Did Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?

[babsbunny]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2008/1641

March 8, 2008

By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

Hilary Clinton's larger-than-expected victory in Ohio may have been won with votes from Republicans, and from independents who usually vote Republican.

Much has been made of Rush Limbaugh’s other far-right commentators’ pleas to Republicans to cast their ballots for her in open primary states like Ohio and Texas. Part of the strategy is to slow down Barack Obama, who analysts argue will be harder for John McCain to beat this fall. Others, like Ann Coulter, have gone so far as to say they actually PREFER Clinton to McCain. Such voters would certainly also prefer the former first lady to Obama.

Whatever the case, there is concrete evidence in Ohio that Republican cross-over voters did, in fact, play a significant role in delivering the Buckeye primary votes to the Senator from New York.

Ohio has a classic open primary. Party affiliation can be whatever a voter states upon entering the polls. Both of this article’s writers, who usually vote Democratic or independent, chose to vote Republican in the 2006 primary, essentially because of a desire to oppose J. Kenneth Blackwell, the sitting Secretary of State, because of his role in his voter suppression during the 2004 election. In 2006, though our previous party affiliations were Democratic, each writer merely informed poll workers that we wished to cast a Republican ballot. Raised eyebrows notwithstanding, there were no problems getting them. The same opportunity allowed voters to cross-over last week.

[SoFlaJet]

1. BFD Babs

at least we won't be like The Monster and her zombie cult and whine about it...what the hell, she's almost a repiglican anyway

[annie1]

2. don't they have exit polls?

[kikiek]

7. Yes and it doesn't support the OP. It just gets repeated over and over again.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/measuring-the-limbaugh-effect/


On Wednesday’s show, after Mrs. Clinton won in Texas and Ohio, Mr. Limbaugh proclaimed victory. However, there is little to suggest that he successfully drove enough Republicans to vote strategically to impact the outcome.

“There’s just not a lot of evidence, when you start looking at the data, that there’s a lot of this sort of behavior in presidential primaries,” said Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies voter turnout.

Mr. Obama actually won among Texas Republicans, who made up nearly twice as much of the voters in the Democratic primary as they did in 2004, at 9 percent, and 53 percent of them went for Mr. Obama, according to voter surveys by Edison/Mitofsky. In Ohio, where Republicans participated at similarly increased rates in the Democratic contest, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both received 49 percent of the G.O.P. vote.

Mrs. Clinton won the Ohio primary 54.3 percent to Mr. Obama’s 44 percent, and she took the Texas vote with 50.9 percent to 47.4 percent.

The Republican vote was “definitely not determinative of whether or not Clinton won those states,” said Professor McDonald. He added that the effect of Republican voters could have added “maybe a percentage point or two” to Mrs. Clinton’s total.

[TahitiNut]

3. Does a bear shit in the woods?

:shrug:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. I don't think they're too particular.

:)

[Snarkoleptic]

4. Hillary is being used as a human wedge...shield your eyes-

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022608/content/01125110.guest.html

[cui bono]

6. Why not? There's evidence that probably happened in Texas

UPDATE: The Texas theory is being challenged in the comments, so I'll add one data point. In 2004, Al Sharpton got 3.7 percent of the vote in Texas. Among the Republicans who crossed over to vote in the race, he got 10 percent. He got 2 percent of liberal voters, 4 percent of moderates, and 7 percent of conservatives. There's no way to explain this unless you assume some eventual Bush voters were making mischief for the Democrats.

UPDATE II: An e-mailer to the Corner has the most persuasive evidence yet. An astounding number of voters took Democratic ballots, voted for president, then left the rest of their ballots blank.

The undercount in the D primary was almost 700,000 ballots out of 2.86 million. By contrast, the undercount in the R primary was about 164,000 ballots out of 1.38 million. In the 2004 general election, the dropoff from president to railroad commissioner (the next race on the state ballot) was less than 400,000 out of 7.4 million.

It's reasonable to assume many of these voters were "screw the Dems" Limbaugh listeners.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125327.html