Obama over 45% of Delegates

Slowly but surely over the course of the evening, Obama’s percentage of the delegate total has been increasing. It just went over 45% for the first time. Yesterday the gap between Clinton and Obama was 17.8%. As of right now (just after 8:30 UTC) that gap has narrowed to 7.1%. And the night is not quite done yet, they are still counting up delegates and it looks like that will continue for hours more. But right now we have Clinton 52.6%, Obama 45.5%, Edwards 1.9%.

The spinmeisters are going nuts on all sides trying to make it seem like the results are stongly in favor of their candidate. But it is looking like the overall narrative that emerges will hopefully be a better reflection of reality… which is that the gap between these candidates has been narrowed significantly (it will be a bunch more hours before we know exactly where it ends up) and this is basically a completely dead even race right now. Any advantage either candidate has after today will be slight.

So at least the next month of primaries and caucuses will “matter”. (Including the Washington State caucuses where I am.) And we get another month of delegate counting as each contest passes by. After tonight is finally done, next stop is Saturday. Then Sunday. Then Tuesday.

This will be a busy week.

But nothing else in the calendar will be anywhere near as big as tonight. From now on it is a long series of individual spaced out events. (With a few clumps, but small clumps.)

And this is a good thing, I can’t do that many all nighters any more! :-)