Blog Perfect
From More Perfect
February 11, 2008 Timothy Killian
Did the Washington State Republican Party Misrepresent McCain's Victory?
It may very well be that the entire world has been misled regarding the results of this extremely important caucus.
Governor Mike Huckabee was on his way to having an unexpected banner night, winning easily in Kansas and pulling out a close victory in Louisiana. It was turning out to be a disastrous night for the newly-crowned front-runner Senator John McCain.
Saturday night, Washington State Party Chair Luke Esser, after having counted only 87% of the vote, declared that Senator McCain was the winner of the Washington State Republican Caucuses, even though at that point, McCain held only a 2% advantage.
This early call for McCain put State-chair Esser into a bit of hot water, and Governor Huckabee threatened to send his lawyers to have a look. When they come, they may find something even more troubling than what they expect. The results, as reported by Esser, are entirely without merit. Let me explain.
The rules of the Washington State Republican Party Caucus states that "there is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct's delegates." In other words, unlike most other caucuses wherein delegates are tied in some formal way to the preferences of caucus attendees, each individual precinct was free to determine their delegate in any manner they chose. (See here).
As a result, a given precincts presidential preferences could break out this way:
- Huckabee: 10
- McCain: 8
- Paul: 3
But, their delegates, which are unrelated to the above preferences, could break out this way:
- Huckabee: 1
- McCain: 2
- Paul: 1
So, is there evidence that this happened? Yes, there is. In Pierce County, the 2nd largest county in Washington State, they posted their results on their web page. (See here).
They Report their delegates this way:
- McCain: 192
- Huckabee: 186
- Romney: 143
- Paul: 142
- Uncommitted: 51
But, what did the Pierce County Caucus attendees list as their preferences?
1946 people signed in and their preferences were:
- Huckabee: 609
- McCain: 571
- Romney: 304
- Paul: 303
- Uncommitted: 167
So, we have an clear example where the preferences of the attendees favored Huckabee, but the delegates went in larger number to McCain. Commenters at popular Washington State conservative blog "Sound Politics" confirm that their precincts operated in this manner as well.
Now, back to Washington State Republican Chair Luke Esser. As is already known, he's in hot water for calling the State early for McCain. But, the more troubling issue is that Esser is using a metric that misrepresents the actual stated preferences of his caucus attendees.
To reach the conclusion that McCain "won," Esser is counting the stated preferences of elected delegates. But, as we've seen, delegates were not appointed based on preference. So, the stated preference of delegates is a meaningless metric.
In summation, it may very well be that Huckabee won Washington State. Or maybe McCain won. At this point, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is this: Luke Esser is willfully mispresenting the results of the Washington State Republican Caucuses.
The entire media world has now reported that John McCain was the winner in Washington, but that result is not based on the actual results of the caucus preferences.
I invite the media to more closely scrutinize this.
Timothy Killian
tim@moreperfect.org
