Puerto Rico vote an enigma of complexities

Hillary Rodham Clinton won big in Puerto Rico. She got 68 percent of the vote, to Barack Obama’s 32. But while the Clinton campaign was hoping for a large showing of at least 700,000 voters, the turnout was a poor 16 percent, with fewer than 400,000 Puerto Ricans voting.

So instead of walking away with half a million votes, Clinton wound up with fewer than 300,000. Not bad, but not quite enough to make her popular-vote argument convincing, based on her own criterion.

Clinton also walked away from Puerto Rico with about 38 delegates to Obama’s 17. She’s now 203 delegates short of the nomination, compared with Obama’s 45, with the last two primaries taking place today. Without the popular-vote argument, Clinton’s sunk. And Puerto Rico, despite giving her that big percentage win, could be considered the culprit because of the poor turnout.”*

by Angelo Falcón - president and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy and co-editor of the book “Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans and the Making of Modern New York City.

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