So I attended my first caucus this afternoon – it was a pretty interesting experience. Normally I haven’t bothered with the caucus – the nominees are usually decided by the time that Washington state gets around to voting, and the candidates themselves have been less important than general party affiliations (e.g. I thought John Kerry was an OK guy, but he didn’t particularly motivate me one way or the other. As long as he wasn’t Bush, I was fine).
This year is obviously different. The caucus itself was held at the local elementary school gymnasium. I was expecting good turn-out, but it was *packed*. Case in point – they had a table set up for each precinct, and each of the tables held 10-12 people. My precinct ended up with 25 people voting and a number of kids there for the experience. There were 10 precincts, but many of them were larger than mine, so you can see how the numbers add up pretty quick.
After going through all of the sign-in, the initial vote was:
Clinton – 12
Obama – 11
Undecided – 2
We went around and folks have 1 minute to make the case for their candidate. After everyone had a chance to speak and a little back and forth, we ended up splitting the undecided votes and ended Clinton – 13, Obama – 12.
The turnout across the Puget Sound has been similarly overwhelming – check out this school in Ballard or this caucus in the Central District..
It was also really interesting to see how the demographic trends that folks have been reporting on across the country (Women and 60+ for Clinton, Youth and men for Obama) held pretty steady (in my neck of the woods anyway). In Seattle-proper, I think it was a little more skewed toward Obama, but still pretty interesting…
Getting this many people out and engaged in the political process is goodness all the way around…I can’t wait to see what the general election turnout looks like…
Andy's World 