Why Clinton Won't Last Until the Convention
Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 09:24:47 AM PDT
There has been great chatter about the Clinton campaign talking about how they're going to try to grab the nomination away from Obama via the superdelegates, I'm sure feeding an additional round of "superdelegates are evil!" waves around here.
However, Obama fans should, instead of rejecting superdelegates, embrace them since they are the very ones who can prevent Clinton from causing a hung convention.
The reason why I say to embrace the superdelegates is that it is nearly impossible for Obama to clench the nomination with pledged delegates alone, yet it's looking increasingly certain that he'll win it if you include superdelegates.
Currently my Pledged Delegate count looks like thus:
If you're viewing this diary after the numbers have updated, the numbers as of this diary are Clinton: 1001, Obama: 1135 - a 134 pledged delegate lead, with 9 delegates still unaccounted for in Colorado.
For Obama to hit 2,025 delegates with only pledged delegates, he would need either:
- 81.6% of all remaining pledged delegates, or
- All of Edwards pledged delegates and 79.2% of all remaining pledged delegates.
Well, the fact is that, without Clinton dropping out of the race, this isn't going to happen, and trying to blow off superdelegates actually gives Clinton the excuse of dragging the nomination out to the convention since "no one will have a majority"
Contrast this with the current delegate count, including superdelegates (based on the list here)
Again, if you arrive after I've updated the numbers, they are currently Clinton: 1235, Obama: 1286.5 (the half delegate is a Democrats Abroad Superdelegate, as they only count 1/2 vote).
Now, the gut reaction for many Obama fans is that they don't like this graph as much since Clinton is much closer to Obama, with Obama only being up 51.5 delegates instead of 134. However, the thing to note here is that Obama is 151.5 delegates closer to the nomination with this chart.
For Obama to win the magic number with absolutely no new superdelegates whatsoever, he would need to win 67.7% of the remaining pledged delegates. OK, still a lot, but not necessarily an unbelievable number now considering his margins in states since Super Tuesday.
However, according to the superdelegate page, Obama has added 53 delegates so far in the month of February, or 3.5 per day. Granted some of those might be older ones which are just being added as the website becomes aware of them, but most of those are probably new this month.
If one were to just assume that Obama were to be endorsed by merely a single superdelegate a day between now and June 7th, the date of the last caucus, that would give him an additional 113 superdelegates.
If you added this to his total, that would give Obama 1400 votes, and Obama would only need to win 57.3% of remaining pledged delegates. And that's by understating the number of superdelegate endorsements he has been receiving by 1/3.
If he were to receive 2 endorsements a day on average, he would only need to win 46.9% of remaining pledged delegates. If he received 3 a day, he would only need to win 36.6% of remaining pledged delegates (though Clinton would actually win the pledged delegate race under this scenario).
If he were to win 1 superdelegate a day between now and the start of the Democratic Convention, he would need to win 50.1% of remaining pledged delegates.
Meanwhile, Obama's own delegate projections - projections which he has far exceeded since Super Tuesday, by the way - He is projected to win 50.2% of remaining delegates.
Just for comparison - Obama was projecting himself to win 193 of the 353 delegates since Super Tuesday (54.6%). He actually won 229, or 64.9%, beating his projections by 36 delegates or 10.3%.
Of course, this shows that Clinton could still swing the nomination her way if she suddenly swung all the momentum her way, and if she went into the convention with all the momentum and only down by a couple dozen pledged delegates, she may have a legitimate argument. However, the chances of that seem rather slim.
Our next sign of whether there is any swing will be Tuesday, when 94 delegates are up for grabs in Hawaii and Wisconsin. Obama's projection has him winning 51-43 (54.3%).
The more he exceeds expectations, the more superdelegates will come his way, and the sooner he will eventually be able to hit the magic number: 2,025.
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