The Mississippi delegate distribution is more complicated than many other states. Some of the delgates are allocated according to the popular vote, while others are allocated according to congressional districts.
I've done some calculations below of how the delegate distribution could turn out. When watching the results come in, you should look for the following thresholds:
First, some background information:
Mississippi has 40 delegates.
There are 33 pledged delegates and 7 super delegates.
(Of these 7, 3 are for Obama, 3 are undecided and 1 delegate is yet to be determined)
Of the 33 delegates:
22 delegates are allocated according to the voting percentage of each congressional district. There are 5 districts.
11 delegates are allocated according to the popular vote.
Below, I have calculated the percentage brackets for each district and for the popular vote. For example, in the first box, you can see that if one candidate gets between 50% and 70%, he/she will get 3 delegates (the other candidate will get the remaining 2.)
Ok, here goes the math!
Predictions
District 1
This is the northern region of Mississippi and consists mostly of low-income rural voters. The last two polls indicate that Hillary has a slight advantage here. You should watch the 50% margin here. Whoever gets above 50% will get 3 delegates and the other will get 2. It is possible, however, that Obama could win this one because of the University of Miss (Ole Miss) and his recent campaign stops in Oxford and the eastern part of the state. If anyone knows how the college students might vote, please let us know. Because of Ole Miss, I'll take a chance and say that Obama breaks the 50% threshold.
Hillary 3, Barack 2
District 2
This is Obama land! Obama should win here by a large margin. There is a very, very high African American population in the Western portion of this district. Obama should beat the 64.29% threshold to win 5 delelgates to Hillary's 2. But, I think it's entirely possible that Obama could beat 78.57% for a blowout win of 6-1.
Barack 5, Hillary 2
District 3
This district includes some of Jackson and a smaller but significant African American population. The income/education levels are also slightly higher than district 1. The polls show this district as fairly solid Obama win, but not a landslide.
Obama 3, Hillary 2
District 4
The polls indicate that this region (SE Miss) is split 50-50 for Obama and Hillary. This region is a little bit of a wild card because of recent hurricane migrations and the inconsistent voting pattern of cities like Biloxi and Gulfport. Since this one is so close, I'll throw the advantage to Obama because of his organizational efforts in the southern part of the state. However, Bill Clinton has stumped several times there for the past week.
Obama 3, Clinton 2
The Popular Vote
Since Obama has been consistently beating the polls, and because he just won Wyoming, I'll predict that he will beat the Miss polls (average of the last five) by 4 points and Hillary will beat her score by 2. This would mean:
Obama 59%, Hillary 40%
*This would mean that Obama supporters should be cheering for a win of more than 59.9% of the vote tonight. If for some reason Obama supporters in Mississippi are as gung-ho as the Georgians, then we should cheer for Obama beating the 68.18% threshold (this is a very difficult goal).
My Final Delegate Predictions:
Obama 20, Hillary 13.
Best case scenario (if you're an Obama supporter):
Obama 23, Hillary 10
Either way, it looks like a good night for Obama!
****UPDATE
There is one correction. The popular vote allocation of 11 is actually split into two groups of delegates: 4 PLEO delegates and 7 at-large delegates. So, this means that the popular vote will affect each group of delegates seperately. This means that there are two new thresholds to watch. Obama needs 62.5 to get 3 out of the 4 delgates and 64.28% to get 5 out of the 7. Whew! complicated. In any case, my prediction still holds, despite this change, but Obama's chances of getting more delegates is better. If you want Obama to win big, you should cheer for him to beat 64.28% tonight.