With the results from the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic Primaries just in there is one fact that is spinning heads in some circles, and that is the exit polls showing that without Rush Limbaugh's influence that Hillary would probably have lost Indiana.
I'd call him a conservative, but that would be insulting to real (and honest) conservatives so I'll say "Right-Wing Nutjob" Limbaugh has been calling for Republicans to vote Clinton in their state primaries — even if the primaries were not open and required them to changes their registered party affiliation — in order to keep these contests going. His goals are to cause chaos and divide within the Democratic Party and possibly even tilt the scales to give John McCain a candidate to face in November that the Republican Base absolutely can't stand, motivating people to vote for the 71 year-old like nothing else can.
Well to the surprise of many, this popular radio talk-show host seems to have actually made a real difference in the Democratic race. In fact, out of the 17% of Indiana voters who said they would vote McCain in the fall if Hillary was the nominee, nearly half of them voted for Hillary yesterday.
I'll let that sink in while we do some math: 17% of Indiana voters said if Sen. Clinton was the nominee, they would vote for McCain in November. 40% of those voters, voted for Sen. Clinton in yesterday's primary. 40% of 17% is nearly 7% of all voters who cast ballots yesterday.
That's 7% of all the people who voted in Indiana yesterday, but since we know all of that 7% voted for Hillary we can eliminate the 49% of voters who went Obama and just look at the Hillary voters. Once we do that the math shows us that nearly 14% of the people who voted for Hillary, did so knowing they were planning to vote for McCain in November anyway.
That's right, the exit polls show that 14% of Hillary's Indiana votes came from people that won't support her in a general election, so congratulations to Mr. Limbaugh. Now, it's a fact that exit polls aren't always right on-the-money but let's say these polls were way off base. She only won the state by 2% so exactly how far-wrong would the exit polls have to be in order to Hillary to claim her Indiana win wasn't influenced by fake support from Republicans? I'll let you do the math on that one.
To be fair, going into Indiana there were some concerns that there might be some hanky-panky going on because of a number of anomalies surrounding this primary, specifically in Indiana, that looked to be favoring Hillary Clinton and possibly deliberate. I'd like to apologize for my own suspicions. Yesterday's figures didn't have any surprises favoring her (in fact there were surprises in both states favoring Sen. Obama) and on those grounds I think it's clear she ran a clean race.
Of course, some would say it's now Senator Obama's turn to be put under the paranoia microscope, and while in one respect that seems only fair, the fact remains that in the one case the areas targeted were expected to vote heavily for Obama and in the other the board of the group responsible was packed with Clinton associates. We can chalk getting suspicious up to political paranoia but once we were suspicious there was no trail of bread crumbs leading to the Obama camp, so all we can do is acknowledge our suspicions seem to have (thankfully) been incorrect.
On the other hand, it does seem clear that between the exit polls and the extremely small margin of victory it isn't paranoid to suggest Republicans had a hand in Sen. Clinton's win. The numbers clearly suggest that without the votes she wouldn't be getting in November, Indiana would have gone decisively Obama.
UPDATE: Here's another interesting article on Limbaugh's influence in this primary. The author missed a step in his Limbaugh math (the author credits 7% of Clinton Voters with being Limbaugh surrogates, but it's actually 7% of the total Indiana electorate) but has some really excellent secondary evidence to back up the conclusion that Republicans who have no intention of voting Democrat in the Fall tilted this election in Hillary Clinton's favor.
For one thing, between previous states who held open primaries and yesterday's primary in Indiana, Republican participation seems to have skyrocketed by more than 50%. On top of that, on-average Sen. Obama had been beating Sen. Clinton by 16 percentage points among Republicans in earlier primaries but yesterday suddenly the majority of Republicans voted for Hillary.
Some might suggest that Jeremiah Wright has caused Republicans to lose their zeal for Obama but the exit polling tells a different story: 96% of Obama voters said they plan to support him come November while only 86% of yesterday's Hillary voters say they would support her.
UPDATE #2: Although everyone from Sean Hannity to John Kerry is crediting Hillary's narrow win in Indiana to Rush Limbaugh's surrogates manipulating the primary, Rush himself spent much of his radio show today trying to convince women voters that they're being marginalized by the Democratic Party, because apparently Rush thinks his listeners aren't smart enough to understand the difference between the Democratic Party doing something and an actual election. I don't have enough information to make an informed opinion but I'll concede it's possible he may be right.
Making that the only change and then seating the delegates as-is Senator Clinton would receive an additional 192 pledged delegates while Senator Obama would receive 126. This shrinks his lead by 66 delegates, but right now he's leading by 166 pledged delegates so even if you seat Michigan and Florida he would still be leading by 100 pledged delegates.
