Since a lot of people have been asking:…..Here’s the deal on why Washington has not yet awarded most of its delegates, and how and when they will be awarded:
THE 34 DELEGATES ALREADY PLEDGED
The 34 delegates already awarded (25 for Bernie, 9 for Hillary) are allocated “using the preferences of the 67 National Convention District delegates” (the precinct caucus results are aggregated by these “Districts”, which are neither congressional districts nor counties, but are defined by the Democratic Party.) Clear as mud, right? Anyway, these 34 delegates were in fact allocated to accurately reflect the caucus results, which include 26327 caucus-level delegates:
Bernie: (19145/26327) x (34) = approx 24.725*, which rounds to 25.
Hillary: (7136/26327) x (34) = approx 9.2158*, which rounds to 9.
(Rounding goes to Bernie’s benefit.)
THE 67 DELEGATES NOT YET PLEDGED
The other 67, yet to be announced, are “congressional district delegates”. According to Washington State Democrats, these are to be pledged proportionally “based on the will of the caucus participants in each of the State's 10 congressional districts”. But those other 67 will not be certified until the state Democratic convention on June 19th; it depends in part on all of the caucus delegates showing up. source: www.wa-democrats.org/...
Thus, it is not a certainty that the state delegate counts will be truly proportionate to Bernie’s results at the precinct-level caucus on Saturday. But according to the estimates by GreenPapers, the final count will likely match that proportion.
Including the 34 delegates already awarded, GreenPapers estimates a final total of 74 for Bernie and 27 for Hillary source: www.thegreenpapers.com…
This comports with the proportions from the precinct-level caucus, with a slighter greater rounding advantage for Bernie than was seen above in the original 34:
Bernie: (72.720%* x101) = 73.447 (rounds to 73 but he gets 74**)
Hillary: (27.105%* x 101) = 27.371 (rounds to 27**)
* The above percentages do not quite add up to 100% (and may not agree with nationally-published figures), partly because I rounded them to nearest thousandth of a percent, but mostly because approximatedly 0.2% of Washington’s precinct-level caucus delegates (46 of them) did not go for either Bernie or Hillary; they remain “unpledged” (from deadlocked precinct caucuses.) At 0.2%, these unpledged people equate to less than half of a state-level delegate, and they will have to make up their minds in the county or district-level caucus; thus they probably will have no effect on the final state convention tally.
** If this is how it actually plays out, Bernie will have 49 more Washington delegates than the 25 that national tallies currently show, and Hillary will have 18 more than the 9 that national tallies currently show, for a net gain of 30 for Bernie relative to those current national tallies. So one could say that Bernie is “now” only 238 behind Hillary, rather than 268 (that is, 1005 to 1261, rather than 975 to 1238). Still, that’s a lot of catching up to do.
SUPERDELEGATES
Since some of you will surely wonder: Of Washington’s 17 “superdelegates”, 10 have pledged for Hillary:
- Senator Maria Cantwell
- Congressman Suzan DelBene
- Congressman Denny Heck
- Governor Jay Inslee
- Congressman Derek Kilmer
- Congressman Rick Larsen
- Congressman Jim McDermott
- Senator Patty Murray
- DNC Member Rion Ramirez
- Congressman Adam Smith
(None for Bernie as yet.)