On the drive home from work I was listening to CNN. There were all sorts of people arguing about what would be “a win” for Obama or Clinton. Is a win just a win? Does Obama *need* to win Indiana? What sort of margin in North Carolina does what for which candidate… etc, etc, etc.

One thing to remember, this is ALL BULLSHIT.

There is one number. It can be computed simply. Clinton needs 62.0% of all the remaining delegates to win. If she gets more than that percentage of delegates tonight, then the is doing what she needs to in order to win. If she gets less than that percentage, then an already hard road becomes even harder.

That is it. That is what the bar is. Any other bar is meaningless. The popular vote doesn’t matter. Who wins each one of these states does not matter. It is all about the delegate count. Is Clinton getting enough to win? (Or, if you want to look at it from the flip side, is Obama getting enough to win? He needs 41.1% of the remaining delegates to win.)

It really is that simple. Looking at any other measure is just looking at meaningless babble. Look at the delegates. Does she get 62.0% of them tonight? Or does she not?

That’s it. It is that simple.

CNN just called North Carolina for Obama as I was writing this. But it DOES NOT MATTER. Look at the delegates. Only the delegates matter.

There have been no delegate estimates yet for the night, in either Indiana or North Carolina.

Big delegate update from CNN today.

First, they finally report on the last two delegates from Pennsylvania. (On the Democratic side anyway, CNN has still not reported ANY delegate results on the Republican side for Pennsylvania.)

Hillary picks up the final two PA delegates. That makes the final total for PA 85 Clinton, 73 Obama. That is 53.8% of the delegates in Pennsylvania. If you recall, she would have needed 59.3% of the delegates to have been on a winning pace for the nomination. Obviously she did not do that in Pennsylvania, and has not been doing that for the most part with the superdelegate count since then. The graph above makes that obvious.

Also today, we get superdelegate updates from Illinois, New Mexico, Guam, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas. The one in Guam was a Clinton to Obama switcher. The net haul in superdelegates today is 9 for Obama and 1 for Clinton. Ouch. That’s not anywhere close to the ratio Hillary needs either.

Total for the day, 9 for Obama, 3 for Clinton. That is 25% for Clinton. As of yesterday the ratio she needed to be getting was 61.4%. Oops.

So… the updated stats:

The new delegate count is: Obama 1745, Clinton 1602, Edwards 19

In percent terms that is: Obama 51.8%, Clinton 47.6%, Edwards 0.6%

2025 delegates are needed to win.

There are 682 delegates yet to be determined.

Obama needs 280 more delegates to win.

Clinton needs 423 more delegates to win.

In percentage terms, that means:

Obama needs 41.1% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 41.7% before Guam.)

Clinton needs 62.0% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 61.3% before Guam.)

I mentioned yesterday that the gap in Indiana had closed to 2.5%. Well… that didn’t last long. A bunch of polls were released Monday, and that gap is now back up to a 5.8% lead for Clinton. Easy come, easy go.

Oh, and North Carolina is down to a 7.7% lead for Obama.