There’s a lot of speculation this morning about whether the call by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts for their listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination fight.
So, did Limbaugh help Hillary win ? I’m sure that Rush, being Rush, will take credit for the win but the numbers just don’t add up:
- Republicans represented 9% of the electorate last night. Out of a total of 2.857 million votes cast, that’s roughly 257,000 votes.
- Obama won Republicans last night 52-47, roughly 134,000 to 123,000.
- Overall, Clinton won Texas by just under 100,000 votes.
So unless the vast majority of Republicans who voted for Clinton (more than 80%) did so at Rush’s suggestion, they didn’t put Clinton over the top. They may have given her a point or two bump in the end, but it seems highly unlikely they were the deciding factor for Clinton last night.
Nonetheless that’s not stopping one columnist from giving anyone who did follow Limbaugh’s advice some well deserved scorn:
So, are you happy now?
If you crossed party lines to pull a selfish stunt and vote in the other primary — as the eminent Dr. Phil would say, how’s that workin’ for ya?
Hillary Clinton is back in the race, thanks in some small part to Republican voters mindlessly following the commands of radio entertainers and crossing party lines to vote for the candidate they view as weakest.
Now, this endless Democratic get-out-the-vote rally will go on for weeks.
Both Clinton and opponent Barack Obama seem to be gaining numbers and setting all-time records for primary turnout.
And every Democratic voter is signing up for e-mails, text messages and everything but personal birthday cards from Clinton and Obama. The Democratic Party has thousands of names of new voters, and they’ll all get phone calls come fall.
Was it really such a good idea to take political advice from showboats such as Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh?
Strategic voting like this usually never works and more often comes back to bite you in the end. I think that’s what will happen to Republicans for Hillary.
Update: Over at Reason, David Weigel Jacob Sullum takes a closer look at the numbers and finds something there:
In Wisconsin, Republicans made up 9 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Obama won them 72-28 over Clinton. Just as tellingly, 14 percent of primary voters said they were “conservative,” and Obama won them 59-40, a bigger margin than he won with liberals or moderates. Tactical voters who said Obama stood a better chance of winning in November? They went for him 87-13.
Now, look at Ohio. Once again 9 percent of voters were Republicans, but Obama and Clinton split them evenly, 49-49. Once again, 14 percent of voters were “conservatives,” and Obama and Clinton split them 48-48. (Obama did better with them than he did with liberals and moderates.) Those tactical voters who thought Obama could win gave him a 80-18 victory, a margin twelve points smaller than the margin in Wisconsin.
It’s a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters, up from 15 percent in the Kerry-Edwards primary) went against Obama. For the first time, they were Clinton’s best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.
Ohio didn’t wind up being very close, but Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. If the exits are right, about 252,000 of those voters were Republicans, and about 618,000 were conservatives. Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.
Andrew Sullivan isn’t surprised:
Who would have thought back in the 1990s that the Clintons would finally join forces with talk-radio hate? But it seems so fitting now, in retrospect. They are just two sides of the same polarizing coin. They need each other; they feed off each other; they sustain each other.
Breaking their stranglehold on American politics is partly what this election is about. It’s good to flush them out.
Or, could it end up strengthening both of them ?
March 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I think you missed the point of why it was done. The point was to keep the Dems fighting each other for as long as possible. Because, frankly, they can say things to each other, and the media can say things about them that Reps can’t or won’t.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
[...] Now, it appears that Rush Limbaugh DID, in fact, game the results, according to several sources. Here and [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Rush is an idiot but a smart one. No one can say too many bad things about Obama, without the backlash from the people. Hillary is just desperate enough to play the race card, like she did with MLK and Lyndon B Johnson stuff, and anything else that is given to her, because she is so desperate. She screwed herself with the black vote with that, and she is screwing herself even now with the Canadian memo, which is a proven lie. How much more do we take, before we just ignore the dirt she comes up with, just vote for Obama and forget about the trash that comes out of the Republicans mouths or even out of the Clintons mouths.
The fact is so clear that this is more about racism, than anything else, as the old white and radical politicians that have had their way with this country for years, are being weakened, and their old white KKK friends will not have a link to the White House anymore, and that link was huge when the Clintons were there, would have been very huge with Huckabee, and was apparently somewhat a link with Bush.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
[...] EZ Math sheet drops the person with the lowest remainder. Apparently 8% of Clinton’s votes came from Republicans. We still have the most votes, most states, and most delegates. cheer [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Well I’m sure a few of my American cousins would like to know that the “alleged” leak was from a Canadian Conservative government that really admires the Bush Administration!
Hmmm, Canadian accomplices to the Republicans to help weaken a Democratic candidate that they would find very difficult to smear or even beat in a Presidential Election? Believe it!
Especially considering that this Prime Minister is dragging his feet on this investigation on potential interference in the US election process, when this same man had a temporary government employee dragged out in handcuffs for leaking a report on upcoming government policies on climate change.
Even we are suspicious of this whole smear campaign in Canada!
May 8th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Every soldier who has ever died or put their life on the line for this country, was protecting our right as Americans, to vote. Our elections are conducted with an air of decorum, our votes are carefully counted and THEY COUNT! I feel proud to be an American every time I have ever voted in my life.
Isn’t it ironic that ardent right-wing conservatives who are pro-war and pro-anything Rush Limbaugh (cowardly ass who had his MAID purchase his narcs for him-remember?!) tells them to support, are willing to demean the entire voting system in our country? Are our soldiers in Iraq dying for the rights of Americans to vote in elections that are treated like a child’s game? How pitifull! How shamelessly hypocrytical! HE doesn’t give a damn. Limbaugh could care less about the ideals on which our country was founded. It’s all about Rush and money and drugs and cigars and houses.
It will backfire on him. It already has. Hillary should have publicly denounced Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that any American make a mockery of our voting rights, the cornerstone of our Democracy. The fact that she will use any garbage that looks as if it could help her win tells me she is more interested in “winning” than in serving our country. She would have had a real boost from Limbaugh had she stood up before Tuesday’s primaries and said, “Do not demean the system voting for anyone other than the candidate YOU think deserves to be our President.” Now THAT would have been impressive.