I am getting really tired of sloppy analysis. Writing in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Jonathan Last predicts that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination. I have no problem with making predictions, but let’s look at his reasoning (emphasis mine).
Obama still leads in pledged delegates and the popular vote, as long as you exclude the results in Michigan and Florida (more of which anon). Democratic primaries in 10 states, Puerto Rico and Guam remain – and the demographic makeup of those states is largely favorable for Clinton. To this point, demography has been destiny – and there’s no reason to think that will change. Obama should win Mississippi, North Carolina, and a couple of smaller states. Clinton should win Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.
If that is what happens, neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination before the Democratic convention in August. Obama would arrive in Denver with a lead of perhaps two dozen pledged delegates.
Is this accurate? To test it out, I decided to use the slightly flawed Slate Delegate Calculator. I assigned a numerical value to each candidate’s performance in all the remaining contests. I gave each state or territory to the candidate that Last suggested will win, and I chose margins in keeping with similar contests that have already taken place. Let’s see what I found.
Mississippi Mar. 11- Obama 58% Clinton 42% (O- 19, C- 14)
Pennsylvania Apr. 22- Obama 44% Clinton 56% (O- 70, C- 88)
Guam- May 3- Obama 45% Clinton 55% (O- 2, C- 2)
Indiana May 6- Obama 46% Clinton 54% (O- 33, C-39)
North Carolina May 6- Obama 53% Clinton 47% (O- 61, O- 54)
West Virginia May 13- Obama 42% Clinton 58% (O- 12, C- 16)
Kentucky May 20- Obama 39% Clinton 61% (O- 20, C- 31)
Oregon May 20- Obama 54% Clinton 46% (O- 28, C- 24)
Puerto Rico June 1- Obama 45% Clinton 55% (O- 25, C- 30)
Montana June 3- Obama 61% Clinton 39% (O- 10, C- 6)
South Dakota June 3- Obama 61% Clinton 39% (O- 9, C- 6)
That adds up to 289 pledged delegates for Obama and 320 310 pledged delegates for Clinton. While the Slate Calculator isn’t 100% predictive, a net of 21 pledged delegates is a reasonable baseline estimate given Last’s assumptions. Now, let’s plug these numbers into the current pledged delegate count.
Obama- 1378 + 289= 1667
Clinton- 1223 + 310= 1533
In other words, even under Last’s optimistic assumptions, Clinton would enter the convention with a deficit of 134 pledged delegates not two dozen.
Clinton currently has a 242-210 advantage in pledged superdelegates. If we plug those numbers in, Obama still has an advantage of 102 delegates.
Is it too much to ask journalists to do a little homework before they spew forth their bullshit?
Actually, she can’t.
It’s apparent Last hasn’t actually been following polls or reading the internet or even looking at history. I wouldn’t rely on young voters to turn out in numbers for a Clinton ticket. The Democratic party should not completely rely on black voters if Clinton is the nominee, especially if they’re under 40.
I’d say there’s an awful lot of reliably Democratic voters that Clinton is counting to turn out for her that simply won’t. And an awful lot of swing voters who would be willing to vote for Obama, but who, if Clinton is the nominee, will vote for McCain instead.
Of course, Clinton has been living in a DLC fantasy world since the beginning.
Perhaps the “journalist” knows that his numbers don’t add up, but knows his readers aren’t going to check his math. Perhaps he wants to persuade his readers that it’s just a lost cause for Obama. Shouldn’t his editor have made some attempt to check the math, though? Obviously, to the more politically-informed reader, his “couple dozen” result makes no sense – unless you are a Clinton supporter and accept the “new math” that they are using in their justification to stay in the race.
Should be interesting to see how many links to this story today come from Clinton-supporters. He makes their case perfectly. As long as he’s saying what his audience wants to hear, they won’t question whether he knows how to count.
Wow, if the new math works like that, we should be very close to anti-gravity and perpetual motion devices in every neighborhood, maybe even a transporter in the family room!
Yes, the force only works on the weak minded. This seems to be the basis of political discourse lately. If it continues, we’re doomed.
So many stormtroopers, so few Jedi…
Y’all are killing me over here!! I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
It’s in the first sentence of your blockquote:
What Last wrote is a flat out lie. All number models have shown that even with the FL and MI delegates seated based on the Clinton’s “wins” in those states, they’d still be behind in delegates. Last’s article was based on either lack of research or crazed talking points from the Clinton’s campaign.
It comes down to this:
Can Clinton bash Obama enough between now and the convention to swing enough superdelegates to go with her to grab the nomination from Obama? I say no.
And I’m not entirely convinced of the projected voter breakdown either. Everywhere Obama’s trailed closes with his organization and campaigning. Are any of these primaries susceptible to Rushies?
That’s worth answering. I may look into that tonight.
The following are closed primaries, limited to party members only:
Pennsylvania
Guam
Oregon
Kentucky
South Dakota
Booman-
I chose margins in keeping with similar contests that have already taken place.
Good analysis. Your assumptions are pretty reasonable, too. The outcomes you assumed are even more Clinton-favoring than the Obama team’s own predictions about those races (which were contained in a spreadsheet “accidentally” – they claim – released after Super Tuesday). For example, they think PA’s delegate split will be 75-83. Those predictions have been pretty accurate so far, so if they outperform your numbers, it will be an even bigger pledged delegate gap.
yeah, I actually will be surprised if Obama does anywhere near this badly, but the point isn’t that he will do well, but that he doesn’t have to.
I think he might do a little better in Oregon than you have listed, but not by a lot. The numbers are good enough for the analysis (which is a pretty good one).
