Delegate Graphs with Preliminary Results from Nevada and South Carolina Republicans

OK, these include preliminary delegate counts as of when I pulled the data from CNN a few minutes ago. If Michigan is any guide, some of these numbers may change further before tomorrow’s update. If so, I’ll post again. But as of right now…

Democrats: The annoying thing here is just looking at what is happening with delegates, and comparing it to what I am hearing the anchors say on CNN. On CNN it is all about the “Big win for Clinton” in Nevada. But what do delegates look like? Clinton and Obama both got 14. A tie. And, because 50/50 is a smaller lead than Hillary had before today in delegates, that means in terms of percentage of delegates, Clinton actually dropped and Obama gained… now, not by much… this wasn’t a huge number of delegates, and Clinton is still WAY ahead in the overall delegate count, and is over the magical 50% mark still. But the end result of the delegates allocated so far tonight? Obama narrows Clinton’s lead (a little bit). But is that the way it is spun? Of course not. Not even close.

Republicans: Again the media narrative is a bit off from what is actually happening with the delegates. Now, I was out earlier and by the time I got home Nevada was old news, and all the talk was about McCain winning South Carolina and pretty much nothing about Nevada. Of course, earlier in the day Romney had won Nevada. On balance (at least as of when I am posting this) McCain got 23 delegates today and Romney got 18. So this is definately a McCain day overall. And so when the media keeps saying that this was a big win for McCain, they are absolutely right. But some of them are starting to call McCain a front runner, etc. Excuse me? Yes, today was a blow for Romney. Romney went from 53% of the delegates down to 46%. McCain now has indeed jumped ahead of Huckabee, but at 24%, he is still WAY BEHIND Romney. Now, we do of course have to look at momentum and where the next few states will go. And this will help McCain’s momentum. On the Republican side the next state is Florida on the 29th. Right now the Polls there are basically showing a four way dead heat between Guiliani, McCain, Huckabee and Romney. This will probably give McCain a boost that puts him in the lead in Florida… which if it happens probably WILL boost McCain into a commanding position, and may well kill off Guiliani… but that is not where we are YET. Right now we have Romney with a strong lead, and McCain in second. But yes, McCain was one of tonight’s winners. The other was Paul, who also had a big positive move forward in percent of delegates, moving from 2% to 4%… on the verge of catching Thompson.

Anyway… very interesting results. I’ll update the charts again tomorrow if the delegate counts change at all.

Next up… South Carolina for the Democrats a week from now. At the moment Obama has a decent lead in the polls, but Hillary seems to be closing the gap in the newest few polls. If Nevada gives her any kind of bump, then it might be neck and neck. The big question, does Obama manage to get a win here? And if he does, can he capture enough delegates to actually further close the gap with Clinton in the delegate count? Can he push her below the 50% threshold? Can he get enough momentum going into Super Duper Tuesday to be competitive? Or will Super Duper Tuesday just be the day Clinton wraps this up?

In any case… this is all very exciting still. I wish Clinton would drop under 50% though. As long as she is way up there, all she has to do is keep up the pace and she wins outright. On the Republican side Romney is ahead, but under 50%… which means that if the current pace keeps up, we still don’t have a winner… which means brokered convention, which would be awesome. But we still have a long way to go before that. McCain could easily take the lead after Florida. So exciting!

Great stuff.