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Definitely all superdelegates this time. Obama picks up four. Clinton loses one. She just can’t catch a break lately. Obama just keeps slowly growing the gap. We now have Obama 51.4%, Clinton 47.6%, Edwards 1.0%. Obama needs 656 more delegates to win. Clinton needs 758.
Minor change on the Republican side. McCain picks up one “Unpledged RNC” delegate, which is the Republican version of a superdelegate. McCain needs 158 more delegates to win. It is not quite as stark as for Huckabee, but the math for Clinton to catch up and win is pretty bad. How Many Delegates Does HRC Need To Win?
(via The Daily Dish) She’s not going to take Ohio and Texas. Maybe not at all. Certainly not by those margins. And the superdelegates will NOT save her if Obama is way ahead on pledged delegates coming into the convention. And unless she comes into the convention already ahead, (or unless Obama is so far ahead it won’t matter) Florida and Michigan will not be seated. She’s done.
A new Quinnipiac Poll in Pennsylvania includes a new head to head Obama vs McCain matchup for the state. Incorporating this new poll into my average moves Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes from “Weak McCain” to “Weak Obama”. The results can be seen in the chart above. Right now based on the state by state polls I’ve been able to find so far, we have Obama ahead for 157 electoral votes compared to 98 for McCain. With the big caveat of course that there are still 283 electoral votes worth of states with no polls at all and therefore completely undetermined (at least by this method). CNN today provides yet more delegate updates. Somebody there must be spending some time on this!
There is a net gain of 4 new delegates today. Luckily, yesterday I printed the CNN page, so I can actually say exactly what this was. It was all superdelegates. Obama gained five new superdelegates. Clinton lost one. Presumably that would be John Lewis switching over to Obama. Net increase in the gap between the two candidates of 6 delegates. Clinton just keeps falling further behind. We’re now at Obama 51.3%, Clinton 47.7%, Edwards 1.0%. Obama needs 660 more to win, Clinton needs 757 more.
OK, I screwed up. I only printed out the Democrats figuring if there were changes, it was more likely on that side. But NO, there were major changes on the Republican side today. And since I didn’t print yesterday’s chart, I can’t go identify where the changes came from. I suspect the same things I did yesterday. Romney delegates being redistributed and final results from second stage caucuses and the like. But I can’t actually tell because I don’t have yesterday’s chart. Damn it. Well, I printed today’s chart, but now just watch, nothing will change. In any case we have a net gain of 44 new delegates listed. Romney LOST seven delegates. Paul gained five delegates, bringing his total to 21 delegates. This is the first addition of delegates Paul has had since February 6th. Huckabee gains eight more delegates, and McCain picks up a full 38. This leaves us at: McCain 66.4%, Romney 16.4%, Huckabee 15.9%, Paul 1.4% Huckabee is very very close to overtaking Romney. He must be thrilled. McCain needs 159 more delegates to reach the magic number of 1191 and have a majority of the delegates and therefore wrap up the nomination. (Absent of course any completely unexpected development that would cause officially committed delegates to change their minds.) First Myron Cope, now William F Buckley Jr.. I never followed sports and so was not a fan and did not spend any time listening to or watching his work… but for a brief time around 1995 or so I worked part time at the radio station where he was based and bumped into him a few times and I think I even worked with him once when I produced one of the football games. (Something I only did once or twice.) He was as much a character in person as he was on the air. Anyway, I know a lot of folks from the ‘Burg have fond memories of Myron cope, so I thought I’d pass this along. Steelers Announcer Myron Cope Dies
CNN has a bunch of delegate changes today. This kind of thing really makes me wish they had a specific change log, or that each day I was printing out the state by state totals so I could identify exactly where the changes are. But I haven’t been doing that, so I can just report the changes and speculate.
Hillary must really hate how her week is going. There isn’t even an election this week, but she keeps falling further behind anyway. CNN added 47 more delegates to their counts today. 33 were for Obama, 14 for Clinton. Now, as I said above, I don’t know where exactly they are getting these from. Maybe they just finished a new poll of the superdelegates and this is more superdelegates declaring preferences? Or maybe this is more results from stage 2 or stage 3 of the delegate selection process in the states with multi-stage processes? Or maybe this is just CNN adding official results from states from earlier in February where they only had partial counts before? I dunno. Like I said, this makes me wish I was printing the full stats out each day so I could see exactly where the differences were coming from. There, I printed today’s. Just in case there are more changes before Tuesday’s primaries. In any case, Obama does widen his lead here. We are now at Obama 51.2%, Clinton 47.8%, Edwards 1.0%. Obama needs 665 more delegates to win. Clinton needs 756. Edwards… well, Edwards could win every delegate still outstanding and it would not be enough. Sorry Edwards.
