Politico maintains a page marvelous in its simplicity and high-grade information: a log of daily superdelegate announcements and other developments.
Following this page over the past month, it’s hard to fight the sense of growing momentum in the Obama campaign when it comes to the superdelegates ... towards the end of February, the HRC campaign held a margin of almost 70 superdel endorsements when compared to Obama (they had the difference at 68 on Feb 25). Since then, the log book is a punishing repetition of Obama’s name, and as of April 4th, HRC’s overall count had gone up by 4, and Obama’s count had increased by 39.
The following chart presents the diminishing spread from February 25 (245 HRC to 177 Obama) through April 2 (249 HRC to 216 Obama).
I’ve fit two trend lines to this data looking out over the next 30 days, one linear trend and another (kinder) exponential, but both suggest the spread will fall below 20, and possibly below 10, by the end of the month.
It won’t quite develop that way. There are only 329 supers still in play at this point, and at a run rate of 10 Obama endorsements for every one picked up by HRC, 30 days would use them all up, and surely a core group will hold out for the convention. Although who knows? Recent polls have started to show a similar closing of the gap in the Pennsylvania Primary, and if that latest bastion of ‘the contest that really counts’ should slip away from HRC, it may be time to fold all the cards.
(Cross posted from The Horse You Rode In On)