Mar. 25

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News from the Votemaster

If you are looking for a Website that is collecting information about the PLEOs, there is a a good one at Sourcewatch.org.

The expectations game has gotten to the point of being absurd. If people have a pretty good idea of how a state will vote in advance, it doesn't count. One of the few states left where no one really knows what is going to happen in the Democratic primary is Indiana, so that has suddenly become the key test according to the Washington Post.

Rush Limbaugh's campaign to have Republican reregister as Democrats to vote in the Democratic primaries in order to cause mayhem has sunk in. More than a dozen readers commented on what could happen if John McCain wins the election and Arizona governor Janet Napolitano (D) has to appoint a successor, which according to (probably unconstitutional) state law must be a Republican. Everyone suggested that she could follow the Limbaugh spirit and pick a Democrat (possibly herself) and have that person reregister as a Republican to be appointed to the Senate. After being seated, the person could then switch to being an independent, as Jim Jeffords did. That is probably 100% legal, albeit not quite what the framers of the Arizona law had in mind. Still, politicians do change parties after election. In fact, if the Democrats end up with 57 or 58 seats in the Senate, Harry Reid will no doubt try to entice a couple of moderate Republicans, like Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) to jump ship.

That said, while probably legal, this would be a dumb thing to do. The new senator would have to stand in a special election in 2010 and the cries of hypocrisy would reach the moon. A better approach would be for Gov. Napolitano to state that the law is unconstitutional, appoint whoever she wants, let that person be sworn in, and defy the Supreme Court to get it reversed.

Some more (older) polls were added to the general election data bases and more will be tomorrow until we get caught up.

No new primary polls today.

The polling results for all states are available as a Web page and in .csv format.

Here are the delegate totals from various news sources rounded to integers (Democrats Abroad has 22 delegates, each with 1/2 vote). The sources differ because in most caucus states, no delegates to the national conventions have been chosen yet, just delegates to the district, county, or state convention so there is some guesswork involved. Furthermore, some of the unpledged delegates are elected at state conventions in May or June. Finally, the PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) sometimes waver and may tell different reporters slightly different stories that they interpret differently.

Delegates

Needed to win: Democrats 2024, Republicans 1191.

Here is another source for delegate totals.

WWW www.electoral-vote.com