Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Is It Over?

I waited until MSNBC called Indiana for Clinton to begin writing this.

Hillary Clinton won Indiana by a margin of slightly more than 20,000 votes. Hillary will get 37 delegates to Obama's 35- a net gain to the Clintons of two delegates.

Predictions on North Carolina are still iffy, but Obama won by fourteen percentiles statewide. Estimates range from the Green Pages' low-end of a net 11 delegates to Obama (63-52) to MSNBC's high-end estimate of a net of 17 (66-49). I'm using the more conservative of those two for my own calculations.

My current estimates:

PLEDGED DELEGATES: Obama 1,595, Clinton 1,423. (Obama + 172)
SUPERDELEGATES: Obama 254, Clinton 270. (Obama -16)
TOTAL DELEGATES: Obama 1,849, Clinton 1,693. (Obama +156)

And remember the Magic Superdelegate Number I made for Obama- how many more superdelegates he needs to snag to stop Clinton from swinging the nomination that way? The Magic Superdelegate Number, going into the vote today, was 67.

Sixty. Seven.

Presuming Clinton and Obama split the remaining pledged delegates evenly- actually, throwing a few extra to Clinton- Clinton would now need over 85% of all currently undeclared (and, in some cases, currently unknown) superdelegates to win the nomination.

Obama only needs 25%.

What's more, let's stick to pledged delegates. Obama, by my math, currently has 1,595. In order to get a majority of pledged, decided-by-voters delegates, he needs 1,627- thirty-two pledged delegates to go. Even if Obama only got 16% of the vote through the rest of the elections- the minimum level to get any delegates at all in a Democratic primary or caucus- he'd get 5 in West Virginia; 9 in Kentucky; 8 in Oregon; 11 in Puerto Rico; and 2 each in Montana and South Dakota, for a grand total of 37- five more delegates than he would need to secure a clear majority of pledged delegates.

And that's if he fell flat on his face tomorrow morning. Obama's predicted to win Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, and he'll get 30% in Kentucky and West Virginia no matter how white and bigoted voters there may or may not end up being. I'm currently predicting Obama to get 106 pledged delegates (to Clinton's 119) in the remaining contests.

In other words- the race for pledged delegates is now over. Obama has won, barring a massive coronary. That victory will become official in two weeks, when Obama wins Oregon.

These are not merely bad numbers. These are not merely impossible numbers to overcome. These are numbers which might- mind you I say MIGHT- be giving the Clintons cause to reconsider the pledge she made in tonight's speech- to continue on to the convention, and thence to the White House.

Because, according to MSNBC, the Clintons have cancelled all their media and campaign events for tomorrow.
(Except, that is, for a fundraiser- which might be necessary to get the Clinton campaign out of debt.)

The last time a candidate did this, Mitt Romney dropped out of the race.

Stay tuned, sports fans, we might actually get news on something besides a doomed-from-birth gas tax holiday or Reverend Fucking Wright.

Like, say, the current battle between the Maliki government and al-Sadr's forces for control of Baghdad...


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