This spreadsheet of the Obama campaign that was leaked out has given me endless hours of entertainment. It’s great to know what they reasonably expect to get from each state and how the entire race might play out.
At this moment of time, they expected to have a 53 delegate advantage over the Clinton campaign. Over this past weekend all we have heard from the Clinton campaign is how they expected Obama to win Washington, Nebraska, and Lousiana. They added Maine to that list because it is a caucus, has a large African American population, and most people there have at least 3 PhD’s.
According to the Obama spreadsheet, he is outperforming his expectations by picking up 24!!! more delegates than they expected to, leading by 77 delegates right now. As someone else said, Barack is doing a good job of setting the expectations quite high, and then exceeding them. That is amazing. But that is not the reason I am writing this diary.
All this time I heard from the Clinton campaign about how Obama is supposed to win these states and Clinton is going to make a comeback on March 4th with Texas and Ohio. It really reminded me of 9u11iani on Meet the Press when he kept asking Tim Russert for the Florida polls (he was quite scary)
These states are supposed to be the firewall states. But I have to wonder, how tall does that wall have to be??? Does she need a 5 point victory??? 10???? 15???
Obama’s expectation spreadsheet has given me the ability to figure that out. I think that if Hilary is within, for the sake of argument, 60 pledged delegates after March 4th it could be considered a toss up. I think I am being generous because there are not many states that favor her after that, with the big exception of Pennsylvania.
Lets say the Pontomac primary goes with 14 point victories for Obama for Virginia and Maryland and a 20 point victory for DC (which I would think would be a good day for Hillary the way things are going) Barack would have a 103 delegate lead. If Hawaii goes 65 to 35 for him and Wisconson splits 50-50, it is now 109. Assuming Rhode Island and Vermont goes as Obama thinks it would, he would have a 105 pledged delegate lead.
So Hillary would have to make up 45 delegates to effectively stay in the race by my benchmark. She was able to do that in California when 271 delegates were up for grabs, which is almost as much as Ohio and Texas have. (334 total)
Plugging the numbers into the spreadsheet, she needs and average of 13.5 point victory in Texas and Ohio to make up the delegates. That is much higher than the 10% advantage she got in California.
Now, I am still going to do everything in my power to Obama elected, but if I was a Superdelegate I would look at these numbers and jump on the bandwagon fast.