There’s been a development in Colorado. The Denver Post followed up the primary by finding an error in one of the counties. It also uncovered something a little less savoury — communications did not seem to be equal between the campaigns.
Colorado Democrats admit mistake that cost Bernie Sanders key delegate
The new projection now shows the Vermont senator winning 39 delegates in Colorado, compared to 27 for Clinton.
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The state party's website reported March 1 that Sanders won 14,624 votes, or 54 percent, in Denver County and Clinton took 12,097 votes, or 45 percent.
But the corrected numbers for Denver County give Sanders 15,194 votes, or 56.5 percent, and Clinton with 11,527, or 43 percent, according to official party results.
Whilst not a seizemic shift in the race, as Sanders gains 1 and Clinton loses 1, it does have a few bigger implications.
Firstly, it is no longer possible for Hillary Clinton to have ended up ‘winning’ the state as the pledged delegate deficit is now equal to the total super delegates for the state. By getting just 1 super delegate, the state goes down as a Sanders state on the board — one of many factors he’ll be relying upon should it be a contested convention.
It also has a potentially bigger problem for the Clinton campaign. They were told about it, whilst the Sanders campaign was kept in the dark. This will only add fuel to the fire that the Democratic party apparatus is working against Sanders, giving him and his surrogates ammunition on the stump and in interviews.
"It was basically a reporting error on caucus night," Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio said in an interview Monday.
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Palacio told the Clinton campaign, but he never informed the Sanders campaign — which didn't realize the mistake until informed by The Post.
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As for being kept in the dark, Weaver said it is "certainly disturbing that that information gets sent to one campaign and not to another."
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A Clinton campaign spokeswoman declined to comment.
The question is, had The Denver Post not been on top of this, would they ever have told the Sanders campaign and publicly corrected the mistake? Palacio’s answer regarding the lack of communication to the Sanders campaign is less than convincing.
Asked why he told one campaign and not the other, Palacio said "it didn't necessarily affect (them). It was our mistake that ended up affecting the estimation on Hillary's campaign."
I’ll just say that I’m skeptical.