The Real Delegate Count: Ignoring the Super(fluous) Delegates
It may seem amazing with all the analysis out there, but I had to assemble these basic facts on non-super delegates myself.
Assumptions/sources:
- Pledged delegates will decide it. Superdelegates won’t override because it would cause a nuclear meltdown. (Nightmare scenario: Clinton wins some even-vaguely-construable semblance of the popular vote, somehow assembled from some combination of some states’ primary and caucus results.)
- Michigan and Florida are meaningless unless they revote. (See “nuclear meltdown,” above.)
- Data from wikipedia.
- Various outfits seem confused about how many non-super delegates there are in each state. See NYT, for instance, showing different counters giving different numbers for non-super delegates in states that have already voted. They range from 2,243 to 2,622.
- The wiki data is unambiguous on the simple facts of how many non-super delegates there are in each state.
- Wikipedia lists a trivial number of unpledged delegates (16.5:
Colorado 9, democrats abroad 2.5, Mississippi 5). I allocated these in
each state according to each candidate’s share of pledged delegates in
that state.
- There is some small-change disagreement about delegate-allocation details in some states. But they won’t make any significant difference in the bottom line of percentages needed by each candidate in the future.
Absent a pop-vote anomaly or an Obama meltdown, it’s over.
Obama (and all the rest of us): Time to go after McCain and (sadly) ignore Hillary.
If he wants to look presidential (or at least nominational), that’s the ticket. It’s also his best strategy for the primary.
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