Tuesday, April 22, 2008

All Hail Chuck Todd!

He's an island of facts in a sea of spin and pontificating. He just pointed out that even with Clinton's win, the race for elected delegates is essentially over. Here on out, Clinton would have to win 70 percent of the elected delegates to overcome Obama's lead. If the results from NC and Indiana balance each other out, she'll have to win over 80 percent of the remaining elected delegates.

I'll extend the analysis. Using estimates very favorable to Clinton, it still looks like Obama will end up with approximately 75-100 more pledged delegates. According to Demconwatch there are 794 superdelegates. 231 of these have committed to Obama and 255 have committed to Clinton. That leaves 308 remaining superdelegates. Clinton would have to win 60-65 percent of the remaining superdelegates to overcome Obama's lead in pledged delegates.

Given these facts, Clinton has to pray for some sort of deus ex machina in order for her to win the nomination. The audacity of hope, indeed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've all known this. Anyone who's played around with Slate.com's delegate math game has known clinton couldn't catch up with pledged delegates since the Miss. primary.

Kudos to Mr. Todd and anyone from the Hotline for being generally awesome. But not so much for stating the obvious.

Anonymous said...

As they stand at 15 minutes past 11 o'clock in Pennsylvania, 87% of precincts reporting.

Clinton leads 55 - 45. The exit polls can't really be off by 6 points . . . unless what? Wilder?