All but official-Obama won 2/5 delegate race by double digits
Fri Feb 08, 2008 at 09:58:35 AM PDT
As should be apparent to everyone by now, the Dem nomination battle is all about delegates. There's been a lot of confusion about who won the delegate battle on Super Tuesday. Obama claimed victory by 9 delegates, but the actual results have been slow to trickle in. However, we now have enough results to be absolutely certain that Obama won and very likely by double digits. My best guess is +13.
Here's what I base all of this on. RealClearPolitics.com http://www.realclearpolitics.com/... updated its delegate count recently. If you back out the superdelegates and the delegates won prior to 2/5, RCP has Clinton up 818 to 814 in the Super Tuesday delegate race. However, of the 49 delegates uncounted, 41 are in IL, CO and GA, all states that Obama won by 2-1 margins. Furthermore--and this is the clincher--we can now compare actual delegate counts, which are complete in 16 states to the spreadsheet the Obama campaign put out in the wee hours after Super Tuesday. In those 16 states, which cover over 70% of the delegates at stake, the actual counts match Obama's projections precisely in 12 states. In the other 4 states, Obama's count was very close--off by 1 vote in UT and MA and 2 votes in CA and NY. Only in NY did Obama overestimate his actual delegate count.
Given the incredible accuracy of Obama's projections, we can assume that his spreadsheet for the states that are still outstanding (GA, AL, IL, TN, NM, CO and American Samoa) will be very accurate as well. If those projections hold up, Obama will win the 2/5 delegate race by 13. In any case, a double digit win is almost assured.
Why does all of this matter? Well, let's consider how this thing is going to unfold. Using +13, Obama is now up in pledged delegates by 28. By my estimate, he'll add about 100 to this margin during the rest of February. Remember, 8 of the 9 contests are either caucuses or states with an African-American population of at least 20%, so Obama getting a 100 vote net pickup out of about 450 delegates is entirely plausible--perhaps even conservative. Then, we have VT, RI, OH and TX on March 4th, followed by WY and MS on the 11th. Hillary may do well in OH and TX, but the chances of her cutting meaningfully into Obama's delegate lead will be small. Each of OH and TX have about 12% African-American population--that's 5% more than CA. And, remember when you translate that into a Democratic primary, you have to almost double the numbers ... so, the OH and TX primaries will be about 20/21% African-American vs. 12% in CA. The big Hispanic population in TX helps, but offset by the fact that one-third of the TX delegates are chosen by caucus. If she won CA by 10%, where she had much better demographics, I think that's a ceiling for her in OH and TX. More likely, I see her winning narrowly, perhaps even losing one of the two. My guess is that she picks up a net 10 delegates from the 370 available. Obama would likely offset that the next week in WY (a caucus) and MS (37% African-American).
So, after March 11th, it looks like Obama might be up by around 130 among the pledged delegates. My guess is that he'll also have nibbled away at Hillary's superdelegate margin and in any case I highly doubt she'll add a lot to her super D lead. So, Obama will also lead in any delegate counts that include the super D's. If Obama really does have a 130 delegate lead among pledged delegates, in wooing the superdelegates he will have a strong case that he is the voter's choice. After all, even if Hillary won in double digits in PA (plausible), Obama would more than offset that in NC (22% African-American, which translates into a primary electorate that will be almost 40% African-American). And, outside of Puerto Rico, the other states will not be enough to make a significant dent. As Michael Barone has pointed out, Puerto Rico, for reasons I don't fully understand, usually ends up going as a block one way or another. However, like it or not, neither Obama nor Clinton will want to base any argument on getting all of Puerto Rico's delegates.
A 130 delegate margin in pledged delegates sounds pretty good if your an Obama supporter. But, in fact, there is very little margin for error here. Why? Because Hillary will make the case that this spread disenfranchises MI and FL voters, who if seated, would give her a net 111 delegates.
Bottom line, I think we're looking at one of five scenarios:
- The dynamic of the race changes (due to a major gaffe, for example) whereby Obama or Clinton surges ahead in the overall polls and obtains indisputable momentum.
- Obama squeaks by in both OH and TX, the superdelegates begin to fall into line and Hillary either concedes before PA or loses PA and concedes immediately thereafter.
- Obama builds up enough of a pledged delegate margin to exceed the 111 net delegates for Hillary from MI and FL, and with a little arm-twisting from Howard Dean, the superdelegates fall into line (albeit more slowly, painfully, and nerve-wrackingly than would be the case in scenario 2). Note: I think the real threshold here is probably the psychologically important 100 delegate margin. After all, most of the 111 comes from not counting the uncommitted MI delegates and most of those will be for Obama.
- Hillary chips away in the delegate race and keeps Obama's lead under 100. Then things get very, very, very interesting. (Note: for Hillary to actually win the pledged delegate count, she would have to have such big victories in March, that I would put this into scenario #1.)
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