This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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I unfortunately don’t have much time for commentary today.
The results from Wyoming are in. Well, 11 out of 12 delegates have been determined. Obama got 7, Clinton got 4. And I’m sure they will figure out that last delegate sometime or another.
Ultimately it makes only a very little difference in where things stand. Obama widens his lead slightly, but very slightly.
Results from the Texas Caucuses are actually still pending. And I’ve seen news reports that when the final results for California were certified, Obama got more delegates than had previously been estimated. I’ve seen neither change come through on CNN’s totals that I use for these charts yet, but when they do, it will widen Obama’s lead further.
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.
CNN is projecting he will get enough delegates tonight to officially have more than 50% of the delegates to the Republican convention. Poor Huckabee.
Including both pledged delegates and superdelegates, there are 1376 delegates left to be determined. (As per CNN’s count.)
Clinton needs 756 of those in order to get the nomination. That is 54.9% of them.
Obama needs 647 of those in order to get the nomination. That is 47.0% of them.
Now, 55% still doesn’t seem quite impossible. That could be a doable margin, right? Well, it still represents a pretty big margin… one that would seem unlikely given how things have been going so far… but it isn’t like that number was 70% or anything.
So when you watch the results tonight… which actually will begin at 21 UTC… 4 PM Eastern… 1 PM Pacific… (Urgh, I’ll still be at work and have meetings. :-( )… if you want to know what is really going on, ignore the spin, ignore the popular vote… watch the delegates… is Clinton picking up more than 55% of the delegates? If so, she’s on a pace to win. If not, look at Obama. Is he picking up more than 47% of the delegates? If so HE is on a pace to win.
Those add up to more than 100% though… what is all that about… well, of course, that is the John Edwards effect. If the split is somewhere between Obama 45% Clinton 55% and Obama 47% Clinton 53%… then that means we are on pace to have the 26 delegates that belong to John Edwards being the deciding factor in this campaign.
And wouldn’t that be fun.
(Of course, the math above does not include either seating the existing Florida and Michigan delegates, or doing “do overs” in those states. For the former, Hillary would need to already be ahead coming into the convention, or Obama would have to be so far ahead that those delegations would not matter… so in either case it would not matter. For the latter… well, that would give a bit more flexibility to the scenarios… if Clinton really wants to drag this out, she should be pushing hard for the do-over options.)
(And before Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island too of course.)
Hillary picks up 2 superdelegates. Obama picks up 9 superdelegates. That gap between them is now 109 delegates.
In percentage terms… Obama 51.6%, Clinton 47.5%, Edwards 1.0%.
Obama needs 647 more delegates to win. Clinton needs 756.
We’ll see how all those numbers change after we get results from today’s voting.
McCain picks up 14 delegates from a variety of places. A few unpledged delegates. Then delegates trickling in from delegate allocation processes in Alabama, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
In Percentages… McCain 66.7%, Romney 16.2%, Huckabee 15.7%, Paul 1.3%.
McCain needs 144 more delegates to wrap it up.
So, a week ago things looked impossible for Hillary in both Texas and Ohio. Her lead in Texas had completely disappeared, and her lead in Ohio was shrinking rapidly. But in the last week Clinton has battled back. She has made some attacks which appear to have been effective. She has gotten some decent press. In Texas, where Obama had pulled ahead, by several points in the polls, she now has the margin back to 0.2%… a statistically completely insignificant number. It is a dead heat. In Ohio, she blunted Obama’s momentum and has managed to retain her lead. Down to 5.8% for sure, but still a real lead. Some polls even have her lead growing once again. And of course she is way ahead in Rhode Island.
So she might… just might… pull out three wins out of four contests during the voting in the next 24 hours.
But… but… now is the part where spin vs reality thing comes in. Here is one good take on it:
Existential Realities Of The Democratic Race
(Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic)
Q. What does “win” mean?
A. The winner of the Democratic nomination is not the person who wins the most states, not the person who wins the most votes, is not the person who gives the best speeches… it’s the person who wins 2024 (25? — we’re not sure yet) delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Q. Can Hillary Clinton win the nomination?
