Turnout Huge: Obama Takes Maine

Waiting in line, Maine caucus

Despite snow, cold and big winds, Maine Dems packed caucus sites yesterday and gave Obama his fifth victory of the weekend, which also included Obama wins Saturday in Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska and the Virgin Islands. The win in Maine was something of an upset for Obama, as recent external and internal polling had shown Clinton with a significant lead. He ended up besting Clinton by a margin of 59% to 40%, or 15 delegates to her 9. Check below the fold for a list of the states so far won by each candidate, along with their winning margins. According to the a statement by Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe:

Obama has now won 20 contests to Clinton’s 11; he’s won a larger share of the popular vote; and he’s projected to more than triple his current pledged delegate lead since Super Tuesday from 27 pledged delegates to 84, a net gain of 57 pledged delegates. This weekend’s net gain of 57 pledged delegates represents more than the 42 delegate net gain that Clinton won in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Tennessee and Arizona – combined.

Oh, and guess what? There were still outstanding precincts in Maine's vote totals reported today -- this in a place where Dems have been running caucuses for decades and there were 420 locations in a state that fits in one tiny corner of New Mexico. Turnout was so huge that sites in Portland, Bangor and other places across the state had lines snaking out the doors and many people were forced to stand out in the stormy weather waiting to get in.

The turnout was high at many caucus sites, despite harsh weather. Many people in Maine's 420 cities and towns were taking part in the state's delegate-selection process for the first time, driven to participate by excitement over the highly competitive race.

"If it wasn't so close I wouldn't vote," said Mark Antoine, who waited more than an hour in line at the state's largest caucus site, Portland High School, to cast his vote for Obama. Antoine, 20, said it was the first time he had participated in any election. There was no parking for several blocks around the school, and some stood in slushy snow and shivered in lines that extended around the block.

According to a story in the Portland Herald:

More than 46,000 voters, including 4,000 who cast absentee ballots, participated in the caucuses, easily breaking the record of 17,000 from 2004.

We exceeded that in a way none of us could have foreseen," said Arden Manning, executive director of Maine's Democratic Party. "Democrats really want something different, and they want something new. That's why they attended in such high numbers."

... The record voter turnout in Maine plus the bad weather led to long lines and confusion at many caucus sites about how a caucus works. The caucus at Cape Elizabeth High School started an hour behind schedule. Caucusgoers waited in two lines snaking out the door even as a wet snow started to fall shortly after 1 p.m.

Portland High School was mobbed with voters three hours before the caucus was scheduled to begin. A line of people stretched from inside the building to outside in the falling snow, with the end of the line falling on Congress Street -- three blocks from the school's Cumberland Avenue entrance. Inside, the school's athletic teams held bake sales as some voters clamored for seats inside the gymnasium and many others figured out where to register.

Packed Maine caucus

Big Dem Turnouts Cause Probems All Across America
Sound familiar? Recall that many of the Nevada caucus sites were so chaotic, people gave up and went home, and an investigation will be conducted by the Nevada Dem Party to look into irregularities. Reports were rampant about people being given incorrect info at the sites about how to vote and who could vote. In California, problems in Los Angeles with a "double bubble" ballot used by non-Dem voters resulted in up to 94,500 ballots being rejected. In several states the Democratic Party websites tracking the results of the contests were so overrun with visitors that they crashed early in the process and stayed down for hours. As of yesterday, only 89% of precincts had reported certified results from Minnesota's February 5th caucuses. In some states, it's still unclear how many delegates have been allocated to each candidate. I could go on.

Why haven't these problems been trumpeted continually by the media? One reason -- the contests in these places weren't close enough for the problems to make much of a difference. Here in New Mexico, however, with only about a thousand-vote margin separating Clinton and Obama, the spotlight glares on with judges from both campaigns monitoring the process closely. Thankfully, the rules negotiated to qualify the more than 17,000 provisional ballots that were cast will result in ballots being rejected for only the most glaring errors. In a number of other states, authorities have taken the opposite view. It's much harder to qualify and count messy, complicated provisional ballots than it is to toss them out or leave them unprocessed, as happened in New Mexico's 2004 Dem caucus.

Candidate wins as of today and margins of victory:

Clinton (10)
Arkansas +43
Oklahoma +24
New York +17
Massachusetts +15
Tennessee +13
California +10
New Jersey +10
Arizona +9
Nevada +6
New Hampshire +3

Obama (19)
Idaho +62
Alaska +50
Kansas +48
Washington +37
Georgia +36
Nebraska +36
Colorado +35
Minnesota +35
Illinois+32
South Carolina +32
North Dakota +24
Louisiana +21
Maine +18
Utah +18
Alabama +14
Delaware +10
Iowa +9
Connecticut +4
Missouri +1