Turnout low in Puerto Rico

With 14% percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by 67% to 33% in Puerto Rico -- and, more importantly for Hillary's hopes of a "popular vote" win, by a raw vote margin of 22,253 votes to 10,924 votes. So far, then, the results corroborate anecdotal reports of surprisingly low turnout.

If we assume that 14% of the precincts means roughly 14% of the votes, and if we further assume that the margin will remain roughly constant across the remainder of the island, Hillary's current 11,329-vote edge translates into roughly an 80,000-vote victory, which is not nearly enough to earn her an arguably plausible "win" in the national popular vote count (barring major upsets in South Dakota and Montana).

Even if Hillary's margin ends up being 100,000 or 110,000, it won't be enough. Hillary needed her Puerto Rico margin to get well into the 100,000's to have any shot at winning the national "popular vote" without the benefit of a) a Saddam Hussein-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan and/or b) the indefensible exclusion of four caucus states that held valid elections.

Bottom line: unless overall turnout and/or Hillary's support is much higher in the precincts that haven't reported yet, Hillary now has virtually no chance of earning a claim on the popular vote that isn't facially ridiculous, undemocratic and absurd.

UPDATE: With 56 percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary now has roughly a 70,000-vote lead, which extrapolates to approximately 125,000. Still not enough unless you only give Obama his "exit poll share" of the Uncommitted vote in Michigan, and maybe not even then, depending on what happens in South Dakota and Montana. Also, given that the DNC gave Obama more than his share of the Uncommitted vote, and given that Obama unquestionably would have gotten more votes in a "real" primary than Uncommitted got, I'd say a count that gives him only a 73% share of Uncommitted stretches the definition of "arguably plausible" somewhat. But that's the only arguably plausible count -- or perhaps arguably arguably plausible? -- that Hillary now has a shot at.

Comments

[aeromusek]

I keep hearing various radio hosts and other 'learned political commentators' trying to sound important by going on about Clinton mis-representing the Michigan vote count, but I've never once heard them mention the four missing caucus states. If I wasn't so lazy, the outcome weren't already set, I would call in and take them to task for it.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

What I don't get about the Puerto Rico campaign is I believe I heard Bill Clinton saying Hillary would push for Puerto Rican statehood. Maybe I am wrong, but aren't there almost as many Puerto Ricans who want independence as there are who want statehood? It seemed like an odd campaign position to take.