Actually, that line of reasoning is only valid if you don't understand how the caucus/convention system works.

There really wasn't a lot of movement at all from the precinct conventions to the county conventions. A few "rounding" as the numbers narrowed and we worked our way up the caucus pyramid.

The fun part is that we have "state Superdelegates" to our state convention that get to cast a vote in the state caucus-level convention (same as the national model). Though, they only make about 4% of the total delegate population going to the convention, so unless they unanimously back one candidate, their votes are unlikely to shift the 37-30 shift.

We're doing our best to track the state Superdelegates at BOR...

Wrong!  I was at our County Convention and the Obama people were trying to game the system.  Our county was small enough that we were able to keep them from cheating very much but THEY DAMNED SURE TRIED.  I have looked at the results from some of the other county conventions and have seen the videos of several and there is no doubt that there were NO Hillary delegates that were changing their minds.  After this election cycle, I will do everything I can to change the caucus system in Texas.  It is an outrage and I have zero confidence in the numbers for Obama.  The only thing I can say is you people are generating a lot of very bad Karma.  I am so glad I am not affiliated with you.

Actually Obama has been sabotaging the Clinton delegates from getting to the convention. Riverdaughter and Taylormarsh both had this on there websites. You can see a video taped phone call of one Clinton precinct captain talking to an Obama camp volunteer on the phone right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nROKBU_Kl Zw&eurl=http://taylormarsh.com/

The Democratic party holds state elections to elect delegates to the national convention.  The only real measure of victory in a state is how many delegates they send to Denver for each candidate.

Anything else is simply a mental exercise.

We have a two-part process, so we've got to look at both parts. The legitimacy of the two-step process aside, we have both, and delegates are allocated for both. Obama's currently leading in the pledged delegates.

As an aside, we never had the hard numbers from the precinct conventions, but considering Obama had a 55%-45% lead, and the estimates are that 1 million people voted in the caucuses, that would mean Obama had 550,000 to Clinton's 450,000 votes in the caucuses...

the votes of citizens don't count for Obama people.

Yes, and in turn that would include the estimated 100,000 - 150,000 Limbaugh Democrats who http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl es/2008/03/17/many_voting_for_clinton_to _boost_gop voted for Clinton with the intent of helping John McCain]. There is ample evidence that pro-Clinton Republican voters in Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi were doing so as mischief-makers; there is no corresponding evidence that any pro-Obama Republican voters were doing so for that reason.

Since mischief-making Republicans were considerably less likely to involve themselves in the caucus process, this has been a chance to undo some of the damage that Limbaugh has done to our state's representation in Denver.

no, jerome, "winning" is used here in a strictly functional sense, and in a selective amnner. obama "won" texas because he got more delegates, but fewer votes. on the other hand, he also "won" alabama because he got more votes, even though the delegates are tied. see how it works?

the will of the people has nothing to do with "winning", obama-style. the obama campaign is oblivious to the disconnect between the delegate vote collection process and the opinions of the democratic voters in the candidate selection process.

Yes, Jerome, it would.

Thanks for asking.

Yes, it does. Thanks again for asking.

Is that the newspapers in TX this weekend are reporting that, "hey, maybe Obama won TX." For whatever that's worth.

We've got a two-part process, and yes, even our State Party Chair has acknowledged that we need to change this -- though he's embracing the grassroots and trying to get solutions made through the process in place.

If folks want to dump on the Obama campaign, or the TX caucus system, they can. I'd hope they realize, though, the tremendous value in having the caucuses -- it helps our Party identify stronger Democrats. We'll take that, considering how much work we have to turn TX blue.

For us in TX, we have real work to do after the Presidential circuses leave town...

Because I support seating FL & MI, and I'm an Obama supporter. So who are you talking to?

Also, I've never said I support caucuses. I've:

1) reported results from the caucuses
2) talked about the happy consequences of the caucuses

I think you're talking to someone who isn't the author of this diary, which makes me wonder -- why comment in this space?

