Over at The Monkey Cage, George Washington University political science prof John Sides draws our attention to something curious that is going on in Colorado, which had its caucuses back on February 5. As no one is pointing out nearly often enough, caucuses in most states are only the beginning of the process under actual convention delegates are picked. The real selection happens at county and state party conventions that follow.
In Colorado, it appears that Hillary Clinton is picking up more convention delegates than her share of votes in the Feb. 5 caucuses would seem to warrant. Sides points to some work that is being done in Colorado by University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket:
It’s hard to know if this is all due to chance, if she really does have an effective post-caucus strategy in the urban counties, or if the Obama folks are just flakier as the process goes on. It’s also hard to say just how much this will matter in the end. Each of the state’s seven congressional districts will only send six or seven delegates to the DNC. So maybe she can flip two or three this way, and if she does that in the other caucus states, we’re talking about serious numbers, although obviously not enough to overtake Obama in pledged delegates. Still, every little bit matters right now.
For instance, here’s what Masket says happened in one Colorado county:
Because the Clinton county delegates are, for the most part, party regulars, and the Obama county delegates are, for the most part, new to the process, the Clinton folks actually stayed in the game. It’s a long process from caucus night to the national convention, and people selected at one level have to be counted on to stick it out to the next one. Democratic caucus-goers in Adams County voted 55-45 for Obama. However, the Adams County Democratic Convention is sending an equal number of Obama and Clinton delegates to the state convention, either because the Clinton delegates are more reliable or because the Clinton campaign is better organized here now.
This is a new one on me.
UPDATE: Commenter cbhenderson calls my attention to Masket’s update to that post:
Update: I checked the Feb. 5th vote shares, and it looks like that original post from Adams County was in error. Obama only beat Clinton 51-46 there, with 3% unaffiliated. So it actually wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for the county to send an even share of delegates to the state convention. Still, Clinton may have picked up all the unaffiliateds.
However, it does indeed appear that the Clinton forces are working the post-caucus process more effectively than the Obama ones are.