Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Picking up wreckage after Tsunami Tuesday.

Politics has almost vanished from the news today. The storms which did nothing worse here than block a TV signal for a few minutes killed people and wiped towns off the face of the earth in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama.

The Obama camp is calling a lead of less than twenty delegates; Clinton, a win by a single delegate. Obama himself states clearly this morning that Clinton is still the frontrunner.

I'm checking my math, as I can, based on final delegate counts. Already I've found one error- I gave Alaska two delegates more than it actually has.

As I predicted just before bed last night, Obama closed the California gap to ten percentiles, with a small percentage of the vote still out. I'm adjusting my totals for a 52-42 Clinton victory, making my new California estimate Clinton 205, Obama 165, the eight-delegate correction I mentioned just before bed.

The Clinton camp is beginning to lay out their talking points. There are two: (1) Obama can't win the big states; (2) Obama's wins are all in red states. All right, then: as of this moment, with 90% of the vote in, Obama is winning New Mexico, a swing or "purple" state, which would make his total 14 to 8 states won.

BLUE STATES: Clinton- New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California (4) Obama- Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Illinois (4)
RED STATES: Clinton- Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona (4). Obama- Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Alaska (7).
PURPLE (SWING) STATES: Obama- Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico (3).

Here's the key point: Obama won the three states last night that could go either way in November. Not by much, except in the Colorado caucuses... but he won them all.

Nobody that I can find has the actual delegate counts nailed down yet. CNN conflates superdelegates with pledged delegates, and MSNBC is way, way behind on its reporting. I don't suppose I'll find out today...

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