Saturday, March 08, 2008

The Math

With Obama winning Wyoming and picking up 7 delegates to 5 for Clinton, I used Slate's Delegate Calculator to determine how well Clinton would need to do in the remaining primaries in order to overtake Obama's lead in pledged delegates. It shows that even if Clinton got 62 percent (an utter impossibility) in each of the remaining primaries, she would still come up one delegate short. No wonder the Clinton campaign is trying so hard to get the Florida and Michigan delegates included.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The delegates should be included regardless. The republican legislature in florida moved their primary, after the democrats there couldn't changed it they tried to spin it as a power play against NH to save face. Do you really want to disenfranchise the democrat voters in a key swing state? This goes beyond the primary. Same with Michigan, just because a few in the legislature there made a play for power, the voters must pay the price? The consequences for future primaries can be dealt with. But this would seriously handicap us in the general election.

You also forget the possibility that Hillary may win the popular vote and not the delegate vote. What happens then? Bush v. Gore 2.0? For a campaign that keeps harping on the will of the people rather than that of superdelegates, obama's camp has been pretty quiet on this issue.

Anonymous said...

MI & FL will be more competitive in a revote than most folks think. Hillary may only pick up only a handful of delegates per state in a final vote that will look a lot different than the ones from January.

No matter which way you slice it, contrary to the media who want you to believe the remaining primaries and subsequent ratings bonanza are crucial to the nomination, Hillary cannot come close in terms of delegates. If she wins it will be a brutal convention win that will tear this party apart. She should step down.

I love this site by the way. Keep up the good work

Anonymous said...

That's false. There's absolutely a chance for her to win the popular vote. You're saying that should the will of the people, the popular vote, go for Hillary then she should still drop out if she doesn't have the pledged delegate count? I call bs. I believe the superdelegates would vote for her for the good of the party. Speaking of the party and its voters, democrats overwhelmingly vote for her anyway. Were we to have closed primaries you'd see a far different result.