Senator Barack Obama continued his string of victories in caucus states on Saturday, projected to be beating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Wyoming by a wide margin.
The victory, while in a state with only 18 delegates, was welcome news for the Obama campaign as it sought to blunt Mrs. Clinton’s momentum coming off her victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton had campaigned here Friday, a day after her husband and daughter, signaling the stakes every contest holds in the fierce battle for the Democratic nomination.
Party officials reported extremely high turnout at caucus sites across the state. More than 1,500 residents of Laramie County came to cast votes at the caucus site in downtown Cheyenne, filling the auditorium. Hundreds more waited outside for hours until they could enter and vote.
Wyoming Democrats, usually a lonely bunch in an overwhelmingly Republican state, basked in their moment in the spotlight.
“Extremely high turnout” is about 8,000 people?
Rather more than that, by all accounts. I wonder, though, how many of these are Republicans out to spoil the Democratic soup?
Oriscus (#3)
Last week (in the Texas primaries) I received several calls from Hillary’s or Obama’s campaign. When I indicated that I planned to vote in the Republican primary, both camps urged me to vote in the democratic primary and to vote for their candidate.
It seems that Republicans are being urged to “spoil the Democratic soup.”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Well, considering Wyoming only has about 500,000 people in the whole state, most of whom are Republicans, I say 8000 to 10000 people at a Democratic caucus isn’t exactly extremely high. Although with the Caucus system, people have to drive extreme distances in Wyoming to get to a caucus, that is still about 1 in 50 people going to the caucus.
#2 As my on-line name says, I am “In Texas”. Even though I have voted Republican for years, and I am on the FEC rolls with donations to Republicans, I received not one, but six calls from Obama. Five were “live” calls from Texas campaign staffers and one was a taped message from Obama urging me to vote for him.
I did feel a little sad that Hillary’s campaign did not call me once. I guess she was counting on Rush Limbaugh to do her work for free.