2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If you think the state with 40 million people, the state that best represents the US demographically [View all]Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)voted even one month later Obama would have won CA. CA likes to be with the winner and it likes to set the winning trend, setting the losing trend did not sit well with CA voters, so this cycle they moved it back to June.
So CA this cycle is both a Hillary win from 08 and a State that experienced a certain amount of regret for not voting for Obama. My CA Obama ardents were furious that I would not state a preference until Oregon was up for the vote. I favored Obama, but we really needed the full cycle to grow the Party.
2008 increased Democratic voter rolls in Oregon and caused a historic change in the process- both candidates traveled all over the State seeking our votes, not just Portland but all over the State. Prior to 2008, the last Democratic Primary contender to visit Oregon was Bobby Kennedy in 1968. So Hillary and Obama did a great service by vying for that nomination so fully and so well. He got my vote, she got my thanks.
She would not have won by 25 points had they gone first. She's have won, probably. But CA is a very hard call. Even CA can't figure out when they want to vote. They just know they want to be influential. 25 points rather absurd. She beat Obama by 7.5% as I recall.