Second Round of PA Delegate Updates

We now have another 52 delegates from the Pennsylvania primaries, bringing us to 150 out of 158 accounted for. We also got three new superdelegates declaring.

Of the new delegates since yesterday from Pennsylvania, Obama picked up 23 and Clinton picked up 29. This brings their totals for the primary take so far to Clinton 81, Obama 69. Clinton has gotten 54.0% of the Pennsylvania delegates so far. If you remember, she would have needed 59.3% to be on a “winning pace” for the nomination.

In terms of the three superdelegates, 2 went to Obama, 1 went to Clinton. She’s not picking those up at the ratio she needs either.

Updating all the totals:

The new delegate count is: Obama 1719, Clinton 1586, Edwards 18

In percent terms that is: Obama 51.7%, Clinton 47.7%, Edwards 0.5%)

(Yesterday it was: Obama 51.8%, Clinton 47.6%, Edwards 0.6%)

(Before PA it was: Obama 52.0%, Clinton 47.4%, Edwards 0.6%)

2025 delegates are needed to win.

There are 725 delegates yet to be determined.

Obama needs 306 more delegates to win.

Clinton needs 439 more delegates to win.

In percentage terms, that means:

Obama needs 42.2% of the remaining delegates to win.

This is DOWN from the 42.4% it was yesterday and the 42.9% it was before PA.

Clinton needs 60.6% of the remaining delegates to win.

This is UP from the 60.1% it was yesterday and the 59.3% it was before PA.

Today’s update did not make things any better for Clinton, it just continued to make her road to the nomination more difficult.

I’m hearing a bit more about this in the media than I was yesterday, but there is still quite a bit about Clinton’s “momentum”.

Look, here is the deal. There are 9 primaries plus the superdelegates left. Of the 9 primaries, 2 have no polls at all (Guam and Montana), 5 have Clinton ahead in the polls (Indiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico and West Virginia) and 2 have Obama ahead (North Carolina and South Dakota). So Clinton will probably win a bunch more primaries before this is over. She will be “Winning”. She will have “Momentum”. But only in a couple of those states is she winning by enough of a margin to be on a pace to “catch up”. Her only hope would be for superdelegates to break for her by an overwhelming margin… but so far they have not been. So far she has gotten 52.3% of superdelegates who have declared a preference. In recent weeks her percentage has been much lower. In NONE of this is she on a pace to win unless something dramatic changes in the nature of the race.

And yet we go on. Because Clinton is hoping that in the months left before the convention, one of those dramatic changes happens… because if something really dramatic happened to damage Obama, the supers could start going for her at a greater pace… indeed, some who have already declared may even change their minds.

So… we’ll go through this and see if something dramatic does indeed happen that lets Clinton change the terms here and start getting on pace to win.

Final note: There should be Republican delegate count updates from Pennsylvania, but CNN is slacking off because that nomination is already determined, and has not posted any delegate updates for that side yet. The one interesting note on that side is that despite having wrapped up the nomination long ago, McCain only managed 73% of the vote. 16% went for Ron Paul and 11% for Huckabee.