To quote Hillary, to much "whoop dee doo" has been made out of her victory in PA last night. I could never understand why so many people seemed surprised. I certainly hoped that Obama would win, but I did know that for him to do so would have been a coup. Given how the tone of the race has turned in the last week or so, I was not at all surprised that the gap could not be made smaller than what it is now.
So I thought about this "surprise" factor a bit. I looked at the data and did some math. I came up with the following argument:
When it comes to performance in "home states", each candidtae won their states, but one of them performed much better than the other: Obama.
I explain this after the fold...
So, what I refer to as home states is basically those states where the population has reason to feel that the candidate represents that state due to their roots or as an elected official.
As such I identified Clinton's home states to be: Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and New York.
Obama's home states would then be: Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois. Some may argue that including Kansas is a bit of a stretch, but I decided to do that anyway.
So I then decided to look at how each candidate performed in these states. In doing so, I looked at the popular vote and pledged delegates, and decided not to include the superdelegates in my analysis as they don't always reflect popularity in the state in an accurate manner.
And here is the comparison: (note that "Net" is used in the table to mean net votes, net delegates, and margin of victory in percent votes)
| | | | |
| Barack Obama | | Hillary Clinton | |
---|
| | | | |
BO Home States: |
---|
| | | | |
Kansas | | Net | | |
---|
Percent Vote | 74% | 48 | 26% | |
Delegates | 23 | 14 | 9 | |
Popular Vote | 27,172 | 17,649* | 9,462 | |
| | | | |
Hawaii | | Net | | |
---|
Percent Vote | 76% | 52 | 24% | |
Delegates | 14 | 8 | 6 | |
Popular Vote | 28,347 | 19,447* | 8,835 | |
| | | | |
Illinois | | Net | | |
---|
Percent Vote | 65% | 30* | 33% | |
Delegates | 104 | 55 | 49 | |
Popular Vote | 1,301,954 | 600,108* | 662,845 | |
| | | | |
HRC Home States: |
---|
| | | | |
Pennsylvania | | | | Net |
---|
Percent Vote | 46% | | 54% | 9 |
Delegates | 74** | | 84** | 10** |
Popular Vote | 1,042,297 | | 1,258,245 | 215,948 |
| | | | |
Arkansas | | | | Net |
---|
Percent Vote | 26% | | 71% | 44* |
Delegates | 8 | | 27 | 19 |
Popular Vote | 80,774 | | 217,313 | 127,308* |
| | | | |
New York | | | | Net |
---|
Percent Vote | 40% | | 58% | 16* |
Delegates | 93 | | 139 | 46 |
Popular Vote | 697,914 | | 1,003,623 | 285,984* |
* These net figures take into account the fact that other candidates were still on the ballot and received a portion of the vote in the primaries of these states (Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, New York), or that a choice of an "uncommitted" existed (Hawaii, Kansas, Arkansas). To calculate the net gain, I added the votes and/or delegates for the losing candidate to those for the "other" candidates, then subtracted that sum from the winner's total.
** These delegate counts are taken from the wonderful analysis of PsiFighter37 in this highly recommended diary.
In essence, Barack gained 77 delegates and Hillary gained 70 from their home states. This is in spite of the fact that the states that HRC can claim to be home states are on average bigger states, which means Obama did better in the proportion of delegates (See table below). This is a reflection of the fact that Barack Obama did much better in proportion of vote in his home states.
| Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton |
---|
Total Number of Delegates Gained | 77 | 70 |
---|
Proportion of Gained Delegates from Total Number of Delegates | 37.6% | 16.5%* |
---|
Average Proportion of Delegates | 69.9% | 63.4%* |
---|
Total Popular Vote Gained | 637,204 | 629,240 |
---|
Proportion of Gained Votes from Total Popular Vote** | 65.3% | 57.3% |
---|
Average Proportion of Popular Vote Gained | 30.7% | 14.5% |
---|
* Pennsylvania delegate counts are taken from
PsiFighter37's diary.
** Total votes cast in HRC's home states: 4,331,208
Total votes cast in BO's home states: 2,077,742
So the bottom line for me is that I think Obama did a phenomenally better job getting votes in his home states, and in comparison, he reduced Hillary's popularity in her home states.
So I'm hoping that those of us who support Obama and are discouraged about PA's results would find this analysis encouraging, and those of us who support Hillary would find this scary enough to tell Hillary to wake up and smell the smouldering burns she is inflicting on the Democratic Party!
UPDATE#1: Pennsylvania delegate counts were initially based on the 150 (out of 158) delegate allocation that CNN had on its web site. Updated based on PsiFighter37's diary.
UPDATE#2 I just found out that C Dawgg published a diary discussing this same topic two days ago.
UPDATE#3 edg has posted a comment below reminding us that Hillary was actually born in Illinois. This would tilt the balance way too far in Barack's favour if I were to list her performance there, as Illinois would be listed twice. The obvious point is that She basically does very poorly with the advantages of having roots in a state.
Any way, I added a poll about this below.