OK, the Republican side is even more interesting. There is a net gain of only 5 delegates. However, there has also been a redistribution of delegates. Romney LOST 24 delegates today. Presumably this is the result either of second stage caucuses where some Romney supporters from the first round changed their votes and elected non-Romney delegates in round two, or just Romney delegates publicly stating they had changed their preference. As before though, there is no easy way to tell by looking at CNN’s summary page EXACTLY what happened yesterday. In the end though, the result was that Romney lost 24, McCain gained 23, and Huckabee gained 6. This gets Huckabee within spitting distance of overtaking Romney in the delegate count. I’m sure Huckabee really hopes this happens before McCain reaches the magic number, so he can claim that he came in second and then drop out. Totals at this point… McCain 65.8%, Romney 17.3%, Huckabee 15.8%, Paul 1.1%. McCain needs to get 197 more delegates to finally have the majority of delegates coming into the convention. There were some vague rumors of Romney jumping back in if the lobbiest affair scandal caused McCain to implode. Yeah, good luck on that Romney. I must say though, the politics-as-sports junkie in me would be THRILLED if McCain imploded after he got a majority of the delegates, but before the convention… giving the delegates a chance to change their minds and just pick someone else at random. That would be very very cool. I just finished watching it on a bit of a delay… Obama just kept his cool the whole time. Clinton kept trying to get in punches, but none of them seemed to take hold, and certainly none got under his skin and got him to respond hottly. Clinton did nothing to help herself here. I stand by my earlier prediction that she will lose Texas… probably by a decent margin, and that she will possibly lose Ohio as well… but even if she pulls out a win in Ohio, it won’t be enough. And I don’t think she’ll try to push forward further if that happens. If she does she’ll start looking like Huckabee (even though the margins won’t be nearly that large) and only further damage her Senate career. She will know it is time to cut her losses. She will drop out within 48 hours of the polls closing Tuesday. Probably on March 5th. She can go on to be the Senate Majority Leader. That will be a fine spot for her. There were some delegate updates from CNN today.
On the Dem side this should be Democrats Abroad and a few superdelegates who have expressed a preference in the last week or so. (I don’t however actually see the Democrats abroad listed in CNN’s state by state breakdown, so maybe they have forgotten them, but that would be stupid… it is a small number of delegates of course, and they have that whole fractional delegate thing, so maybe their system choked on that. :-) ) Anyway, the net results of today’s changes were very small. 13 new delegates were added to CNN’s totals. 8 for Obama, 5 for Clinton. We went from Obama 50.8%, Clinton 48.2%, Edwards 1.0% to Obama 50.9%, Clinton 48.1%, Edwards 1.0%. Like I said, tiny change. We are mathematically still a long way from the end. Obama needs 1281 more delegates to win. Clinton would need 1353 more to win. Of course, the big question is will one of them give up at some point. (I’m of course guessing Clinton will do just that if she loses Ohio and Texas.) Otherwise, we could certainly go straight through to the convention.
69 delegates were added on the Republican side. 20 of these were from the Republican caucuses in Puerto Rico. Like the Democrats abroad on the other side, CNN doesn’t list this on their state by state breakdown. I’m not 100% sure where the other 49 come from. I suspect they are from CNN finally getting around to adding up final delegate results from Wisconsin and Washington State. In any case, McCain gains 53 more delegates. Also for the first time since my February 10th update, Huckabee gains some delegates… a whole 16 delegates. In any case, McCain is closing in on the magic number. 220 delegates left to win. News about one of the brothers of the person who was my boss from March 2004 to January 2006. And on The Subject of Pentagon Announcements
I never met Stanley. Just his brother whom I worked for and another brother who I worked with. Of the two brothers I knew, one was OK. The other… well, let me not talk about that here. And of course none of that likely has any relevance to Stanley. But I still find it interesting to note when I see new news about General McChrystal. |
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