Is Jimmy Carter Letting Democratic Voters Down??
Posted on April 15, 2008 by GRL

On Monday (April 14) I caught a brief comment by Jimmy Carter about the Nepal elections on the BBC World Service. Carter, who was in Nepal to monitor the polling, said that whatever problems occurred had "paled" compared to the overall success of the vote. (Unfortunately, the audio report is no longer available.)

In a report issued on April 15 entitled Trip Report by Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to Nepal: April 6-14, 2008, Carter wrote in great detail about all the efforts made to ensure a free and fair election.

   <We have maintained a staff of long-term election observers for more than fifteen months. They have visited all 75 districts and had an opportunity to become familiar with the entire nation and its various and conflicting political factions.</p>

   After our arrival from Atlanta, we joined Dr. John Hardman and began receiving extensive briefings from former U.S Ambassador Peter Burleigh, David Pottie, Darren Nance, Sarah Levit-Shore, and others. Most of our 60 international observers, from 21 nations, had been deployed to the more remote areas by helicopter, all-terrain vehicles, and by foot. My co-chairman was Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, former deputy prime minister of Thailand, who was a key partner and essential to the mission's success. Our team was joined by international observers from the European Union, Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), and by several thousand domestic observers. ...

   On election day we visited as many polling sites as possible in the valley that surrounds Kathmandu and found the election commission's procedures were being largely followed. There were long and separate lines of men and women in a celebratory mood, the total turnout being above 60 percent. Despite some problems, our observers throughout the nation found the same situation among a total of 400 sites visited. Ballot boxes were required to be delivered to 75 central locations for counting, and we observed a number of these procedures.>

Impressive, no?

There's more...

An early call to begin the evening. The numbers across my desk showed Obama up in Georgia by almost a 3-to-1 margin, and NBC News is projecting that Barack Obama that has won the state.

Update [2008-2-5 19:1:31 by Jonathan Singer]: Per MSNBC, no call on the Republican side where there's a tight three-way race.

Update [2008-2-5 19:7:28 by Jonathan Singer]: Obama wins Black voters in the state 86 percent to 13 percent, while Clinton won White voters in the state 54 percent to 43 percent. It looks like that's a very good showing for Obama among both groups. Remains to be seen if this is a bellweather or an aberration...

Update [2008-2-5 19:12:4 by Jonathan Singer]: One more point. If Hillary Clinton can only pull in 13 percent among Black voters nationwide, it could spell trouble for her because she needs to break the 15 percent threshold in Black majority districts to ensure that Obama doesn't get extra districts. Again, this could be limited to Georgia, and we don't want to read too much into these numbers at this point. But if this is a trend...

There's more...

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A lot of new polling is out today from the February 5th states...

Alabama

SurveyUSA, 1/31/08, 586 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 4.1%

Clinton 47
Obama 47

Capital Survey Research Center, 1/29/08, MoE +/- 5%

Obama 40
Clinton 35

Connecticut

SurveyUSA, 1/30-31/08, 679 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 3.8%

Obama 48
Clinton 44

American Research Group, 1/30-31/08, 600 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 4.0%

Clinton 48
Obama 35

Georgia

Public Policy Polling (D), 1/30/08, 457 Dem LVs, +/- 4.6% (.pdf)

Obama 51
Clinton 41

Missouri

SurveyUSA, 1/30-31/08, 664 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 3.9%

Clinton 48
Obama 44

New Jersey

SurveyUSA, 1/30-31/08, 642 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 3.9%

Clinton 51
Obama 39

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (D), 1/30-31/08, 600 Dem LVs, MoE +/- 4.0% (.pdf)

Clinton 41
Obama 34

New York

SurveyUSA, 1/30-31/08, 950 Dem LVs, MoE+/- 3.2%

Clinton 54
Obama 38

What say you about these numbers? In general it looks like Clinton holds an edge in the overall head-to-head polling, but far from an overwhelming one. Because so many delegates are apportioned by congressional district, it's hard to discern from these numbers who is going to come out ahead in the delegate race at the end of the day on Tuesday. That said, what is clear from the numbers is this: We've got a heck of a race on our hands at least through the 5th -- and likely much longer than that, too.