68% in and only 900 votes?

[pwnsey]

68% of the votes are in and Paul only has 851 votes. I know for sure Paul must have more supporters than that in Maine.

People decide it was more comfortable to stay in their house on voting day or what? Pathetic.

 

[Dan.]

Those are delegates not raw votes.

 

[Rangeley]

No, those are raw votes, not delegates. We are winning a majority of delegates by all reports - though because all delegates are technically "unpledged" until the actual state convention in May, the media isnt going to report who won the most delegates until that time. However, in actuality we can know who is leading in delegates from people on the ground.

But the reason there are so few is partly due to bad weather, partly due to it being a slightly confusing process, and partly because Republicans constitute less than 30% of the states voters. Theres other reasons too, but as has been said in other topics, this is actually a record turnout for a Maine Republican Caucus.

 

[syborius]

No, those are raw votes, not delegates. We are winning a majority of delegates by all reports - though because all delegates are technically "unpledged" until the actual state convention in May, the media isnt going to report who won the most delegates until that time. However, in actuality we can know who is leading in delegates from people on the ground.

But the reason there are so few is partly due to bad weather, partly due to it being a slightly confusing process, and partly because Republicans constitute less than 30% of the states voters. Theres other reasons too, but as has been said in other topics, this is actually a record turnout for a Maine Republican Caucus.

yeah, all those things, and partly do to the massive perception problem the media, establishment and ruling elite would face if you had 50k votes for one candidate, and 5k for the next one down.

 

[syborius]

68% of the votes are in and Paul only has 851 votes. I know for sure Paul must have more supporters than that in Maine.

People decide it was more comfortable to stay in their house on voting day or what? Pathetic.

don't be naive. We are getting the delegates, these supposedly actual vote totals will be manipulated to kingdom come.


"He he counts the votes controls everything"

 

[RufusTDoofus]

68% of the votes are in and Paul only has 851 votes. I know for sure Paul must have more supporters than that in Maine.

People decide it was more comfortable to stay in their house on voting day or what? Pathetic.

He's got a lot more than that. Unfortunately many of them aren't willing to register as Republicans in order to participate in a caucus. I know of at least 8 people in our area that fall into that category. I know of a couple more that are registered Dems that support RP (they actually gave money to the RP campaign) and don't plan to participate in their caucus and also weren't willing to switch parties to vote for RP.

I'm sure the weather had something to do with it today as well. I don't know if the weather was to our advantage or disadvantage. The early morning caucuses today most likely required 4WD to get to them. I'd guess many people simply couldn't get out of their driveways.

 

[Brodown]

No, those are raw votes, not delegates. We are winning a majority of delegates by all reports - though because all delegates are technically "unpledged" until the actual state convention in May, the media isnt going to report who won the most delegates until that time. However, in actuality we can know who is leading in delegates from people on the ground.

But the reason there are so few is partly due to bad weather, partly due to it being a slightly confusing process, and partly because Republicans constitute less than 30% of the states voters. Theres other reasons too, but as has been said in other topics, this is actually a record turnout for a Maine Republican Caucus.

then why does it say that romne has 18 pledged delegates and everone else including paul have 0???

 

[Rangeley]

then why does it say that romne has 18 pledged delegates and everone else including paul have 0???

Because they apperantly didnt read the caucus rules. They are assuming that the winner of the straw poll gets all the delegates, when this is not the case at all.

 

[Dude!]

The 851 number is estimated state delegates.

 

[Doriath]

then why does it say that romne has 18 pledged delegates and everone else including paul have 0???

Because the MSM, as usual, doesn't have a clue what it's talking about. A good rundown of the Maine GOP caucuses can be found in this article:

http://www.villagesoup.com//Community/story.cfm?storyid=108225

 

[RufusTDoofus]

The local media wasn't much help in getting the vote out. Their lead headline in yesterday's paper was "Is Waterville singer-songwriter dating Lindsay Lohan?" Seriously. That was the most important news item. It ran in three papers. Here's a link to one of them:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=166369&ac=PHnws

 

[RufusTDoofus]

The 851 number is estimated state delegates.

Nope. Not the case.

851 is the number of votes in the non-binding popularity contest. It's a Presidential Preference Poll. It's not related in any way to the number of delegates.

 

[petros153]

According to Maine's GOP website, some of the caucuses are on Feb. 3 and one is at 3pm on Feb. 4

http://www.mainegop.com/FlexPage.aspx?area=caucus2008schedule

Thus it cannot be 100% until then.

Regardless, my sincere gratitude to all Paul supporters on the ground in Maine, especially those serving as delegates.

For Freedom!

 

[SteveMartin]

I do not believe that McCain was second. It just does not add up to me, at this point..

 

[drdamwi]

per CNN's website, the 851 is the number of "state delegates" for Ron Paul - these delegates go on to the state convention and then select 18 delegates for the national convention. In the Maine caucus, delegates are "not bound" to support a particular candidate (just as in Louisiana I believe).

Each town or caucus site is allocated a number of state delegates based on the number of registered Republicans in that jurisdiction. There are three delegates for the first fifty Republicans, and two for each additional 150 Republicans in that jurisdiction. So it's basically impossible to extrapolate a "vote total" when you look at the 851 delegates selected, because the delegate:voter ratio is not a constant.

See this PowerPoint for further info:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2pj4f/MRP Training/Part 2/Caucus Introduction Part 2.htm

All reports from Maine news stations are that voter turnout was heavy despite the weather, as parking lots were packed outside the local caucus sites.

 

[subdefective]

851 is NOT the number of state delegates for Ron Paul. All delegates elected during Maine's caucus are officially "uncommitted." All ~3000 of them go to the state capitol in May and elect the 18 national convention delegates, and they choose who the state's delegates go towards. 851 is the number of *votes* RP received in the unofficial presidential preference survey.

 

[RufusTDoofus]

per CNN's website, the 851 is the number of "state delegates" for Ron Paul

cnn and yahoo are wrong.

 

[RufusTDoofus]

then why does it say that romne has 18 pledged delegates and everone else including paul have 0???

I thought I'd expand on this a little further.

The programming that goes into the fancy flash-based election reporting systems on sites like yahoo, and politico is pretty extensive. There's a lot of effort and I assume costs involved. I think that there's very little incentive for yahoo to program all of the peculiarities for each state into their reporting system. The vast majority of states are winner-take-all and that's how the reporting system is written. I suspect that when a winner is declared based on whatever criteria is used by the MSM, the act of flagging the winner in the system automatically updates the declared delegate column. I doubt there's a conscious decision to allocate all 18 national delegates to Romney. It's most likely just a quirk of the programming involved.

 

[drdamwi]

So in a state where 330,000 people voted for George Bush in the 2004 general election, only 4500 people went to caucuses today and voted? That's a pretty sad turnout.

I concede that you are correct, according to the Portland newspaper they are reporting 857 votes for Ron Paul with 69% of caucuses (cauci?) reported.

Being from a primary state (Ohio), I guess I just don't understand these non-binding caucus states...

 

[RufusTDoofus]

Being from a primary state (Ohio), I guess I just don't understand these non-binding caucus states...

I think part of the rational behind non-binding caucuses is to maintain flexibility. Maine's caucus is fairly early in the election cycle. If the process were binding it's conceivable that the state could select a candidate early on and ultimately regret it if that candidate self implodes. (Like if they admit to having witnessed an alien
abduction.) This way Maine has some level of national attention and hopefully attention from the candidates while postponing the real work until closer to the National convention.