We now have 292 of 370 (79%) of the delegates counted for Tuesday’s Democratic primaries and caucuses. As expected, with more of the results actually in, the advantage Clinton had yesterday has dwindled, but not disappeared. I should note that Obama also picked up five superdelegates in addition to delegates earned in the Tuesday states.

As of today, here is where we stand: Obama 51.2%, Clinton 47.9%, Edwards 0.9%. The gap between them, which had been 4.1% before Tuesday’s results, which had shrunk to 3.0% yesterday, is now back to 3.2%. In raw delegate terms, the gap went from 109 delegates, to 86 delegates, back up to 96 delegates.

With what has been counted so far (including those 5 superdelegates), since Tuesday Clinton gained 155 delegates, Obama gained 142. A net difference of +13 for Clinton. Back in the terms I posted Tuesday this puts Clinton at 52.2% of the delegates awarded… she needed 55% to be on a winning pace. With just yesterday’s results, she accomplished that. But add in today’s count and she is no longer there. If Hillary and Obama split all remaining delegates at the same percentage as the results of the last two days, Obama would win the nomination.

At this point there are 1079 more delegates up for grabs assuming no delegates change their minds. This counts both pledged and superdelegates. To win Obama needs to get 505 of those. Clinton needs 601. In percentage terms, Clinton would need 55.7% of them. Obama only needs 46.8% of them.

On the other hand, momentum does unfortunately really matter. If someone starts to get seen as a loser, then that tends to feed on itself. 56% is a big number. A difficult number But it is not actually completely out of the realm of possibility. And of the states that are left at this point, a bunch do favor Clinton. And if Obama shoots himself in the foot again like he did with that Canada story in the couple days right before Tuesday, then that will make it even more possible.

She would need to have the superdelegates flip in enough numbers to reverse the pledged delegate count most likely. But if Obama loses a big string of these heading into the convention, like Hillary did in February… then those superdelegates may well flip.

What’s left from Tuesday to count on the Democratic side are 11 more delegates from Ohio and all 67 delegates from the Texas Caucuses, which still have not release actual results in delegate terms. That should favor Obama some, so the gap between them may widen a bit more again. But not by too much.

Another election on Saturday. They just keep coming…

I won’t go into a detailed analysis of all the delegate counts on the Republican side. We have 250 of 256 delegates accounted for at this time. And we all know McCain wrapped it up yesterday.

But the important news today? Over the last two days of counting Huckabee picked up 4 delegates in Rhode Island. And 16 in Texas. This brought him to 267 delegates. Which is 12 more than Romney’s 255. So Huckabee wins second place!!

Woo Woo! Go Huckabee!

OK, to start with, these delegate results come in SLOWLY. So todays update is by no means the final result from yesterday’s voting. On the Republican side there were 256 delegates at stake yesterday… we have the results for only 183 of them… 71%. On the Democratic side the count is even slower. Of 370 delegates at stake, we have the results for 169. That’s 46%. The results will presumably continue to be finalized over the next few days. In the mean time, despite what you may hear, we don’t actually know yet what really happened yesterday.

OK, the charts as of now…

We’ve gone from Obama 51.5%, Clinton 47.5%, Edwards 1.0% to Obama 51.1%, Clinton 48.0%, Edwards 0.9%. Clinton narrows the gap in percentage terms from 4.1% to 3.0%. In terms of raw delegates yesterday she was behind by 109 delegates, today she is behind by 86… a net pick up of 23 delegates.

Obama needs 574 more delegates to win. Clinton needs 660.

Now, in a post yesterday I said to look at the percentage of delegates being earned by each candidate to see which candidate was “on pace” to win. Of the delegates from yesterday allocated so far, Clinton grabbed 56.8%. To be on a pace to win, she needed to be over 55%. Which means, if every delegate still available (including both pledged and super) breaks at the same percentage she got with the delegates in this update, then she’d get the magic number and win the nomination. I’ll repeat again, given just the delegates allocated since yesterday, Clinton *IS* on a pace to win the nomination.

Of course, looking at which delegates are still “missing” from the counts, the expectation is that as those results come in, Obama will win more and reopen the delegate gap. Estimates I have heard seem to indicate that when everything is counted, rather than narrowing the gap by 23, the gap will be where it was yesterday, plus or minus five delegates or so. But we shall see. Nothing to do other than wait for the final results to keep coming in over the next few days. At that point we’ll have a better picture of what is really going on. What you see right now is looking at partial results, with only 26 out of 193 of Texas delegates accounted for. And given how Texas allocates delegates, between the caucuses and the weighting of precincts, a popular vote win for Clinton does NOT necessarily mean a delegate win.

You’d think that in this day and age we could have instant results, but we don’t. This will take a little while to settle.

And of course we have more voting this coming Saturday and Tuesday. Results from yesterday may or may not be final by then.

And the Republicans… John McCain did indeed go over the magic number. Absent death, disability, or a major scandal that causes him to step down, McCain is the nominee.

More importantly, Huckabee is now only 4 delegates away from catching Mitt Romney for second place. There are still a bunch of delegates to be allocated in Texas and Ohio… so he may well still do it!

CNN just called the Texas Primary for Clinton.

Delegates from the various primaries still being counted. Texas Caucus still being counted.

At this point it is also clear that the media is buying the whole “the math and delegates don’t matter, she’s a winner!” narrative.

I’ll wait until morning to do delegate count updates, because at this point they are still very much in flux.

CNN just called Ohio for Clinton. But there is absolutely no word yet on the delegate counts, which is of course what actually matters. Her margin (at the moment) looks pretty good. So she’ll probably pick up a few delegates here. The question is how many.