The GOP vote in the Dem primaries is more complicated
This Boston Globe story is making the rounds today saying Republicans are voting for Clinton in significant numbers simply to help McCain.
A caveat from my personal experience in Texas. As I was running around pimping my candidate, I spoke to 8 Republicans who planned to vote in the Texas Democratic primary.
Two of them voted for Clinton the "Rush Limbaugh way," solely to continue the Dem primaries and arguably help McCain.
Two of them voted for Clinton because they thought the Dems would win the presidency and thought Clinton would be a better (more acceptable?) president.
One of them voted for Clinton (against Obama) because she thought he was unpatriotic for not putting his hand on his heart during the pledge.
And, three Republicans voted for Obama because they liked him as a candidate.
However, of these eight Republicans in Texas, all five of the Clinton voters, and two of the three Obama voters, planned to vote for McCain in the general.
My point is that, although there are GOP votes are in the Dem primary, it may be a bit more complicated than the coverage suggests. It's not just the "Limbaugh effect." Some Republicans prefer Clinton as a fallback candidate, and some percentage wanted to vote against Obama in the primary.
I thought that needed to be said.
A caveat from my personal experience in Texas. As I was running around pimping my candidate, I spoke to 8 Republicans who planned to vote in the Texas Democratic primary.
Two of them voted for Clinton the "Rush Limbaugh way," solely to continue the Dem primaries and arguably help McCain.
Two of them voted for Clinton because they thought the Dems would win the presidency and thought Clinton would be a better (more acceptable?) president.
One of them voted for Clinton (against Obama) because she thought he was unpatriotic for not putting his hand on his heart during the pledge.
And, three Republicans voted for Obama because they liked him as a candidate.
However, of these eight Republicans in Texas, all five of the Clinton voters, and two of the three Obama voters, planned to vote for McCain in the general.
My point is that, although there are GOP votes are in the Dem primary, it may be a bit more complicated than the coverage suggests. It's not just the "Limbaugh effect." Some Republicans prefer Clinton as a fallback candidate, and some percentage wanted to vote against Obama in the primary.
I thought that needed to be said.
posted by mikevotes at
8:25 AM
4 Comments:
So I guess what I'm coming away with is that there may be a Repub factor in shaping the Dem primaries, but this cannot be extrapolated (necessarily) into predicting behavior in the general election.
By
-epm, at 11:12 AM
Definitely a non-scientific sample, but yeah.
I also found it very interesting that the couple next door (long term, semi-evangelical republicans) voted for Clinton because they preferred her as a "steady hand."
They firmly believe that the Dems will win the White House, so their Dem primary vote was a kind of way to register a second choice preference towards Clinton. They would never vote for either one in the general, but I thought it was interesting.
(And the woman who wanted to vote against Obama for a lack of patriotism is another neighbor, an 85 year old woman who was recently taken by a telemarketing scam.)
By
mikevotes, at 1:48 PM
By the way, I believe the hand-over-heart "controversy" was during the playing of the national anthem, not the pledge of allegiance...
(Interesting piece on NPR/BBC the weekend talking about some British committee proposing an "oath" of some sort to promote British unity. It was roundly scoffed at as being too ridiculously "American" with our silly, overly nationalistic, patriotism-on-your-sleeve, sort of way.)
By
-epm, at 2:13 PM
Yeah, it was. I had that in the first draft, but it kinda took way too long to explain and distracted from the point of the post.
I figured anybody coming by here probably won't buy into that.
By
mikevotes, at 2:22 PM
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