Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Texas Updates

At 9:00 PM when I got home, 18% of the votes had been counted in Texas and there were 10,000 votes separating Obama and Clinton with Obama leading. The race was 50/50, too close to call.

At 9:45, only 1,000 votes separated the two with Obama still in the lead.

At 9:55, ABC reported a shift. Clinton was at 748,849 votes and Obama was at 738,007 votes with 29% of the precincts reporting. Clinton had the 10,000 vote lead.

At 10:00 PM, Clinton's lead had grown to 20,000 with 32% of the vote in. She's at 776,700 votes and he's at 756,680 votes.

My precinct convention was a nightmare. Totally disorganized, noisy and confusing. Two precincts were meeting in one location. Small groups of people were meeting in corners with a big mass of confused folk in the middle. I was one of the confused.

The thing that disturbed me the most was that the groups appeared to be drawn on racial lines. I was hoping to find a multi-ethnic coalition of people for both candidates.

The Republicans were easy to find. They were the two smallest groups (less than a dozen each) composed totally of white people. I'm guessing there were 750 people present. Bored with milling around, I spent some time watching the sign-in sheets being tallied. It seemed to be breaking 66/33 for Obama.

I'm guessing Hillary will take the primary vote, and Obama will take the precinct convention vote.

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