Ya'll are grumbling so much about the anti-democratic nature of Obama's campaign when, by all metrics I've seen, even those that include FL/MI, Obama has received more votes than Clinton.  (And don't cite a count that doesn't include the caucus states--talk about disenfranchising states!) The rules of the system have skewed Obama's national popular vote total into a slightly larger pledged delegate total (I'd be curious to see an analysis of the size of this distortion).  In some individual states (NV, TX), this has had the perverse but not all that dramatic result of pairing a slight Obama popular vote loss with a slight Obama popular vote lead.  Similarly, in Alabama, it has paired a dramatic Clinton popular vote loss with a tie in pledged delegates.  

But as a "progressive Obama supporter," I'm capable of recognizing that our system introduces all kinds of distortions as it translates our votes into electoral decisions.  The most basic of these is by dividing our votes, in various ways, into individual states.  At the end of the day, as part of my progressive values, it's people I care about, not states.  And as long as Obama is ahead in the popular vote count, then my progressive values see no contradiction in supporting Obama.  If Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count but still trails in the pledged delegates, then she can use her lead among superdelegates to make up the difference, and everyone will be happy! Right?

for your report on what really goes on and also thanks for your help in the real world.

Thank you very much for report.
I have read on other blogs the same experience.  

Hillary should fight it, but then she'd look like a trouble maker.  Texas needs to re-evaluate their election process.  Lose the caucus.  It only really works in a smaller, homogenous state like Montana, if it works at all.

I always felt that primaries give the REAL opinion of Americans because it's private.  From that I saw of the caucus in Texas, it looked like a free-for-all.  

You are not alone in your assessment.  Please keep blogging.  Would love to hear more of what happened down there.

from election night, the only two large counties I can see that reported over 50% of their precinct results were El Paso and Travis (Austin). It's obvious that these two counties' precinct conventions ran well compared to the rest of the state, since so many of their elected chairs were able to call in their numbers to TDP HQ in Austin. They were exceptional in their degree of order.

Their results are as follows (popular vote, caucus vote, county convention Burnt Orange county convention spreadsheet) :

El Paso: 69/29, 75/25, 90.1/9.9 Hillary/Obama
Travis: 63/37, 66/34, 67.5/32.5 Obama/Hillary

I note that Travis, the strongest large Obama county saw three points of erosion for Hillary between the popular vote and the initial caucus reports; El Paso saw six points of erosion for Obama.

I draw these conclusions:

- Austin was run roughly as well as El Paso was - I suspect that the Obama organization was a cut above the rest of the state, as was the Hillary campaign in El Paso.

- I suspect that there was very little cheating in Travis caucuses because the numbers, like El Paso's were similar to the popular vote

- The rest of the state must have been exponentially more chaotic than what I saw in El Paso, and what I suspect from Travis.

- Something went wrong in most of the state that did not in the two well run counties - in chaotic counties, Hillary lagged the popular vote.

- As the Burnt Orange Report wrote a few weeks ago,

this process awards whichever campaign has the best grassroots effort to get their voters to stay after the polls close and attend the precinct convention. This is truly a process where the numbers build up -- and yes, it's crazy. But we're Texas -- what would we be if we weren't at least a little crazy.

What I saw has not yet begun to be told, but I hope it will, soon. The Internet is hostile to any information that tarnishes Obama, but if I can find a forum where I won't get troll rated I'll tell more of the story. Hopefully a reporter from the major media will get on this. It's not a very hard story to verify.

The two processes are meant to measure different things, hence why they also lead to election of two different sets of delegates. Try to keep up.

I'll match your anecdotal talk about no one liking the caucus system with my own: I've talked to numerous precinct chairs and participants (it's all about the voters, right?) who thought it was an empowering experience and they were motivated to become more involved through the process.

