Election Update
OK, it looks like the margin in NC is going to end up around Obama 58, Clinton 42. Indiana at this point is still too close to call, Obama slightly behind but with a solidly Obama district as one of the few still to report.
However, assuming Clinton wins 52-48 (the current numbers, which aren't likely to expand) and once again using Slate.com's delegate calculator, without Florida and Michigan, Hillary Clinton now needs to win more than 85% of the vote in every remaining contest, a 70% margin of victory over Obama, in order to win the popular delegate count.
If you bring in Florida and Michigan, in the percentages I spoke of in the previous post, she still has to win over 72% of the vote in every remaining contest.
Assuming she does not manage to convince the super delegates to overturn the election (which doesn't appear at all likely in today's political climate), I really don't see that she has any shot.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 5/06/2008 11:36:00 PM
2 Comments:
From a legal point of view it's not "overturning" anything. The popular vote does not directly decide the candidate; the convention does. And the convention rules do not dictate that the superdelegates must follow the outcome of the popular vote, or even of the committed delegate count.
No matter what the outcome of the last several primaries, there MUST be wheeling and dealing on the convention floor to come up with ANY candidate. If you see this as the public losing -- it's already happened; the Democratic system of candidate choosing has already decided that the popular vote will not choose the candidate.
Monday, May 12, 2008 1:43:00 PM
You are correct, Ross, and I worded my post poorly.
Still, though, I think most of the super delegates at this point are extremely aware of the extent to which, after 7.5 years of feeling shafted by the system, a large percentage of the core membership of the Democratic party would not sit well with the super delegates coming in and altering the outcome.
Yes, there's nothing wrong with it, by Democratic party rules, but at the same time, Clinton has kind of shot herself in the foot on this one, by making such a loud stink about seating the FL and MI delegates, because "every vote must be counted".
This is one of those cases where, in the absence of something huge that fatally damaged Obama as a candidate, they're simply not going to risk the alienation of the base by reversing their results, even if that's what the rules said up front and no hanky panky was actually going on.
The only way I can see Clinton being the nominee at this point is if she can find some way to so fully damage Obama that the supers feel it's the lesser evil to alienate their core membership than to run a candidate who simply can't win.... and she has to be able to do that in a way that doesn't also damage HER electability.
Of course, we've all been surprised before. But I think there's a difference between what they're ALLOWED to do and what would be politically EXPEDIENT for them to do.
Liam.
Monday, May 12, 2008 2:39:00 PM
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