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• Monday, June 2, 2008 03:43 PM

  @ mimawright

  Just to be clear, since you're accusing me of making things up and getting things wrong, the previous story I wrote on Puerto Rico didn't say Clinton would lose the primary to Obama. It said, first of all, that turnout would be low, and also noted that the most recent poll had her winning by only 13 points, so "she might not" win by the blowout margins she's been winning other primaries by.

  As it turned out, far fewer voters showed up than anyone expected; even the lowest projections for turnout I heard from any analyst or campaign official was about 120,000 higher than the actual turnout. The pollsters who did that survey (a neutral Democratic polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, working for Univision and El Vocero) projected 600,000 to 700,000 voters. Turnout was actually 384,000. As turnout projections dropped, though, experts told me Clinton's expected margin would go up, because her dedicated voters were far more motivated than Obama's voters or "leaners" who didn't support either one of them that passionately.

  So if the other piece got something wrong, it was actually in expecting too many people to vote (even though I predicted turnout would be low amidst general voter apathy). Of course we'll never know what the margin would have been in an election with more voters, but I suspect it would have been much closer.

  —mikemadden Read mikemadden's other letters
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