How big the news?
Senator Obama won Wyoming. He got 4000 votes. Was this big news? How big? WSJ:
Sen. Obama was projected the winner while leading 58%, or 4,138 votes, to Sen. Clinton’s 41%, or 2,876 votes, with 21 of 23 counties reporting…Democrats were showing up in record numbers. In 2004, a mere 675 people statewide took part in the caucuses. In Casper, home of the state party’s headquarters, hundreds were lined up at the site of the Natrona County caucus…While few national candidates ever campaign in the state, the resort town of Jackson has become a popular spot to troll for campaign contributions and is the only county that voted for John Kerry in 2004.
It’s hard not to notice a certain strangeness of the Wyoming vote winding up on the front page of the New York Times. Wyoming has almost no delegates at the Democratic national convention (18), has only voted Democratic at the presidential level once in the last sixty years (1964), and, despite the excitement of the caucus, possibly produced fewer Democratic voters for the victor than a stretch of Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica or a couple of blocks on the Upper West Side. Moreover, it’s an old story by now that Obama tends to do very well in caucus states for a variety of reasons. What’s the fuss all about?