One statistic from the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania was not widely reported. CNN exit poling (p 4) showed that 15% of those voting in the Democratic primary plan to vote for McCain in November. Of these voters, 90% reported voting for Hillary Clinton.
Since Clinton reportedly won by 9.2%, the actual margin - without interference from CHAOS voters - would have given Obama a narrow victory
What can we expect in Indiana? Probably MUCH more of the same. Indiana is a highly republican state - and with no meaningful race on the Republican presidential side, they have little to lose by manipulating the Democratic vote. Moreover, unlike Pennsylvania, which was a closed primary, Indiana is open.
Unfortunately, the link goes to page 1 of the poll. There does not seem to be a way to correct it. On page 4 in the second question, you will see the following:
Vote for President in November
Response Voted for
(% response) Clinton Obama
Obama (73%) 41% 59%
McCain (15%) 90% 10%
Would not vote (9%) 98% 2%
The pollster has already determined whether the voter voted in the Democratic or Republican primary. The question is, "Who do you plan (or expect) to vote for in November?" Of the respondents, 73% said Obama. Of those, 41% voted for Clinton and 59% voted for Obama. Of those responding "McCain", 90% reported voting for Clinton and 10% for Obama. Of those responding "Would not vote", 98% voted for Clinton and 2% voted for Obama.
Clearly these are disaffected voters who are unhappy with McCain and are voting for Clinton in the primary.
One reason Republican voters might chose to interfere with the Democratic party voting process is that they are highly dissatisfied with their own candidate.
On the Republican side, running basically unopposed, McCain was able to garner only 73% of the vote with 16% going to Ron Paul and 11% sticking with Mike Huckabee. Not a very solid endorsement.
It is not exactly clear how the vote would have come out if there had not been interference. One interpretation given by ddoston yesterday is as follows:
If 15 out of a 100 voters (15%) were operation chaos voters and 13.5 voted for Hillary, and 1.5 for Obama.
Hillary got 55 votes to Obama's 45 votes initially, but since 13.5 of Hillary voters (15 times 90%) would not vote for her again and only 1.5 of Obama's voters would not vote for him.
Without Operation chaos, the final vote would have been 42.5 Hillary and 43.5 Obama which would have given him a 51 to 49 victory.