There is a major fight brewing in Washington state over the called race for McCain. I can't remember a time when they stopped counting votes because a party chair figured out the winner, but that appears to be what's happening:
Esser said he declared McCain the winner after calculating what Huckabee would have to win in the remaining precincts in order to take the lead. And even with being generous with a forecast of Huckabee votes, and purposefully assuming McCain's support dropped significantly in the late counts, McCain still looked like the winner.
Let's take a look at those numbers. 87% of the precincts were counted, which yielded a total of 13,475 votes. Doing the math that gives an estimated 1,752 votes uncounted.
Now let's look at the breakdown. McCain has 3,468 and Huckabee has 3,226, for a net difference of 242 votes. Looking at those numbers, what if Huckabee took the remaining precincts by 40% to McCain's 25%? That would give Huckabee the lead by 20 votes, and considering the way Saturday went, it's not a long shot.
There's more to it than just the numbers though. We also have to look at exactly what is happening. The state party chair, Luke Esser, is basically telling those remaining 13% of voters that they don't count. That is an insult to the Republican voters of Washington. I don't know the break down of the remaining precincts, but I would love to get some idea of how these areas break down by religion, race, political ideology, etc.
Something weird is going on in Washington and I am glad Huckabee has decided to fight it. The voters of Washington state deserve a chance to make sure their votes are counted, and at least Huckabee is standing up for that basic principal of democracy.
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My long view is that it's only been in the last generation that most voters got to participate in anything resembling a primary. I'm obviously not happy about what happened with the REpublicans in Washington nor do I think it's right for the Clinton's to be claiming the Florida-Michigan delegates simply because she refused to withdraw from those primaries like every other major candidate. I don't blame the Clintons for trying though.
I was at lunch the other day and older colleague mentioned that he had been hearing that Clinton has it wrapped up because of the super-delegates etc. I told him that he was still seeing the political world from the perspective of the 1968 convention. The Democratic party does some pretty odd things, but I think that even they know that they want to avoid the appearance that the nominee is the product of backroom deals. At least, I hope they know that.
I look at the race as Hillary having been dealt three of a kind and Obama and someone else at the table has already been dealt the fourth. In the meantime, Obama has four cards for a straight flush. The flush or the straight would still beat Hillary's hand, but until he draws into one of them, he's not actually holding much of anything. A couple big states and it could get even more interesting.
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