Democratic Freak States Holy Saturday results thread (1st caucuses begin @1pmET)

[dspNY]

The only silver lining for Clinton supporters with Washington today is that the Caucus allows for absentee ballots, and apparently there's been a record number turned in already. If anyone remembers Nebraska, Hillary was able to keep Sanders margin down somewhat due to all the absentee votes she got.

I'll bet Clinton pushed that early vote/absentee voting to the max like she did in other states. It won her Ohio and Arizona decisively and as you said, kept Sanders at 57% in Nebraska when Kansas went 68% for him

[dspNY]

Are they counting absentees with these totals or are these numbers just the people who are showing up today?

[dspNY]

Rules are rules, but I don't think low turnout unrepresentative caucuses are the best thing for the party. I like both of our candidates and I don't mind seeing the race go on (especially because California's top-two system can product nasty results if only Republicans have competitive races, such as CA-31 in 2012), but I really don't believe these kind of margins are representative of the broader Democratic electorate.

I think all states should have primaries. And, I think if Washington Republicans can have a primary for delegates, Democrats should certainly do so as well. I would hope this is something the party can work on for the future once we have our nominee.

Agreed. Caucuses are a relic

For the anti-caucus crowd, if you got your way and caucuses were done away with, would you make an exception for Iowa?  There is a lot of tradition there, and they do a good job managing it.

I would make Iowa the only exception

[dspNY]

Hillary's much stronger on Oahu than on the other islands, it seems.

Oahu is where most of the people are in paradise/Hawaii

[dspNY]

Hillary invested a lot into Seattle & it will pull the margin down to a little over 70% - Bad!

This was set-up to 75% & above, somewhere close to Idaho, but above 70% in a large state is awesome - I will take it. Fantastic result in Alaska too!

It'll be the only large state where you get anything like that margin so if I were in your position I would take it too because the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic closed primaries are going to slaughter your guy