NM FINALLY Announces the Winner. And it's...
by RenaRF
Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 02:12:41 PM PDT
Clinton by 1,709 votes.
- RenaRF's diary :: ::
It took 8 days locked in a room for New Mexico's vote to be accurately counted. Right now the NM Democratic party is commending both the Clinton and Obama campaigns for their diligence in ensuring the process bore itself out and was fair.
He continues to talk and laud praise on the Clinton and Obama staffers.
Now he moves on to thank the "scores of volunteers" and chides the crowd for not answering his question of whether or not "scores of volunteers" means more than 144... And then he tells us that over 2000 people volunteered to help see the process through.
Provisional ballots were reviewed. He indicates that this yielded the "biggest surprise" - over 17,000 provisional votes were cast on February 5. They ensured they could tie each provisional ballot to a Democratic registered voter. They found, though, that THOUSANDS were from registered Republicans, Independents, and Greens (even one from the Bull Moose party - I'm not making this up).
Those non-Democratic registered voters "sent a message" that they were for change. They welcome them in the November 2008 general election.
He goes on about the uniqueness of the candidates. He expounds on the largest voter turnout in decades. Over 158,000 people came out to participate and send a message about who should be the next President of the United States. The credit for the turnout belongs to Clinton and Obama for "lighting the state on fire" in just two weeks.
It was one of the slimmest margins of victory every in the history of NM.
Here we go.
Total votes cast both absentee, regular, and qualified provisionals: 149,779
Obama: 71,396
Edwards: 2,157
Dodd: 81
Kucinich: 574
Richardson: 1,305
Biden: 122
Clinton: 73,105
Clinton takes it by a nose.
Update [2008-2-14 17:19:11 by RenaRF]: Sure wish that he had indicated what way the provisionals cast by Republicans, Independents, and Greens had voted. It's their rules - registered Democrats only, so discarding those is appropriate. But man. Sure wish they had given the size of that pool and the percentage breakdown.
Either way, it doesn't seem to change the delegate estimate given the closeness of the race.
Update [2008-2-14 17:26:39 by RenaRF]: Ok. Extrapolating - initially he said over 158,000 turnout to participate, yet the final qualified tally was just shy of 150,000 qualified votes. That means that somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000 provisional ballots were excluded.