Predicting the Texas Democratic Elections

I was going to write this amazing post about the upcoming Democratic primaries/caucuses in Texas, but after researching it for a hour and a half, I realized that 1) I don't have the time right now, and 2) someone's already done it.

I'm not sure if I agree 100% with the outcome, especially since it's done by an open Obama supporter, but I think it's pretty close. In fact, if anything, I think Obama might win more delegates.

The key will be the caucuses. Over the last couple weeks, I've been working with some other students and the Harris County Medical Society (HCMS) to get a spokesman from both the Clinton and Obama campaigns to speak about the candidates' stances on medical care. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the world, seems like the ideal place for such a discussion. Now seems like an ideal time, given the primaries are March 4th, and the Democrats seem like ideal candidates, since they're locked in a bitter battle for delegates.

However, all is not well. Clinton has a well-run organization in Texas. It was easy for a student to contact her campaign and get a staffer willing to do the meeting. Obama has no official campaign office. Everything around here is grassroots, and the student found no person with the permission or knowledge to come to our meeting. He even contacted Obama's national campaign headquarters and came away empty.

So, we're now seeing if the HCMS can come up with anything. With exams coming up, and the primary soon after, time is running thin.

But this story brings me back to my point that Obama will win lots of delegates in the primary because largely Black districts get more delegates than largely Hispanic ones, and various other demographic intricacies. However, Clinton's well organized campaign staff will do wonders at caucuses. It will be interesting to see how the cards fall.

The Texas Democrat's political process is incredibly intricate. Go to Election Inspection to get a decent overview of the situation. You can also go to this article by the Houston Chronicle. The writer of Election Inspection has a blog, Texans for Obama, which does the aforementioned good job at predicting the results.