A. Maybe.
Q. Can you be more specific? Is it mathematically possible for her to win the nomination?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it likely that she will win the nomination?
A. Based on the math alone and a reasonable projection of external events, no.
Q. But you said it’s possible.
A. Yes. But lots of things have to break her way. If, say, voting ends and the press discovers that Obama has a secret second family in Idaho and all his superdelegates abandon him; if, for some reason, she wins 75% of the popular vote in the states after Ohio and Texas and half the remaining superdelegates; if, by slow attrition, she closes the delegate gap to about 70 and picks off two thirds of the remaining superdelegates; if the pledged (Obama) delegates concur with the credentials committee and seat the (Clintonian) Florida and Michigan delegations) — then, yes, it’s possible.
Clinton’s campaign has been signaling that if they “Win” tomorrow (in popular vote) then damn the delegate count, full speed ahead. They won’t care that the actual gap between the two candidates in terms of delegates will at best only be slightly tightened. That Obama will still be significantly ahead. That in order to have a shot at winning she will have to do a lot of damage to her party. “Club the baby seal to death” as has been said. That even if she won, she would emerge as a damaged candidate. And more likely, even after all that she’d still not get it in the end. And the other candidate would emerge damaged. Is she really willing to go to murder/suicide route, giving McCain the best shot at the presidency he could possibly hope for?
More importantly, will anyone take her seriously and buy the spin? If she actually manages to win the popular vote in three states tomorrow, I think they might. Even if the delegate balance barely changes, or even if it goes against her. And then it is on to fight through at least until Pennsylvania… another state where she is ahead in the polls but Obama is closing fast… but that might change if she manages to paint herself as a comeback winner out of Ohio and Texas.
If she loses one of the two, I no longer have a feeling of confidence on what she will do. Will she try to keep going? Maybe. Will she decide enough is enough? Maybe. It will all be about how the spin plays out in the 48 hours or so after the election results come in.
If she loses both Texas and Ohio? At that point not dropping out would just be… well… then she really would be playing the Huckabee role. Could she force the decision all the way to the convention? Yes. She probably could. But in the end she would lose anyway.
On the February 24th Curmudgeon’s Corner I first predicted that Hillary would drop out on March 5th. I think that is less likely than it was then. Not that it SHOULDN’T be what she should do at that point, but she might just be too damn stubborn to do it.
Which will of course mean more fun and excitement for political junkies like me, but you know, ad much fun as taking this to the convention would be, I’m guessing it is kind of obvious I’m quite ready to start obsessing over the general election.
The first Obama vs McCain polls for Florida and Tennessee were posted at Pollster.com. Tennessee is a weak McCain, Florida is solid McCain.
We now have polls covering more than 50% of the electoral votes for the first time. And as of now, looking at the “weak” totals we have Obama 157, McCain 136. But still 245 electoral college votes with no polls at all.
Also a note, right now I just have “Solid” (at least a 10% lead) and “Weak” (less than a 10% lead). I keep thinking that maybe I want to add a third category, with “Weak” restricted to a less than 5% lead, and a new “Strong” or “Medium” or something category being 5% to 10%. I haven’t so far for three reasons:
- At the moment only 3 states would fall in this new category… Minnesota, North Carolina and Tennessee… all on the McCain side. So it really wouldn’t change the picture all that much. Although it would show that some of McCain’s “weak” support is actually a little stronger than it would seem otherwise.
- If this primary season has shown us anything, it is that a 9 point lead isn’t really all that strong. It can evaporate in a week if the right things happen in that week. It isn’t just the places with leads less than 5% that are “weak” and therefore “in play”. So maybe any lead less than 10% really is “weak”.
- It would make the graph more cluttered and harder to read. (Imagine a third line squeezed between the two current lines for each candidate.)
Anyway, if anybody wants to chime in on that particular comment, I’d welcome thoughts and opinions, and might be influenced by them. If I do make this change, I’d rather do it sooner rather than later, because the longer I go, the more work I’d have to do to make the change.
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