by next Friday, the 18th. So at the state level, they will know a week ahead of the caucuses, what the count from those ballots are for both Clinton and Sanders. I don't know if they disclose those counts to the two camps. I know our local Sanders campaign is having us volunteers tell the absentee caucus voter to fill out the surrogate ballot while we are standing at their door and then having us turn it in to the local campaign office. The field office will then fax it on or before the 18th to the state chair. That way, the Sanders campaign will have a rough estimate of the "absentee" Sanders preference. The voters are free to send it in themselves, though. I had one such voter who insisted on doing that. She agreed to let me call her before the end of next week though, to remind her to fax it in.



Those surrogate ballots are then delivered to each precinct caucus table by vote time on Mar 26th, the surrogate's name is placed on the precinct sign in sheet, and their candidate preference is counted just as if they were there in person.



Of course, both camps are pushing those surrogate ballots. On top of that volunteers go door to door to have the supporters fill out "commit to caucus" cards to also get a rough estimate beforehand of a base level of how many supporters actually will be at the caucuses. So by caucus day, on the 26th of Mar, the campaigns will already have a baseline of minimum estimated votes. Other than that, it's all a crap shoot, just like it is every election, as to which camp will get out the votes. Last minute GOTV is done by volunteers relaying to their field offices the count of supporters as they arrive in line, and then having other volunteers calling to rouse awake supporters who haven't shown up by caucus-door-opening time, and maybe even ferry them to the caucuses.



So, in a round about way, yes it is a little harder now for an outside observer of the lines on caucus day to tell the level of support for each candidate just based on the amount of people in line for each of them. But, as a percent, those surrogate ballots will be a small percent of the total vote.



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