15-58-100

By David Epstein

OK, that's a bit of a mysterious title, so I'll explain. I've been playing with Slate's fun Delegate Calculator, and I used it to figure out three quantities: what percentage of the vote in the remaining primaries and caucuses each Democratic candidate would need to wrap up the convention via pledged delegates, and what percentage would yield a tie entering the convention. The results surprised me.

First, if Clinton takes only 15% of the vote, on average, in the remaining contests then Obama will have over the necessary 2,025 pledged delegates to be assured of a first-ballot win at the convention. To put it another way, Obama needs a full 85% of the remaining vote to not have to rely on superdelegates to win the nomination. That's a pretty tall order.

Hillary, on the other hand, needs 100% of the vote to win outright. (OK, I'm cheating a little; the Calculator says this would leave her 8 votes short. But they don't add Florida and Michigan into their calculations, about which more in my next post.) If Obama's chances of taking 85% of the vote are incredibly slim, this would seem like a physical impossibility.

Finally, if Hillary wins 58% of the remaining vote she will tie Obama for the number of pledged delegates entering the convention. This seems high, but not impossible if she regains some momentum.

What conclusions to draw? Well, first of all it's almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates by convention time to claim a clear first-ballot victory. So in almost all scenarios the superdelegates will play a role.

Second, the present gap between the candidates is 152 pledged delegates out of 2,228 elected, or 7%. If Obama widens this margin in the months ahead, even if he doesn't make it to 85% of the vote he may come close enough that he needs only a few superdelegates, and the race will effectively be over. But if we make it all the way to the convention, it will probably be because this gap has narrowed, so we're looking at a different of under 7% of all delegates elected at convention time -- certainly not a blowout.

At that point, it will be up to each candidate to convince the superdelegates that they have the best chance of winning the general election. That's their responsibility, and they can't rely on the pledged delegates to make their case for them. Again, more on this later, but the bottom line is that the Democrat's proportional allocation of delegates means that, having reached this point, we'll most likely be treated to a real convention for the first time in 40 years.

Comments

[Tony]

I see Hillary's hint at a shared ticket as a signal to the SDs that they don't have to choose yet; early endorsements wouldn't help her, so from that point of view, it's a good play.

[xyz]

Which makes arguments like this: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/03/clintons_moral_claim.html very compelling (I also happen to really like Cost's reporting style and analysis of the data, so maybe I'm biased). Both will need superdelegates to win this thing. It depends on who can make the best appeal. No wonder dems want someone to quit. I doubt anyone wants to see this get ugly, except McCain, of course.