Delaware Republican Primary Should Worry the Democrats
McCain's Hopes For an Upset with Bush Probably is Short-lived
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
February 9, 2000
In announcing George W. Bush's victory in the Delaware Republican Primary, the Washington Post observed:
While the stakes in Delaware were small -- only 12 convention delegates -- a win became more important to Bush as a way of stemming the erosion in public support in post-New Hampshire polls. The governor had the backing of Delaware's two top Republicans, Sen. William V. Roth Jr. and Rep. Michael N. Castle.
McCain's ability to win a quarter of the votes without setting foot in the state was a measure of the way in which his New Hampshire victory has resonated across the country. One strategist unconnected to the McCain campaign said that "his support in the suburbs tells me McCain might have won here if he had campaigned." With limited funds compared with Bush and Forbes, the Arizonan long ago scratched Delaware from his list of target states.
In Delaware the total number of votes for both Al Gore and Bill Bradley in the Democratic Primary totalled a measly 10,814 votes.
Yesterday, in Delaware's Republican Primary, the total number of votes for George W. Bush was 15,102 - 50% more votes than Gore and Bradley combined and 51% of all Republican votes. McCain received 7,547, a mere 25% of the votes, giving all 12 Delaware delegates to George W. Bush. Bush won the Iowa Caucus, which could give him most of the Republican delegates from Iowa. He has six delegates from New Hampshire, where John McCain won his very first 9 delegates. So, at this point, in the first two primaries, Bush has 18 delegates to McCain's 9 delegates, and will probably end up with most of Iowa's delegates, if not all of them if Steve Forbes drops out of the race.
Somehow the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN saw in this a real chance for a McCain upset. Delaware and New Hampshire are both small states - Delaware will send 12 delegates to the Republican Convention whereas New Hampshire will send 17 delegates. Yet, the McCain win in New Hampshire, where many non-Republicans voted in the Republican primary was touted has a huge upset. Many commentators treated the win as a real indication that McCain would probably beat Bush in the end.
Why would supposedly responsible news commentators make statements like that on such flimsy evidence? They appear to totally ignore the fact that in all three states, Iowa, New Hampshire and Delaware, the tiny turn-out in the Democrat primaries does not bode well for the Democrats in the general election. In New Hampshire, 234,214 people voted in the Republican primary and 145,423 voted in the Democratic primary. The turn-out for the Democrat caucuses in Iowa was never actually announced by number, but was very small, compared with the Republican turn-out and in Delaware the Republican turn-out was almost three times that of the Democrats. It seems increasingly obvious that McCain is the fair-haired boy of the Media right now, with little statistical evidence that there is a huge REPUBLICAN switch to McCain. It appears to be Democrats or Independents who have previously voted Democrat who are voting for McCain.
GOP Delaware Primary
Candidate
Votes
Vote %
* Est %
Del Est
George W. Bush
15,102
51%
51%
12
John McCain
7,547
25%
25%
Steve Forbes
5,857
20%
20%
Alan Keyes
1,138
4%
4%
Others
137
0%
0%
100% Precincts Reporting
On the other hand, the Democratic Primary, held on February 5th:
gave Bill Bradley 4465 votes, 40% of the total and Al gore only
6349 votes, or 57% of the total. Few national reporters gave the NUMBERS
of Democrats voting in the primaries - only the percentages of the votes for each candidate.
The find the actual vote, I had to track it back to the Delaware elections department.
Of course, the states with the largest numbers of delegates are still ahead - New York, California, Florida and Texas. But, it appears that the real message of these first three contests indicates that the Democrats should be the most worried about the Delaware Republican Primary. It was the third straight primary or caucus where the numbers of Republicans coming out to vote dwarfed the numbers of Democrats coming out to vote. Strangely, no other news commentator that I have heard has mentioned that, even though it appeared that many Independents and Democrats voted in the Republican Primary in New Hampshire. That probably will also happen in California, which has an open primary this year.
But, in Delaware and in Iowa, where they did not have an opportunity to help choose the Republican candidate, the Democrats just seemed to stay home in droves.
