Tonight's media spin on the Democratic side seems to come down to "neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton can lock this up before the end of the primary season."
Sure, it makes for good talk during times where there isn't anything substantive about which to report, but it's patently ridiculous. They're projecting a ten percent gap between the candidates, resulting in one or the other getting 55% of the delegates to the other's 45%.
Sounds plausible, but the facts just don't bear it out. Of the 32 states contested so far (not counting American Samoa or Americans Abroad), the voting percentages make that unlikely.
I know this is something of comparing apples to oranges, and I'm projecting votes or caucus delegates to convention ones, but bear with me for a few minutes and see if the logic doesn't seem solid.
If a 55-45% delegate split equated roughly to a 55-45% popular vote, give or take a few percent, the talking heads projections that neither can 'close the deal' with enough pledged or superdelegates to clinch the nomination might be viable. Unfortunately, the actual data doesn't support that conclusion- of the thirty-two states contested, only seven have had margins under ten percent- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona, Connecticut, Missouri and New Mexico, and only California (10%), Delaware (11%), New Jersey (10%), Massachusetts (14%) and Tennessee (13%) are between ten and fifteen percent.
The cumulative margin over those thirty contests shows a 23% differential between Senators Clinton and Obama- and the majority of these were contested when there were still several contestants in the race. Now, aside from Mike Gravel, who is all but out of the race (since he's still receiving less than one percent of the vote), it's down to two.
In the seven contests since former Senator Edwards suspended his campaign, the margins are even more significant. Granted, some of these have been in smaller states, or in caucuses- both of which have been claimed to exaggerate the trends- but in the last week, the average margin has been 31%.
The upcoming primaries in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania are all in larger states (well, Wisconsin has five fewer delegates than Washington, but the other three all have at least half again as many convention delegates as Washington, which I'm using as a bellwether since it was the one in the past week with the most pull) will probably tend a little closer than the ones from this past week, but to suggest that suddenly for the remaining eighteen contests the voting will show a pattern which hasn't been established is at best a long shot.
And, lest you don't want to take my word for it, here are the numbers:
State % margin
Iowa 9%
New Hampshire 3%
Nevada 6%
South Carolina 28%
Alabama 14%
Alaska 49%
Arizona 9%
Arkansas 42%
California 10%
Colorado 35%
Connecticut 4%
Delaware 11%
Georgia 35%
Idaho 63%
Illinois 31%
Kansas 46%
Massachusetts -14%
Minnesota 35%
Missouri 1%
New Jersey 10%
New Mexico 1%
North Dakota 24%
Oklahoma 24%
Tennessee 13%
Utah 18%
Louisiana 21%
Nebraska 36%
Washington 37%
Maine 19%
Virginia 29%
District of Columbia 51%
Maryland 23%
Total percentage differential 723%
Divided by number of contests 23%
Last week results 216%
Divided by number of contests 31%