loquacious

More counting delegates

There are some new polls in on the Feb 5th elections. [SC votes today, it looks like Obama should win handily.] Given all the caveats in my prior post it now looks like Clinton will take 370 district delegates, to Obama’s 280. Given that Obama should come into super tuesday with a 10 delegate advantage, that gives Clinton a 70 or so delegate advantage. [If delegates other than district delegates are counted, Clinton comes out with a 120 delegate advantage — however, it’s not clear to me whether those delegates will be awarded proportionally….] Remember, you need over 2000 delegates to win., so there will be a ways to go after Feb 5th (unless some giant surprise happens). We have polling data now for 12 of the 24 states voting 2/5 (the most populous/delegate rich ones, luckily).

Also interesting about the 2/5 polls is that there are a lot of undecided voters still. So if undecideds break for Obama, that could narrow his gap. Also, CA and NY have the lion’s share of delegates, if Obama takes some Clinton votes in just those two states, he could even things up.

If things continue like this, we could well have a brokered convention (where neither potential nominee has enough delegates). In that case, assuming Edwards stays in the race and keeps getting 10-20% of the vote, he could well be in the position of choosing the nominee (by asking his delegates to vote for a specific candidate). What sounds better? Clinton/Edwards? or Obama/Edwards?

The elections as a math problem

I think I have too much time to obsess over this. Anyway, read on, if you too enjoy the completely fruitless pursuit of trying to figure out who’s going to win. I’m only covering the D’s here, and only Obama and Clinton (sorry Edwards, Kucinich and Gravel supporters). Overall, it’s pretty important to us that the D’s take the White House. Not that I’m a single issue voter, but only the D’s have said that they are in favor or equalizing benefits for same-sex couples — and only they are in favor of passage of some version of UAFA, which would solve Otts and my little problem of not being able to find a country we can both live in at the same time. [I think I’ll write a later post about the nuances of Obama v Clinton on LGBT issues.] Whether the Congress will pass UAFA is a different question, of course….

Anyway, here’s what the polls are currently telling us. If you are Obama or Clinton, you need 2,025 delegates at the Convention. Currently, Obama has 38 and Clinton has 36 [this is the count without the Superdelegates, as the superdelegate count is a little squishy… if you count known superdelegates, Clinton leads with something like 210 to Obama’s 123]

If you look at the current polls, it appears that Obama will win a majority of delegates (the D’s give them out proportional to the vote) in SC (let’s say he gets 25 and Clinton gets 20). FL’s primary does not count for the D’s (like in MI, explanation here). So then we are on to the ’super Tuesday’ contests around the country. Only 8 of the 24 states voting that day have recent polls. They mostly favor Clinton (except in IL, GA). Still, because delegates are done proportionally by the D’s (unlike the R’s winner take all approach), by my count of the polled contests, Clinton comes out with 299 county delegates to Obama’s 234. [I’m making some math assumptions here about how delegates are awarded, I think each state does it differently, and I’m only counting county delegates at this point.]

So, that would leave us at: Clinton 355 to Obama 297, in terms of total awarded delegates, where we’ve counted the delegates very conservatively (and probably not exactly accurately). That’s still pretty damn close.

I’m doing all these calculations because it’s starting to look to me like Clinton might have a small lead across the country, and I’m wondering if Obama still has a chance. Clinton does lead in national head-to-head polls against Obama, but her lead has shrunk from a 20% point lead to a 6% point lead, which is probably close to the margin of error. So maybe he’s still in there? Hard to tell at this point.

I’m starting to wonder who is the most electable in the general election. I think I will go into a coma if the D’s actually manage to lose this election. There are some interesting national polls out that pit specific D’s vs. specific R’s. Pretty much every scenario looks good for the D’s, except if McCain is the R nominee. Then McCain wins (against either Clinton or Obama, although Obama gets closer to winning). I never thought McCain would be the nominee, but it does look like that might happen, since the evangelical vote is fractured 3 ways currently. Yes, yes, we should keep in mind that there’s still 9 months to go before the election.

Still, I’m starting to think who might weather the R attacks in the general election better, Obama or Clinton? I’m kind of thinking Obama….

Watching the Primaries

Ok, if I were at home, I’d be talking about this, so I thought I might as well blog about it too. I really can’t believe that Obama won the caucuses so decisively in Iowa. And that he’s now taken over the lead from Clinton in NH. Are people really that much like sheep? He wins in one state and so that’s it, he’s going to take the whole thing? I find that hard to believe. I’m actually a mild supporter of Obama (any of the three will do, but I have a better feeling about him than Clinton [seems like she’s playing some kind of game] and Edwards [I don’t really believe his change from 4 years ago]).

I did recently read that Bill Clinton lost both Iowa and NH and went on to get the nomination in ‘92, so I do guess it could go to HRC still. Or even more interesting, there is a real Convention because no one gets enough votes, which puts Edwards into a really important position (but as a compromise candidate? I really doubt it).

My favorite web site for all of this is www.electoral-vote.com, which is run by some poli-sci professor who compiles every single poll that happens and keeps track of them all. I became addicted last election, when all the polling was so close. This site does a great job of graphically representing what all the polls are saying, showing you all the prior polls for comparison, as well as adding commentary about the worthiness of the polls themselves.

For example, right now you can see both what is currently happening in the NH polling, but also if you mouse-over on the home page map, you’ll see the most recent polls for that state. So let’s say that Obama takes Iowa, NH and SC. Big deal. Currently, in the polls, Clinton is smashing Obama dead in every state but IL. Of course, most of those polls are a little old, but we’re talking 50% to 20% differences here. As we approach Feb 5th, the data will grow, and, if you are truly geeky like me, you’ll go back and check the actual vote count vs. the polls, to see how accurate they are. Fun!