OK, I don't actually mean to have "the Math" in a Rovian sense.
But I'm looking at what we've seen so far in the race, and I'm wondering more and more if we're going to have a brokered convention.
As we approach South Carolina, it looks like BHO might win solidly, which will then mean we go into Feb 5th with 2 wins for Hillary, 2 wins for Barack, and John in 3rd, collecting delegates.
NOTE: Yes, I know we had MI and will have FL before 2/5 - but with no delegates awarded they are meaningless.
So, what, I thought, would it look like on the morning of Feb 6th, if this pattern continues?
Before I go further, I should note for clarity that I'm partial to both Obama and Edwards, and while I'll support Hillary if the nominee, I'm really dreading that possibility.
So - as I am wont to do - I whipped up a spreadsheet to model the future for me.
Now, I could have been complicated, and assigned percentages based on polls and whatnot to date, where such data existed.
But I wanted a quick and dirty, so I hacked it out like this:
Assume that either BHO or HRC wins every state of all 22 on Feb 5th. JRE always comes in 3rd; DK is always 4th.
Just for simplicity sake (again, you can debate my logic in the thread, but I was going for rough order of magnitude of accuracy) I assume that whoever wins a state wins at 49%, and the second place finisher comes in at 40%. That means JRE always gets 9% (yes, I hear you screaming!) and Kuicinich always gets 1%.
So what I ended up with was a table something like this:
STATE | WIN | DELEGATES | HRC | BHO | JRE | DK |
Alabama | o | 60 | 25 | 29 | 6 | 0 |
Alaska | h | 18 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 0 |
Arizona | h | 67 | 33 | 28 | 6 | 0 |
Arkansas | o | 47 | 19 | 24 | 4 | 0 |
California | h | 441 | 216 | 181 | 44 | 4 |
Colorado | h | 71 | 35 | 29 | 7 | 1 |
Connecticut | h | 60 | 29 | 25 | 6 | 1 |
Delaware | h | 23 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
Georgia | o | 103 | 41 | 50 | 12 | 0 |
Idaho | h | 23 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
Illinois | o | 185 | 59 | 100 | 19 | 2 |
Kansas | h | 41 | 20 | 17 | 4 | 0 |
Massachusetts | h | 121 | 59 | 50 | 12 | 1 |
Minnesota | h | 88 | 43 | 37 | 8 | 1 |
Missouri | h | 88 | 43 | 37 | 8 | 0 |
New Jersey | h | 127 | 62 | 52 | 13 | 0 |
New Mexico | o | 38 | 15 | 19 | 4 | 0 |
New York | h | 281 | 141 | 100 | 28 | 3 |
North Dakota | h | 21 | 10 | 9 | 2 | 0 |
Oklahoma | h | 47 | 23 | 20 | 4 | 0 |
Tennessee | o | 85 | 35 | 42 | 8 | 0 |
Utah | h | 29 | 14 | 12 | 3 | 0 |
Democrats Abroad | h | 11 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
| | | 960 | 890 | 206 | 15 |
| | | 46% | 43% | 10% | 1% |
Assume that SC follows this rule, and add in the other early states:
STATE | WIN | HRC | BHO | JRE | DK |
Iowa | o | 18 | 17 | 17 | 0 |
NH | h | 11 | 12 | 4 | 0 |
MI | h | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
NV | h | 14 | 14 | 0 | 0 |
sc | o | 23 | 26 | 5 | 0 |
FL | h | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
And you end up with something like this for total numbers (not including Superdelegates)
HRC | BHO | JRE | DK |
1026 | 959 | 232 | 15 |
That's with 2232 delegates elected out of the 3,253 "pledged" (non-super) delegates.
That means, post Tsunami Tuesday, HRC would have 32% of pledged delegates, BHO would have 29%, and JRE would have 7%. That's amazing, and to me, it would mean almost certainly a brokered convention.
So - once again, I don't expect these numbers to be accurate. But as an order of magnitude view into what our world could look like on the morning of Feb 6th...
Well, let's just say the unthinkable might suddenly become thinkable - where we have a long, hard battle to the convention where every state and every delegate matters.
And, perhaps, we might just see the first brokered Democratic convention in nigh on sixty years.
update: I've tried fixing the tables, but have no idea why there is this weird gap above them. Sorry for the awkward formatting. I hate that to get in the way of the point.