I wanted graphs over time of the delegate counts, but hadn’t seen one yet, so I went ahead and made a set of them. Since it was the easiest way for me, I just set this up on my wiki page. I will update these after each new primary or caucus (or if I notice any changes in between as superdelegates commit and such).

For those interested, click through below:

2008 Presidential Delegate Graphs

The following are graphs of the delegate counts for the US presidential race in both parties on a day by day basis. Data is taken from CNN’s Democratic Scorecard and Republican Scorecard pages. At a minimum, graphs will be updated after new primary and caucus results. Changes to superdelegate totals between primaries and caucuses may or may not be caught on the day they occur. The totals are as of the start of the day, so typically results of primaries and caucuses will show up on the day following those contests.

Results are shown both as a total number of delegates, and as a percentage of the delegates which have been allocated as of that date.

It is interesting to note how everybody didn’t start at zero before Iowa due to superdelegates and unpledged delegates who had already stated a preference.

CNN just declared the winner. Obama has conceeded.

Hillary pulls out an upset, completely contrary to all recent poll results. And once again the dynamics of the race change completely again. Will Obama’s new found lead in South Carolina start to evaporate? Will Hillary’s leads elsewhere consolidate?

If Obama had won the way the polls said, this would probably have been nearly over as the momentum grew.

Now… it is all wide open again… and the advantage has to go back to Hillary… she is ahead on delegates, and she is ahead in more of the upcoming states… and has better organization in the Super Duper Tuesday states.

And of course the Republican map is still completely crazy.

Wow. This is such a fun election season. Can’t get better than this.

There were a few moments, but for the most part the Dem debate was nowhere near as interesting as the Republicans. Whereas the Republicans were very much interacting directly with each other, even when the Dems were talking directly about each other, for the most part they seemed to be talking to the audience or the moderator, not REALLY talking to each other. Although it lightened up later, it seemed like all four of them spent the first half of the debate or so trying to avoid eye contact with each other.

A lot less of it seemed to be spontaneous. They all got in their prepared lines. I heard lots of things which I had heard verbatim previously in other debates or speeches. That was disappointing.

It was amusing to watch all four of them try to claim the “change” mantle.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a few fireworks that were interesting. But it was a very different kind than on the Republican side. And the tension between them (well, maybe not Richardson) was much higher. You could just feel the antipathy. And there was less dynamic back and forth that seemed like actual conversations. Just talking past each other and a few attacks and parries.

I’m not sure how much either of these debates will change anything for Tuesday’s vote. I don’t think there were any clear knockouts on either party.

Now I’ll have to spend some time into reading other people’s reactions (I waited until I was done watching). Then sleep. It is past my bedtime and I have a podcast to record in the morning.

At this point I’ve only watched the first hour out of the four hours of debate tonight. And only about 45 minutes of it was actually debate. And this is of course only the Republicans, the Democrats come later.

But I’ll say right now that the format for this first 45 minutes… Very few interruptions from the moderator, just occasional questions to get conversation started… and a lot of interaction between the candidates… and long form answers without buzzers or time limits… this is by far the most substantive and informative debate I have seen so far this election cycle. And at this point I have watched ALL of them. 17 Democratic debates and 14 Republican debates. Most of them sucked. Most of them just let the candidates make little speeches, or posture for the sound bites.

In this one I’ve seen the candidates interact with each other in a far more natural way. And I’ve seen them have the chance to spend several minutes explaining themselves, and then ask questions of each other, which were then answered in turn. There were some chaotic moments at times, but even then one learned something.

I gather the rest of the Republican debate will not have this same format. That is a shame. This is how all debates should be. I look forward to seeing the Democrats in the same sort of format once I watch the rest of the Republican debate.

I just needed to go ahead and post this now, because I was somewhat dumbfounded that, for once, I was actually seeing a real debate with some real content too it where I actually had the possibility of learning something new about the candidates.

3 hour delay aside, good job ABC and Charles Gibson. Bravo.

OK, I’m going nuts with posts tonight, mainly because I can’t do my other normal evening work because I am spending the evening in the living room with Brandy who is recovering from some medical tests she had Thursday rather than spending the time in my office where I have access to my normal stuff.

So a few more thoughts. And yes, I know I haven’t posted anything but presidential stuff for awhile now. Tis the season and all that. Although other things may come back soon, this is my main topic of interest at the moment.

Anyway, a reminder that of course in all this it is really number of delegates that count. And despite all the Iowa hype, Hillary is still ahead in delegates due to superdelegates that have already committed (of course they can change their minds).

I went looking for a place that had definitive delegate counts. CNN has pages for this. (It was just the first one I found…. it may or may not be the best such page.)

• Democratic Delegate Count
• Republican Delegate Count

I’ll be bookmarking those, or something like it if I find a better source…

Anyway, current standings as of this moment:

Democrats (2025 needed to win):

• 169 – Clinton
• 66 – Obama
• 47 – Edwards
• 19 – Richardson
• 17 – Dodd
• 8 – Biden
• 1 – Kucinich

Republicans (1191 needed to win):

• 20 – Huckabee
• 18 – Romney
• 3 – McCain
• 3 – Thompson
• 2 – Paul
• 1 – Guiliani

Of course, of these Dodd and Biden have already dropped out. Usually candidates who drop out either release their delegates to vote for whoever they want to, or ask them to please vote for someone that they specify. In this case though Biden and Dodd have dropped out so early that it doesn’t really matter. Now, they could theoretically still get more delegates, as they will likely still be on the ballot in a number of states, and could get enough votes for more delegates to be awarded to them… but in reality they had low support to begin with, and people rarely vote for the people who have dropped out, so that will also be a very minor effect if it happens at all.

Of course, one important thing to note is that even though a very small percentage of the delegates have already been awarded… and if we were in a world where each primary was indeed an independent event and was not influenced by the results of the previous primaries, then the results so far would be pretty insignificant and meaningless. But in the real world, the results of these early states is much more influential than the results of later states. Because of them candidates start dropping out. And the ones who do well get more money, to better compete in later states, and the ones that do less well get less money, and so are disadvantaged… plus people have a tenancy to get on the bandwagon and start voting for the winners. They stop voting for people who look like they are losing. So the later in the process you get, the less people vote for the people they really agree with or think would be best, and more start doing the “well, everybody else likes them, so I should too” sort of thing… Which is why Iowa and New Hampshire get this kind of attention.

If somebody (read Obama) starts running the boards and winning state after state, this could be over quickly (at least on that side). If on the other hand we start getting different winners in different states, then it could last longer. This could happen on the Dem side, but it seems the biggest chance for it lasting longer is on the Republican side. Huckabee in Iowa. McCain in New Hampshire. Maybe Romney manages to pull it out in South Carolina (although Huckabee is looking good there right now). Giuliani in Florida. Etc. That could just drag things out nicely…

If after Super Duper Tuesday on February 5th nobody has a commanding lead, then the rest of the season will (for once) be interesting. We shall see I guess. And before very long too.