Recall the initial days of the 2016 presidential primary cycle, when Hillary Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus was the result of 6 perfectly tossed coin flips.
Now, as we are wrapping up the primary season, Clinton shas scored a razor-thin win over sanders in Kentucky.
Hillary Clinton is the apparent winner of the Kentucky Democratic primary Tuesday night, NBC News projects.The win — which seems like it will be by the narrowest of margins, perhaps just a few thousand votes — will blunt rival Sen. Bernie Sanders primary winning streak by winning Tuesday’s nominating contest in Kentucky….After the results came in, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, “Essentially a tie in a state they dominated last time. And Oregon is yet to come.”
The press is already massaging the news, because “a few thousand votes” is a stretch. It was approximately 1800, and less than 0.5% difference.
Consider the magnitude of Sanders’ achievement for a moment: When the process began Clinton was 44 percentage points ahead of him in polling.
Interestingly, there were 76 separate reports of election fraud during the primary.
Complaints included procedural and legal questions, voter assistance, voting machines, voter identification, residency, election officials, electioneering, poll disruption and vote buying.The following counties in our region were among those with reported issues:
- Boyd County: Voting machine
- Floyd County: (two calls) Special or absentee ballot and one electioneering within 100 feet of polls
- Johnson County: Procedural question
- Pike County: Election official
- Rowan County: (two calls) Election official and procedural question
To say that Sanders’ supporters are skeptical of the results would be an understatement:
At least Sanders is not walking away empty-handed, though.
Only 17% of Kentucky’s voters participated in the primary, and since Donald Trump won both that caucus and then went on to become the presumptive nominee, the clash between the two presidential candidates was the hot ticket item.
Let’s compare the two races for a moment:
1) Donald Trump faced a field of 16-other experienced campaigners, did not prepare for debates in the traditional manner, never relied on polling, and limited his use of political consultants. However, he became the GOP standard bearer a couple of weeks ago, and has actually earned more votes at this particular point in the race than Mitt Romney or John McCain during in their respective elections.
2) Clinton, whose main selling point is “experience”, faced a mere 2 candidates (neither of whom had run in a presidential race before) and still cannot make the sale. Interestingly, Sanders won the vaunted “women’s vote” in some states. Meanwhile, she is making the contingent of Sanders supporters angrier as the season progresses.
And I am suppose to buy that Clinton is “inevitable”?
And while there will be no “coin flips” during the November election, I sure hope Team Trump has an eye on the disturbing reports of fraud and takes appropriate steps to make sure that “every legal voter counts and every vote is counted only once” in the fall.
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