Somerville Presidential Primary Results

[ron_newman]

For some reason, the city has posted these unofficial totals on City Cable channel 16, but not on the city's website:

Democrats

Obama	9033
Clinton	8234
Edwards	264
Kucinich	73
Richardson	40
Gravel	39
Biden	37
Dodd	5

Republicans

McCain	951
Romney	869
Paul	150
Huckabee	76
Giuliani	11
Thompson	6
Hunter	1
Tancredo	0

Comments

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I will never understand voting for someone who has dropped out. Even if you hate everyone still in the race and can not bear to vote for any of them, staying home seems more logical to me.

I voted for you, by the way.

[ron_newman]

Thanks!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

So, how'd you do?

[elements.livejournal.com]

He made it on - as did everyone I knew of who was running as a write-in in Ward 6 (me included!).

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

I disagree, especially in primaries. Clinton, losing the Somerville primary, can look and see that if she wants to pick up more Democrats in the next set of primaries, she can start trying to woo Kucinich voters.

Doing that will probably net her more voters than examining Biden's platform.

Florida in 2000, for example. Rather than simply complaining about Nader, the DNC should have realized "Hey, if we had convinced 600 voters to vote for us instead of Nader, we would have won. I wonder how we can reach out to those voters in 2004?"

Trying to get Kucinich voters (who might stay home in November) to come out and vote for the eventual Democratic candidate is easier than trying to sway a McCain voter to switch, as well.

[ron_newman]

There were only 73 Kucinich votes. She'd do better to try appealing to the Edwards crowd.

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

True. My eyes skipped right over Edwards for some reason.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I didn't see it from the candidate's perspective. Fair enough point, there.

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

> I will never understand voting for someone who has dropped out.

Absentee? Perhaps the vote was cast before they dropped out?

Why:

[elusiveat.livejournal.com]

To let the leading candidates, the Party, and anyone else who might be paying attention know that you care enough about politics to express yourself, even if your views are unpopular. If a candidate who has dropped out gets a number of votes close to that of a candidate who is still in, it gives the candidate who is still in something to think about.

Re: Why:

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Or in the case of massive mismatches, use your vote as creative expression. I still can elicit laughs by telling people I voted for Al Sharpton in the 2004 primary (which Kerry won by a 4 to 1 margin).

Fortunately, I had a reason to cast a "legit" vote yesterday.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

I'd disagree about staying home vs. writing in a candidate who's dropped out of the race for two reasons.

1. It looks good for the community if everybody votes, because then politicians take an interest in what we want.

2. It encourages the pol who's dropped out to try again, and it lets his competition know that some people are attracted to the other guy's platform.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

What about the Green/Rainbow primary?

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

And the Ward 7 Democratic Committee results. (Seriously)

Quick question: Why were ballots for the Working Families Party even printed up for yesterday? The entire ballot was a blank slate. It's small peanuts, but could you conceivably bill the WFP for the cost of printing those ballots?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Because legally, they could have mounted a big write-in campaign at the eleventh hour.

Thanks, "Working Families Party", for wasting city and state money! YOU'RE AWESOME!

[ourthermidor.livejournal.com]

I think every party deserves ballot access. The WFP/Labor Party is a rather strong organization nationally and does a considerable amount of coalition work with the Greens sometimes. They have at least five thousand dedicated party activists. But, for the sake of Democracy, seeing other parties listed on ballots is always a good thing.

[elements.livejournal.com]

And if WFP had been able to get multiple-party endorsements passed, we might have been able to choose to vote for candidates of more major parties on the WFP line, if we'd so chosen. I know my mom (in upstate NY) votes for Democratic candidates on the WFP line to help remind the Dems in NY about their progressive base. While I'm personally committed to working for change within the party, it would have been nice if MA voters had been able to have that option, too.

[elements.livejournal.com]

In Ward 7, all I know for sure is that everyone on the challenge slate (group 2) was elected.

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Perfect Symmetry Division: Bob Trane 951, Rachel Heller 951.

That's interesting, it's not like any of the big guns from Group 1 (Trane, Ciampa, Jim Halloran, Liz Moroney, Rossetti, Harris) got shut out, rather the lesser-known individuals.

Are Trane and Heller going to kiss and make up? The tension at that first meeting could be palpable...

[elements.livejournal.com]

Where'd you get the counts for the non-write-ins? I've been curious about those (the write-in results are in a comment on the previous post, http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1141669.html?thread=11470757#t11470757

PDF of full Dem results

[elements.livejournal.com]

Nevermind, found it: http://www.somdems.org/pdfs/2008.02.05.pdf

[gruene.livejournal.com]

One interesting thing I noticed:
All the people from Group One who missed the cut were near the bottom of the list. Maybe they chose to order the list so that the better known people were on top, but it could also be that people just gave up scanning the names.

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

And they were All in the Top Ten.

[ron_newman]

I believe it was because a candidate from that party received more than some threshold (5% ?) of all votes cast for state auditor in the 2006 election. This elevated it to 'major party' status, which it will most likely lose after this year's election.

Full Results

[tomchampion.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Ron. We still don't have a full time Web person, and one of us is out sick, but the full unofficial results (in PDF format)are now downloadable from the city website at the following URL: http://www.somervillema.gov/alert.cfm?alert_id=99

As for the Working Families Party, the party qualified for ballot status statewide and nine people in Somerville took WF ballots. The cost was unavoidable.

Re: Full Results

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

The nine WFP ballots for president included two blanks and two "no preference"?

Unintentional Comedy Scale: 8.3 out of 10.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Have there been any news articles about which towns were the most "Obama" and which towns voted the most for Hillary? I scanned the headlines this morning but everything was either national or it was only about one town.

[fefie.livejournal.com]

Here are the stats of each city/town:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/primaries/mass_primary_dem_results_by_town/

[ourthermidor.livejournal.com]

Anyone know any further statistics for Somerville residents in chosing candidates in primaries? (Demographics--income status, age group, religious affiliation, etc)

[ron_newman]

I don't know how anyone would know that since those questions were not on the primary ballot. All we really know is which candidates won in each precinct.