CNN must really love Grant County, Oregon. Where's the outrage? Grant finally has some returns to show 14 hours after the polls closed. Of the whopping 725 votes counted, Obama won 58.62%, just a hair better than the pace he needs to win a 7-5 split among at-large delegates 4-2 split among PLEOs. Thanks to better than expected numbers coming in this afternoon, he may just be able to sustain the 58.7% edge he has according to the NYTimes latest update.
PLINKO-watchers everywhere, this is the place to watch the late, late results from Oregon...
As of 10 AM EST this morning, 88% of all precincts had reported and Obama had won 58.3% of the head-to-head vote. It appeared the counties where Obama performed well below the 58.5%58.33% target pace could outweigh the slight edge he gained in the more populous counties that surpassed the threshold. Now that more results are available, there is cause for optimism.
Five counties have reported new numbers and Obama is extending his lead in them all. Two of these updates have not yet been reported by the NY Times, so I'll fill in the details as they become available. Unfortunately, the SoS link does not indicate what percentage of precincts have reported. While the numbers are official, it's tough to project them without a sense of their scale.
A handful of updates, to keep the Grant County finals company:
The first 73% of Clackamas County broke 26,814-22,911 for Obama and the next 4,732 votes stuck with that proportion fairly closely, 53.92% early and 53.38% late. That only accounts for a quarter of the pro-rated turnout, so it will be interesting to see how much of the missing 27% these precincts account for. Because it is the largest remaining County to fall short of the target, this county poses the greatest threat to gaining the extra at-large delegate.
The latest numbers for Coos County are similarly behind the target with a 52.8% Obama edge, but given that Clinton led the County by nearly 10 through the first 78% of precincts, this is a positive sign. Of the five outlying states that voted in Hillary's favor, Coos had the second widest margin and the largest prorated votes remaining, so it represented her best bet for cutting into his popular vote total.
Deschutes County (Bend) is one of the four outliers that performed ahead of the target with a 60.36% edge through the first 72% (17,777 votes). Now that all precincts have reported, the news is mixed. While he improved his proportion to nearly 62%, the turnout fell well short of the pro-rated total with just 3,052 votes in the last 28%.
The best news comes from his stronghold Multnomah County (Portland). I have long suspected that the slowest counts tend to come from the densest and most active precincts. This could be a case in point. With 92% of the vote in, Obama had a 64.78% edge. Pro-rating the turnout over the last 8% suggested he would get a 7,532-4,095 edge the rest of the way. When the Times reported the next 4%, that projection was put to shame. In fact, he's added over 3,000 more to the popular vote spread by winning 72.8% of the votes, a 10,786-4,029 spread.
Anyone who thinks these results may be too heavily weighted toward Obama, consider that nearly a quarter of Lane County (Eugene) has yet to report, and that should be where the biggest chunk of remaining votes surface. Through the first 77% of precincts, he's got a 62.73% edge, 43,471 to 25,827.
The shortcomings of projecting at this point is the ambiguity of the data. The percentages of precincts reporting has been an unreliable measure in the counties that are slowest to report. Some precincts have not officially reported but have already had their totals added. Curry and Malheur counties are complete now, yet when they showed the same totals this morning, they had supposedly only counted around 3/4 of the precincts. Washington County was among the bigger disappointments in this regard as it's gone from 84% to 98% reporting without boosting his margin by a single vote. Of the 15 counties that appeared to have precincts left to report at 10 AM, 10 have increased the number of precincts reporting while only 5 have added new votes.
This is all just statistical doodling, but there's no harm in sharing a little ray of delegate sunshine.
UPDATE: Thanks for the correction. Link fixed.
UPDATE 2: The only new numbers on the SoS site show Obama closing the gap slightly in Lake county, picking up a 47 to 38 split in the latest report, and performing better in the most recent Clackamas results, winning 57.7% of the latest batch (2636 to 1935). No news about what percentage of precincts are left to count but the odds are against anything that will threaten his chances at the extra delegate.