The Texas Flip-Flop

Something the pundits haven't discussed in the myriad of exit polls taken throughout Texas last night is this new category of voter -- the Republicans who voted in the Democratic Party for the one candidate whom they thought stood the least chance of beating John McCain. I have a slew of Republican friends who stood in line yesterday to cast their vote for the "best loser." Most of them went toward Hillary Clinton thinking that she stands the best chance of losing to McCain. They are worried about Obama's potential to beat McCain in the general election. A McCain-Obama contest has a slimmer margin of victory for McCain than a Hillary-McCain contest in their minds. They want to make sure McCain gets the weakest opponent to run against.

The state of the current election and the confusion of the Texas Primary System allows such a category of voter to turn up. If the McCain-Huckabee contest had been much closer, more Republicans would have turned up in that primary and eliminated themselves from the Democratic Primary. In Texas, you don't have to declare your party affiliation before the Primary. You declare it by voting in the Primary, and retain that affiliation for the reminder of the year. At the end of the year, everyone resets. Since McCain had clearly won the nomination by yesterday, a lot of would-be Republican Primary voters came out to the Democratic primaries to help sway that vote in their favor. I wonder how much of a percentage that was of the vote last night. I don't think exit pollsters were asking that question. They were looking at more traditional demographics. I'm willing to suggest that as much as 10% of the vote yesterday was from this kind of flip-flop voter. My friends think it's less than 5%, but how can we ever tell?

This is akin to playing golf with a handicap. You start out ahead of your competitor. Your competitor could play a better round than you, but because of your handicap you come out better in the end. I'm willing to bet that the same thing happened in Ohio last night. I'm not saying this guaranteed a win for Hillary, but it didn't hurt her cause any. In Texas, the majority win was so slim, that I'm willing to think that enough Republicans came out to make the decision to break the tie.

Of course, this is playing with fire. Things could backfire, and the one for whom they vote could take office in January '09. These voters would then find themselves in a precarious situation of knowing that they made it possible for their opponent to assume the office they so desperately were trying to keep for themselves. Talk about irony!