Now, on to this bad-mouthing of the Obama campaign: you've implied numerous times on this and other threads that you have evidence of Obama voters/caucus-goers violating rules ("shaving votes"). Now, no one is interested in you 'naming names' here, so no need to repeat your bit about being willing to "share it with reporters" (which  tells me you just have a yen to give the other campaign bad press). What I've yet to see specified is a)what rules were broken and b) how were they broken.

As a precinct chair, I want to get a full idea of what kinds of problems there were so we can get to work making the changes this process needs in order to be run more smoothly and less contentiously next time.  

BTW, someone pretending to be a Hillary supporter is certainly dishonest and shameful, but not a rules violation that I know of.

90% of the delegates at a county convention that had 25% Obama supporters puts your whole delegation at risk, actually - unless you got all of that 90% from the precinct caucuses that day (which I understand you did not).

Because, if you didn't, that means Clinton was awarded at-large delegates over and above her fair % of the convention sign-in  (a sign-in that had to be approved by the credentials committee). And that clearly violates Art IV, sect. C, 10.(d)

" (4) Poll results shall be used by the Nominations Committee and by the Convention as a whole as the basis for nominating and for electing At-Large Delegates so as to ensure the fairest possible representation of the Convention participants as a whole within the total delegation, without disturbing the Precinct Caucus election results. The threshold will be the lowest allowed by the National Committee (which at present is 15%)."

And every county chair also received a stern and unambiguous clarification from the State Rules Committee Friday before convention day, stating explicitly that at-large delegates could NOT be simply awarded to the candidate witha majority at the convention, but should be used, as outlined in the rules above, to balance the entire delegation with the sign-in/poll %s as closely as possible.

So, you guys won 90% of the convention delegates in the precinct caucuses alone? Impressive....

Hillary wins the primary and then suddenly Obama "wins" the caucus.  After so much controversy about these caucus, this is a tainted win.

Sometimes, a "win" is really a loss.

"yet again showing how biased they are in Obama's favor."

hahaha you hillary supporters sound like Republicans as the days go by.

/you steal their talking points so well.

The data has changed a bit even since this post. With corrections in Houston, Obama would be just barely (by about 5 state delegates) above the line to force a 38-19 caucus split for a +5 pledged lead from Texas. That might become more solid as a couple of challenges come to be in districts (one of which is a pretty clear case of misallocation mathematically of at large delegates in SD-26 in San Antonio). We'll update those at Burnt Orange Report as we find out more.

Exactly right.

Personally, I like the TX two-step process because I think (if run fairly) it is both reflective of the breadth of support for a candidate (the primaries) and the depth of support for a candidate (the caucuses).  And it weights breadth as being twice as important as depth, which seems about right to me.

For a normal election, I think I'd probably prefer straight-up popular vote.  But this is just a preliminary election, selecting who we want to represent us in the General Election.  And for that, I think gauging both depth and breadth of support is valid, and in fact desirable.

Do you have the slightest bit of evidence that primary vote results would have turned out different  than the caucuses, i.e. that Clinton would have won more delegates than Obama in any of the caucus states he was victorious in?

I'm perfectly willing to concede that the margins of victory might have been narrower, if you are willing to concede that the overall popular vote margin between Obama and HRC might have increased if all states had primaries (because caucus vote totals are typically lower than primaries)

However, it doesn't matter. The rules of the contest were clearly known to every candidate going in. To somehow claim the process is evil fraud is....well, words fail me.

Sorry, the difference between the primary result and the caucuses was GOP crossover for Hillary 4 days after Rush's 1st call for it.  The caucus portion makes up for the primary being open. I ran the election for 4 Pcts in S. Collin Co. TX and watched my GOP neighbors line up to my table. They were not going to commit to the 14 hr day that ended this AM for me as the convention elected delgates at midnight, with resolutions being discussed well into the wee hrs.  Real Dems showed up to the caucuses!