Without a primary or caucus to tally, there's been fewer updates of the state of the race by the numbers. Here's a few highlights of where the numbers stand now. It might help erase the bad taste from last night's debacle by ABC.
- As of today, there are less than 250 regular superdelegates left to endorse (249 to be exact)
Per DemConWatch, there are only 316 superdelegates left to endorse. However, 67 of those are add-on superdelegates whose vote can be predicted by the state they come from. Only 249 are superdelegates that are actual people who are "free" to choose their endorsement already. Add-ons are usually selected with their endorsement known.
- Obama winning endorsements of 88% of his add-on superdelegates, Clinton only winning 25%.
Of the 12 add-ons already selected, 9 have endorsed someone. If add-ons go with their state, Obama should have won 8 and Clinton 4 so far. Obama has won 8, although he stole one from Clinton (OK) and 1 from Missouri has not endorsed yet. Clinton only has 1 (AK); she lost the OK add-on and the 2 from Tennessee are still undeclared. Therefore he's 7 for 8 (88%) with a bonus and she's 1 for 4 (25%). The remaining unselected add-ons can be predicted to go 36-31 Obama. This does not bode well for Clinton, since the analyses below assume she wins her state add-ons.
- With projected pledged delegate distributions all the way to June 3, Obama needs 61 of the remaining 249 "free" supers to reach 2024. That is only 24%.
If you look at Obama's spreadsheet, it projects they will split the remaining pledged delegates 282-282 (weird perfect coincidence). The current pledged count I used is 1418-1251. The add-ons can be projected by state winners. The add-ons from future contests can be roughly predicted as Obama gets NC, IN, OR, MT, SD and Clinton gets PA, WV, KY, PR. You can argue a few delegates here or there going another way, but there's not likely to be a 50 delegate swing one way or the other. I'd estimate the 75% confidence interval to be +- 20 delegates (just a guess of course).
61 endorsements seemes trivially easy for him.
- Using the same projections as above, Clinton needs 211 of 249 delegates, or 85% to reach 2024.
Obama is only 38 delegates away from "blocking" Clinton from the nomination (249 left minus 211 needed). These could come from superdelegates endorsing or better than expected performance in pledged delegate counts (of course Clinton can also do better than expected and increase this number). Note that the percentages do not add to 100% (24 and 85) due to Edwards' 18 delegates. Obama only needs 52 delegates to "beat" Clinton in the delegate count (although that wouldn't put him over 2024).
- With the same projections above, Obama needs 194 superdelegates after NC&IN to reach 2024.
After NC & IN is the first time one candidate would mathematically be able to say they have 2024 votes. It would take 194 super endorsements for Obama to do it (78%), but it's at least possible. After KY/OR on May 20, he'd need 127 to clinch (51%).
- With the same projections above, it wouldn't be until Kentucky that Clinton would be within superdelegate reach of 2024. She would need 234 at that point.
If supers keep endorsing, the 249 will keep shrinking and it might be past KY/OR before she could even theoretically clinch with a mass superdelegate endorsement.
- Obama will very likely reach 1627 pledged delegates in Oregon, thus being able to claim the pledged delegate victory.
The projected total for him as of Oregon will be 1659. That's more than enough margin over 1627 to ensure he wins the pledged delegate count that day.
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This of course doesn't take into account FL&MI, but my personal feeling is that Obama will clinch it by the current rules and adding FL&MI won't change the result. I think the popular vote result will also be sealed in his favor after either PA or NC & IN, and thus won't matter either. Projections that show Clinton getting close in the popular vote require results that are very different from the current polls, and realitic results from PA, NC, and IN will put him out of reach.
Thinking about the numbers always makes me feel better.