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Obama Win Now Inevitable?

NeoRicen

Critical Thinker
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Joined
Dec 30, 2006
Messages
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I was just looking at CNNs politics page and after Mississippi it shows the delegate count at:

Obama: 1608
Clinton: 1478

That gives Obama a 130 delegate lead. With the number of remaining delegates dwindling and only 400ish more needed for Obama (compared to 530ish for Clinton) is it even possible for Clinton to win anymore?

I'm not a US citizen so I'm quite unfamiliar with the process, so what's required for Clinton to get 2025 in terms of % in upcoming states. Even after Pennsylvania Clinton won't be ahead, how are the states after that polling?
 
The supers are waiting for the end of the primary/caucus process (June 3). At this point, they have to. Anything else would appear to disenfranchise the remaining states, and Florida/Michigan is enough on that front. I also think that neither candidate should drop out at this point (although the rhetoric should be dialed back from 11).

Hillary only enjoys a lead in supers right now because of her early "inevitable" status. Barack's momentum will probably assure him the nomination (Mississippi just erased any margin Hillary might have gained from Texas and Ohio, and Barack appears to have the edge in Texas delegates anyway).

The supers will then (by and large) go for the candidate with the most delegates. There will be no brokered convention. If Camp Hillary floats one more veep balloon Barack's way, his campaign should respond by releasing a short list of their veep candidates. As I see it, Obama/* is the Democratic ticket against McCain/*.
 
No. Rather, I think it's now almost certain that we cannot be sure until the convention. Because neither candidate can win on pledged delegates alone.
But he remains ahead.
The bettors favor him 76% to 23.6% for Clinton. Prior to March 4 he had been as high as 86% favored, so people think that March 4 increased Clinton's odds of winning. And Wyoming and Mississippi didn't seem to change the odds much, so I guess those wins were already factored into the price.
Obama will probably need something in the neighborhood of 340 to 380 superdelegates to vote for him. Now he has 211.
Slate's delegate calculator shows that it would very hard for Clinton to take an outright lead in pledged delegates (barring new contests for Michigan and Florida), but if she does very well for the remainder of the contests, that would be fresher in people's minds (including superdelegates) than what happened in February.
 
boloboffin said:
Hillary only enjoys a lead in supers right now because of her early "inevitable" status. Barack's momentum will probably assure him the nomination (Mississippi just erased any margin Hillary might have gained from Texas and Ohio, and Barack appears to have the edge in Texas delegates anyway).
Click to expand...

Actually, since the TX caucuses broke heavily in Obama's favor, he ended up with slightly more delegates than Hillary:

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has won the Texas Democratic caucuses and will get more delegates out of the state than his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won the state's primary, according to CNN estimates.
Click to expand...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...ives-obama-more-texas-delegates-than-clinton/

Eta: Also, there are three important statistics Obama has going for him

1. He has won (thus far) the popular vote.

2. He has won more states than Hilary.

3. He will (almost certainly) end up with more delegates than Hilary.
 
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IchabodPlain said:
Actually, since the TX caucuses broke heavily in Obama's favor, he ended up with slightly more delegates than Hillary:



http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...ives-obama-more-texas-delegates-than-clinton/

Eta: Also, there are three important statistics Obama has going for him

1. He has won (thus far) the popular vote.

2. He has won more states than Hilary.

3. He will (almost certainly) end up with more delegates than Hilary.
Click to expand...
And I do not know how reliable it is, but Howard Dean had said, while on the daily show, that the superdelegates are planning to vote for whoever wins the most delegates.

Obviosuly they are not required to do so, but it sounds like they do not want to cause even more controversy.
 
According to Yahoo News this morning, Obama has accumulated 1364 pledged delegates so far to Clinton's 1218. Assuming that's true, a 146 delegate lead for Obama, and assuming there are 566 pledged delegates remaining in the 10 contests yet to be run, Clinton would have to get approximately 356 of them just to pull even with Obama. That calculates to almost 63 percent of the remaining pledged delegates.

I don't see Clinton winning the remaining contests by that margin, even if she is able to win all of the remaining contests. Unless something really dramatic happens along the way, it looks increasingly likely that Obama will go into the convention with the pledged delegate lead, and the lead in popular vote. Clinton's only hope will be with the superdelegates.
 
Won't all this change if there's a redo in Florida/Michigan which we'd presume would deliver more delegates for Hillary?
 
TheChadd said:
Won't all this change if there's a redo in Florida/Michigan which we'd presume would deliver more delegates for Hillary?
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Assuming she won both, which seems likely, then yes.

However, would it make a big difference?

She won Ohio by a big margin (54% - 44%) and picked up a net gain of 9 pledged delegates out of 141 available.

Florida and Michigan have a total of about 313 delegates (based on figures on Wiki so may not be spot on). If she won both by a similar margin to her Ohio win, and extrapolating from her delegate gain there, she might close the gap by 20 or so pledged delegates. (It may be that this does not give an accurate projection of how the delegates would split due to different allocation rules in different states so treat with a pinch of salt).
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:
Assuming she won both, which seems likely, then yes.

However, would it make a big difference?

She won Ohio by a big margin (54% - 44%) and picked up a net gain of 9 pledged delegates out of 141 available.

Florida and Michigan have a total of about 313 delegates (based on figures on Wiki so may not be spot on). If she won both by a similar margin to her Ohio win, and extrapolating from her delegate gain there, she might close the gap by 20 or so pledged delegates. (It may be that this does not give an accurate projection of how the delegates would split due to different allocation rules in different states so treat with a pinch of salt).
Click to expand...
That's the thing, even a win in a big state now, while giving you a lot of delegates, doesn't actually give you much of a lead over your opponent.
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:
Assuming she won both, which seems likely, then yes.

