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Essay On Political Caucus

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A google document I created during the “Western Saturday” Democratic caucuses broke the story of Bernie Sanders win in Hawaii. By compiling social media posts containing caucus results, I was able to report the statewide results before the mainstream media was able to. My google document became the go-to place for results and became a front page story on USA Today. Before I go into the details, I figure you would like to know a little bit about me. I am a junior Cinema & Photography major and have a hobby of following politics. I am a Bernie Sanders supporter, but I do not let that affect the integrity of the data I collect. Feel free to visit my website and take a look at Fall Reflections | Freeport, Maine some of my photography (some of which is for sale). I got the idea to make the spreadsheet while browsing through a reddit thread about …show more content…

Due to the large number of caucus precincts in the state, we found a small percentage of the results. In the end, our sheet differed from the official results by 8%. Alaska caucused later in the day. Because the state had fewer precincts, our results were within 3% of the official results, not too bad in Front Page of USA Today our eyes. The last state to caucus was Hawaii. Due to rules enforced by the Democratic party of Hawaii, every caucus had to be finished before results could be reported to the media. Because of a large voter turnout, the results were delayed for five hours. Social media was in uproar about how long it was taking to tally all the votes. But my google document had the results ahead of time. Not only were they early, they were accurate to within .5% of the official results. The hardest part of this whole process was finding the results on social Hawaii Results Spreadsheet media. So many people posted numbers, but they either didn’t include locations or were unverifiable. Many were duplicates of the reports we had already

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