nick:
Being a real life Obama foot on the ground and Obama caucus organizer your analysis is a rehash of many talking heads who haven’t gone under understood the depth and breath of the Obama organization on the ground or how they have developed a new ground level political science. I can speak of this because I am a political scientist, previously run local political campaigns and formerly in a previous “open primary state” a Green Party organizer.
Bottom line why Obama does better is that he circumvents the regular Democratic Party organization which is Clinton centric
by building a bigger Obama organization and turning out more motivated voters. In short they train and build volunteer coordinators supported by campaign staffers and not the other way around. Meaning—local regular people are getting other local regular people to do the work. Meaning—the early primary function is building a robust volunteer network and regenerating volunteers and not fund raising or yard sign support but actually people willing to knock on doors and telephone voters. In CO Springs we started with about 75 people who came to an original organizational meeting and then came down to about 20 super volunteers. After Iowa we had 200 people and by Super Tuesday we had 700 who had done something.
Next we trained Obama precinct captains who were educated to run caucuses and not rely on the regular Democrats…this resulted in maintaining the control and not getting hood winked at the caucus. This meant at the caucus people were made to feel comfortable coming out to something they were unfamiliar with and turned out the vote outside the external motivations. Caucuses have always been about a contact sport where people show up because they have been talked to and motivated to show up.
The new science is combining old time volunteer organizations with meetings and delegating activities to those who desire to get involved and change…meaning they have an immediate say in what goes on not having to be shut out by a hierarchy who is fixated in maintaining their old power position in the party and two using the power of the Internet as a powerful communication and data tool. We can push phone lists to motivated volunteers across America and have them call anywhere else in America and collecting their phone bank data online. Since many home phones are not toll charged anymore people at home can do this.
Emails are sent and targeted not to persuade voters but to communicate events, talking points, need for help. This all equates to turnout in unprecendented numbers in the caucuses. You see Nick, it goes deeper than merely doing well in the caucuses, the real phenomenon is that Obama is generating record turnouts in those caucuses by ten-fold, in some cases beyond this. Yesterday in Wyoming 8,000 plus voters showed up when in 2004 600 voters showed up.
Now in the primary as you put forward you fail to identify states that the demographics naturally favor Clinton’s base of support and those that favor Obama and remove them from the analysis. Let us say that OH and SC are removed, same with ARK & AL for each, NY & IL for each and concentrate on CA, MD, VA, WI, TX, NJ, MA, CT, NM, NH, VT, MO and WI as good samples to analyze.
CA appears on the surface as a good win for Clinton except that over 40% of the ballots were cast 2 weeks before the campaign ended. Reasonable in a general but as the date got closer Obama closed. Then in LA almost 250,00 ballots were DQ’d because of voter error in not checking a box in the bottom where they were Independents or GOP…..This would have closed the gap to within a few points…still a close Clinton win. Yet in WI an open state Obama drew away….why? Same with MD and VA while in neighboring NJ a closed primary state Clinton won. NH Clinton won in a 3-way race by 2-points but lost in neighboring VT in a two way race by a large margin. Why in CT did Obama do well while in neighboring RI and MA he didn’t? In NM only a few hundred voters seperated a tie but in MO Obama won a close race.
The real analysis is that Clinton has acquired a base of woman over 50, who are working class coupled with the Latino vote while Obama has acquired the voters under 40 and those making affluent or professional incomes and the African American vote.
As for Clinton not doing well in caucuses, it is because she doesn’t organize on the ground but relies on the regular party to do it for her. That party will change after November and be taken over by many new comers from the Obama campaign who will also know how to locally organize. This will be the party legacy of Obama….besides winning the WH.