However, would it make a big difference?

She won Ohio by a big margin (54% - 44%) and picked up a net gain of 9 pledged delegates out of 141 available.

Florida and Michigan have a total of about 313 delegates (based on figures on Wiki so may not be spot on). If she won both by a similar margin to her Ohio win, and extrapolating from her delegate gain there, she might close the gap by 20 or so pledged delegates. (It may be that this does not give an accurate projection of how the delegates would split due to different allocation rules in different states so treat with a pinch of salt).
Click to expand...

Plus we'd assume that PA is going to be another big state to deliver for her, so we could very well see her being on top of the delegate count, right?

So basically if:

- MI, FL have a re-do.
- She wins in MI, FL, PA by a decent amount.

She will be in the lead and take the nomination.... I can see a lot of people getting angry about this though. IMO if this happens, the democrats will be absolutely fractured and Hillary will lose to McCain.
 
TheChadd said:
Plus we'd assume that PA is going to be another big state to deliver for her, so we could very well see her being on top of the delegate count, right?

So basically if:

- MI, FL have a re-do.
- She wins in MI, FL, PA by a decent amount.

She will be in the lead and take the nomination.... I can see a lot of people getting angry about this though. IMO if this happens, the democrats will be absolutely fractured and Hillary will lose to McCain.
Click to expand...

I would think it would take more than just a "decent amount" in those 3 states for Clinton to catch up. I'm not saying these are definitive numbers, but there are about 470 pledged delegates between the three states, and Clinton's behind by about 130. She'd have to win about 300 of those 470 delegates to catch Obama. She'd probably have to win by 25-30% (that'd be about 63% to Obama's 37%) in all three to do that. I can't imagine that happens without an Obama scandal surfacing.
 
NeoRicen said:
I was just looking at CNNs politics page and after Mississippi it shows the delegate count at:

Obama: 1608
Clinton: 1478

That gives Obama a 130 delegate lead. With the number of remaining delegates dwindling and only 400ish more needed for Obama (compared to 530ish for Clinton) is it even possible for Clinton to win anymore?

I'm not a US citizen so I'm quite unfamiliar with the process, so what's required for Clinton to get 2025 in terms of % in upcoming states. Even after Pennsylvania Clinton won't be ahead, how are the states after that polling?
Click to expand...


The Democratic leadership will pick the nominee. The current system was created to prevent another McGovern.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern
 
TheChadd said:
Plus we'd assume that PA is going to be another big state to deliver for her, so we could very well see her being on top of the delegate count, right?

So basically if:

- MI, FL have a re-do.
- She wins in MI, FL, PA by a decent amount.

She will be in the lead and take the nomination.... I can see a lot of people getting angry about this though. IMO if this happens, the democrats will be absolutely fractured and Hillary will lose to McCain.
Click to expand...

Not going to happen. Michigan is polling at about 50-50. And Pennsylvania isn't such a huge win. If you look at the polls, it is Clinton 50% to Obama 37%. She can only get 0 delegate net gain to a maximum of 38. That isn't nearly enough to overtake Obama's lead, which varies depending on the source but all agree to be well over 100. Also, if Florida is seated as is, Hillary only gets a net gain of 31 delegates.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Not going to happen. Michigan is polling at about 50-50. And Pennsylvania isn't such a huge win. If you look at the polls, it is Clinton 50% to Obama 37%. She can only get 0 delegate net gain to a maximum of 38. That isn't nearly enough to overtake Obama's lead, which varies depending on the source but all agree to be well over 100. Also, if Florida is seated as is, Hillary only gets a net gain of 31 delegates.
Click to expand...

It all depends on the party leadership, exact vote counts do not matter.

If they see her winning the large electoral states she will be the nominee regardless of pledged delegates.


They have memories of McGovern.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
Not going to happen. Michigan is polling at about 50-50. And Pennsylvania isn't such a huge win. If you look at the polls, it is Clinton 50% to Obama 37%. She can only get 0 delegate net gain to a maximum of 38. That isn't nearly enough to overtake Obama's lead, which varies depending on the source but all agree to be well over 100. Also, if Florida is seated as is, Hillary only gets a net gain of 31 delegates.
Click to expand...

But with Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania she'll probably have the greater % of the popular vote right? I can see party insiders going with her on the basis of that and that she's won the bigger states. It'll ruin their election chances though.
 
TheChadd said:
But with Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania she'll probably have the greater % of the popular vote right? I can see party insiders going with her on the basis of that and that she's won the bigger states. It'll ruin their election chances though.
Click to expand...

I dunno. In Florida she got about 300,000 more votes. Obama has over 700,000 lead. Not sure what the Penn. turnout will be.
 
TheChadd said:
Plus we'd assume that PA is going to be another big state to deliver for her, so we could very well see her being on top of the delegate count, right?

So basically if:

- MI, FL have a re-do.
- She wins in MI, FL, PA by a decent amount.

She will be in the lead and take the nomination....
Click to expand...

In a word, nope.

She would need to win each not by a decent amount but by a massive amount to end up ahead in pledged delegates. Ohio made a difference of 9 in what was a "big win" for her by 10%. scale up from 141 delegates to 470ish for MI, FL, PA and assume the same margin and she close the gap by 30.

She is currently around 130 behind. So even assuming she wins all three by a decent amount, she is still 100 behind.
 
So the only way for Clinton to win is to persuade the superdelegates to defy the popular vote?

It seems to me she's pretty much screwed then. If the remaining superdelegates wanted Clinton to win so badly over Obama even if he got the popular vote they would have already endorsed her.
 
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