Question for Texas Du'ers: Would Obama have taken Texas if it was a PURE primary?

[Ken Burch]

Were caucus goers also allowed to vote in the primary?

Seems to me that if Obama's caucus goers had had to choose between the caucus and voting in the primary, or had even assumed that they could only choose one, that might have made the difference in the primary, given Obama's dominance of the caucus portion of the vote.

But as an out-of-stater, I don't know.

Could you folks enlighten me on this? Or at least offer good guesses?

Enquiring minds want to know, as some great journalist once said.

[MagickMuffin]

1. In order to participate in the caucus, you have to vote in the primary first

That is the only way someone can caucus. If you don't vote in the primary, you are not allowed to caucus. You also have to prove you voted in the Democratic Primary.

Hence the term Texas Two Step.

Texas holds caucuses every two years that is an election year.

The caucus actually is a Precinct Convention/Caucus.

At the precinct level, we have a precinct chair who starts the convention, at which point they sign in people with their preferred candidate. We also nominate a Permanent Chair and a Permanent Secretary then we tallying the percentages to allocate how many delegates each candidate receives, after the tally we submit resolutions for the Senatorial Convention/County Convention which the process for nominating delegates to the State Convention, during the State Convention the process once again is a nomination process to determine which delegate gets to go the National Convention. After all the nominating and resolutions are finished the meeting is called to a close.

The Texas Two Step would be a lot easier if voters took the time to learn the process.

I hope this makes some sort of sense. I'm sure there are other Texas DUers who know the process a lot better than me.

[Ken Burch]

2. I see. Thanks for clarifying that.

That would tend to argue against the idea that the caucus/primary hybrid cost Obama victory.

[MagickMuffin]

3. I guess the jury is still out on who actually has won Texas.

If this is correct, that one of the Chairs calls in the delegate count to TDP HQ's, so they have a basic idea of how many delegates each candidate receives.

Then the Permanent Secretary either mails in the sign in sheets, or hand delivers them to the County HQ's, which then sends them to the TDP. I believe they have three days to get the paper work to the county.

I hand delivered mine the next day.

I'm pretty new to the process and there are other DUers here who know the process a lot better, but I think this is a quick run down of the process.

You can check out the TEXAS DELEGATE SELECTION PLAN: it has a lot of info there.

http://txdems.3cdn.net/11ae19646381305920_tom6bhhx8.pdf

[tanyev]

4. They are still tabulating the caucus results.

It's not final until the county conventions? state convention?, but Obama is definitely in the lead so far and may end up winning the state as far as delegate count. At my precinct it looked like the Obama contingent outnumbered the Clinton crowd by 2:1.

Texas Democrats | Polls | County Results
Candidate Votes % of votes Delegates won
Clinton 1,459,814 51% 92
Obama 1,358,785 47% 91
100% of precincts reporting


Texas Caucus Democrats
Candidate Votes % of votes Delegates won
Obama 23,918 56% 0
Clinton 18,620 44% 0
Uncommitted 38 0%
41% of precincts reporting

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660914#TX