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I live in Washington state, which has two Democrats in the Senate because Senators are voted for statewide, and the state by population is Democratic. But there are substantial differences between one legislative district and another; so much so that almost half of the state's Representatives in the House are Republicans.
Howard Dean has been winning polls here in Washington for some time. He will not, however, win the caucus coming up this Saturday, because his support is limited to some very specific places in Washington, in the larger cities in the western half of the state, including my caucus precinct. I am sure that Dean will draw many caucus goers to those precincts in which his suppport is strong; however, those precincts only get a number of delegates to the statewide caucus that reflect how many people voted in that precinct in 2000. Thus, Dean's strong poll numbers are an overestimate of the result he will get in the caucus.
I don't mean to detract from Dean; Dean and Clark both opposed the Iraq War from the very beginning, and that is the most important of several important issues for me. Dean has run an exciting campaign that has been good for the entire Democratic party. Dean's support just doesn't match up well with the caucus format here in Washington.
Wes Clark has also polled well in Washington state, and unlike Dean, his support is geographically widespread throughout this Western state, as it was in Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. I also think Kerry will do well here, although I haven't seen any support for him either in polls or on the street; he is the front-runner, and the general feeling here seems to be ABB. I think a lot of the caucus-goers will be deciding who to vote for at the caucus, and a lot of them will end up supporting ABB in the form of Kerry. Governor Locke has endorsed Kerry, as well. The Seattle Times, which supported Bush in 2000, chose to endorse Lieberman at the end of January--much to everyone's amazement.
My prediction is that, as far as delegates to the state caucus go, Clark and Kerry will be the top two in Washington at around 30-35%, with Dean close behind at 25% and Kucinich at about 5%.
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