Obama Clinches Nomination

You may have heard some reports that this already happened back at the beginning of April (CNN reported it for instance), but I can’t figure out any math to back that up other than someone mistakenly thinking that since more than 50% of the Republican delegates had been allocated, the same must have been true for the Democrats. Not true. Different calendars.

Anyway, while the fun has been on the Republican Side I have been diligently tracking the Green Papers numbers for the Democrats too. Their soft count does not include Democratic Superdelegates, but I think it is a pretty safe bet that 100% of the Democratic Superdelegates will vote for Obama at the convention, so I have been including those in my own counts for the Democrats. Given that assumption, plus Green Papers’ tally of the results from primaries and estimated results from caucuses, as of yesterday’s contests we have this delegate count:

• Barack Obama – 2862
• Randall Terry – 7
• Jim Rogers – 3

Sorry Randall and Jim. I don’t think this year is going to be your year.

Anyway, 2776 delegates are needed to win the nomination on the Democratic side, and as of today, Obama exceeds that number.

This is of course no surprise to anybody. If anything, it is surprising 10 delegates went to someone else.

The chart’s of Obama’s walk to victory follow, but they aren’t as interesting as the equivalents on the Republican side this year.

And two bonus charts I include for the Republicans on the 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page but not on my blog updates…

Of course, nothing is actually official until the convention. But I think we have a Democratic nominee. :-)

Note added 16:28 UTC: To be absolutely strict, if you look at Green Paper’s “Hard Count” which only includes delegates officially bound to Obama, and not estimates from caucuses, and not officially uncommitted delegates who unofficially are identified Obama delegates, and not any of the super delegates, Obama only has 1940 delegates, so still has some ways to go. But I think including the superdelegates, estimates from caucuses, and officially uncommitted delegates known to support Obama is completely reasonable. So I’m willing to call this clinched. :-)