I do have one question, though. Something looks off for Puerto Rico. I heard somewhere that (1) Obama was going to take the territory and (2) it was the only contest on the Democratic side that was winner-take-all. If so Clinton’s numbers go up a little.
I still don’t think she can pull off the big win, though.
Why would Clinton be favored in Puerto Rico?
Latino voters, presumably, although I don’t know if the Clintons have the relationships with Puerto Ricans that they do with, say, Latino in the Rio Grande Valley.
The governor is a big-time supporter of Obama. Puerto Rico prefers to stay a sovereign territory, not become a state. Clinton has supported statehood, Obama has not. Obama has long supported cleaning up the toxic mess made by the Navy test-bombing in the area. They like that. Obama should do real well there. Or so I have read.
not according to his own campaign’s estimates.
Mneh, what does he know?
Well all I can say is I hope they got this one wrong.
I don’t know what to believe, as I know nothing FOR SURE about Puerto Rico. They usually hold caucuses, but now that they think they might actually matter, they’ve moved themselves up a few days so they’re not last and made themselves a primary. Should be interesting. But maybe not any better than ant of the other exciting 50/50 (roughly) races we’ve been seeing lately.
I’ll challenge your math: I think there is ample evidence that Clinton’s win in Texas came from Republican hanky-panky, and that there will be a significant advantage to Obama in closed primaries.
I did a little data check this morning. (Disclaimer: The meaning of “open” varies among states. In some states you have to be declared in advance, in others you declare on the spot. Clinton won the open primaries in Arkansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, California Ohio…and the “open” portion of the Texas Primary where she had an edge of about 3% or 98,000 votes. But about 10 percent of those who voted in the Texas primary were crossovers.
Obama has won every closed primary or caucus except Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Clinton’s home areas of New York and New Jersey. But Obama won more votes in New York than Clinton won in Illinois.
Moving forward, Pennsylvania is a closed primary with delegates skewed toward the big city areas where Obama is strong. So I predict a Texas situation–Clinton wins the PR call, but the ultimate difference in delegates will be very small. Obama needs to get his ground game really going in Indiana, because I can assure you that there will be significant cross-overs just to cause havoc.
I’ve suggested that we publish ads congratulating the new Democrats who register just to vote in the primary! (Someone said it was “invasion of privacy” but it is clearly public information.)
I consider a caucus “psychologically closed” because the guy at the donut shop whom everyone knows is Republican is less likely to go down to the local elementary school and call himself a Democrat than he is to walk into a voting booth and do it secretly.
how does this challenge my math?
Booman, maybe not the math, just the judiciously conservative estimates, which you explained above. In a final exam I’d cheat off your paper any day.
I think you are actually a bit conservative in your estimates of the upcoming closed Pennsylvania primary…
last I heard 2 is greater than 1, except for those members of Cult Clinton where less delegates is actually more delegates.
Shoddy journalism, he should be fired or forced go back to writing obituaries.
“…where less delegates is actually more delegates”.
Hmmm, maybe the guy’s a Mies van der Rohe fan.
I haven’t heard any updates about whether NYC ballot counts will change the delegate totals from that state.
And I’m glad you read the works of these lazy journalists so I don’t have to. Still kinda stunned by the success of the “wah, the press is meaner to me than to the other guy” meme from the candidate whose kindergarten years have not been used for sick rumor-mongering, …I mean for real.
Was the recalculation of Cali delegates due the “problems” with vote-counting in LA?
Our Country Registrar said that since it was only 48K votes and the gap between Clinton and Obama was so big in LA County, that they weren’t going to waste the resources to count them. He determined that no matter what, it was too small a number to affect delegate counts.
your addition of Clinton delegates from the Miss thru S. Dakota primaries does not agree w/ mine. I come up w/ 300 – Clinton and 289 – Obama.
And your breakdown? Please, some data to back up your scenario. Thanks.
Using Boomans scenario:
Obama: 1667 + 210 = 1877 delegates
Clinton: 1543 + 242 = 1785 delegates
To win nomination requires 2025 delegates.
Obama needs: 148 delegates
Clinton needs: 240 delegates
How do they get it?? How many super-delegates remaining to commit? And how many likely to change their vote?
Bottom line this likely will not get resolved until the convention when delegates have to actually vote. So who wins the nomination is anyone’s guess!!
Here’s an answer:
OK. This makes sense. Obama needs 90 out of 284 uncommitted delegates and needs to keep those that have already committed from bolting. This is a very reasonable proposition. But it still seems that it all winds up at the convention because even if the 90 supers commit to Obama – at the current juncture it seems Clinton will still be unwilling to concede by claiming that the supers have yet to vote so its not yet a done deal.
I am surprised the math of how each candidate gets to 2025 has not been more prominently written up in the blogosphere. Maybe time for Booman to do a DKos diary?
Maybe someone also needs to send that math spreadsheet to Jerome who seems to have really jumped the shark this primary. How’s he ever going to get on the bandwagon in the general election if Obama gets the nomination?
Every day party officials step forward saying that they want this over before the convention. Clinton can’t win without a convention fight. That means they are saying that they want Clinton to concede.
If they have their way it will be over.
Lazy, biased or shrewed
I’m betting shrewed.
If they actually came out and said there is zero chance of her getting the nomination without much arm twisting spin and self serving party busting, then:
A) there would be no story to draw readers/listeners/viewers for the next so many months.
B) by repeating the spin put out by the Clinton PR flack the media they curry favor and access with them should they actually win.
In the end they are less interested in who wins than making sure there is a continuing story to report and that they have ready chance to report it first/early/at all.
And yes they are lazy in that like any other business they’d like to conduct their business as efficiently as possible.