| The Atlantic Monthly's new article The Front-Runner's Fall provides leaked Clinton campaign internal memos. The look at the internal problems and strategic mistakes in the primary is fascinating, but I thought I would look at how the Clintons viewed New Jersey. As the long primary made us all aware, the primary was really 20 separate district elections plus a statewide result.
Not surprisingly, New Jersey as such is rarely mentioned in these high level memos. As many warned, we got lumped into the big February 5 Super Tuesday. It's good to see that Mark Penn did value Corzine enough to view his endorsement as a significant April 2007 development, on par with Iowa Governor Vilsack.
After that, the main interest of the leaked memos is in the predictions of the outcome. On January 21, 2008, senior adviser Guy Cecil included New Jersey in his predictions. His memo considered New Jersey one of only four Clinton "Base States" and predicted the following primary results (Clinton-Obama):
Vote: 56%-44%
Statewide Delegates: 21-16
District Delegates: 39-31
Total Delegates: 60-47
This was pretty good: The actual results were 55% - 45%, statewide delegates 21-16, district delegates 38-32, and total 59-48.
The memo specifically lists Delegate Districts 10 as a 3-delegate district they should target and Districts 16 and 17 as additional targets to pick up delegates. At first, I thought this was an excellent decision as Clinton picked up +1, +1, and +2 net delegates in those districts. Clinton got 52% of the vote in NJ10 to pick up an extra district, so that targeting decision was definitely right on. On the other hand, vote breakdown, Clinton actually easily blew by the thresholds in NJ16 and NJ17, and I can't help but think some effort in District 2, or districts 12 and 18, would have been more valuable. If I read the 21 January internal targeting projections correctly, Clinton's campaign aimed for the minimum threshold in these districts, when in reality they fell just missed the higher threshold to pick up additional delegates on February 5.
Assessment: B+: The Clinton campaign predicted the vote within 1% and the delegate breakdown within one. The three districts Cecil wanted targeted provided a net +4 delegates, most of the Clinton district-level +6 victory margin. So far so good, but when I look at the district breakdowns I wonder what they were doing in districts 2, 12, and 18, where a few percent more would have picked up additional delegates. So I give them a B+, but only with the benefit of hindsight. |
