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Earlier today, Ann Hulbert, one of our "XX Factor" colleagues, issued a call to arms: Could the nerds over at Trailhead predict what would happen if all superdelegates voted for the winner of their states?
Keep in mind this is a thought experiment. It's unlikely that superdelegates would be swayed by their state’s vote rather than by pledged delegate totals, their districts' results, or the national popular vote. So this exercise might require, as Hillary would say, “a willful suspension of disbelief.” But bear with us …
So far, Obama has won 25 states and territories to Clinton's 15, but her big-state victories yield more supers. From the states that have already voted, 289 superdelegates would vote for Clinton and 286 would vote for Obama. Incredibly, they still come out essentially tied. At this point, we should probably expect as much.
For the sake of argument, let’s extrapolate this method to the rest of the race. Based on our arbitrary, slightly informed predictions—we know it’s early, but again, bear with us—for the remaining states and territories, Clinton will win six (Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Guam) and Obama seven (Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming). That would give Clinton another 63.5 superdelegates to Obama’s 61. (The half-super is because of arcane DNC rules toward territories' delegations.) Again, no big disparity there. In concert with Slate's delegate calculator, we get the final pledged and superdelegate tallies, assuming 10-point wins across the board. Obama: 2,020. Clinton: 1,888.5
That's right, even with all of these stipulations, neither candidate will reach 2,025 delegates—the number needed for a majority. Impossible, right? No. Our state-by-state delegate breakdown doesn't include about 50 20-30* nomadic superdelegates who aren't tied down to a state. Nor does it include the 40-50 76* superdelegates who haven't been named yet.
All of this means that the delegate system isn’t screwed up just because superdelegates are the ultimate free-agents, picking whomever they want. Even if they were forced to vote with their state, the two candidates would still be deadlocked heading into the next few months.
This insane scenario included a hell of a lot of confusing assumptions, so try your own hand at sorting out this mess. We'll provide the whole tool kit. Here's a spreadsheet with the state-by-state breakdowns of the superdelegations, and Slate's delegate calculator is ready and waiting for your predictions. Combine the two together and let us know what you come up with. Also, forward along any other nutso thought experiments that can fill the time between now and April 22. It's going to be a long ride.
*UPDATE Mar. 6, 10:49 p.m.: Some more clarification on these numbers. 76 superdelegates haven't been named yet, according to NBC. The rest I was referring to are stateless.
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March 4 is barely gone, and already Pennsylvania is the new Iowa. Translation: For the next six weeks, stat-happy media will lay the state out on a dissection table and poke its innards. So, to pre-empt this information glut, here’s a rundown of what the state looks like—its demographics, its geography, and how these factors might affect the outcome on April 22.
Like Ohio, but different. Pennsylvania is really three states. Off to the West, you have the large, heavily Democratic Pittsburgh, which looks more like a Midwestern city than an East Coast enclave. Like Ohio, Pittsburgh and much of western Pennsylvania is largely blue-collar and has therefore been hit hard by NAFTA. So look for that issue to dog Obama through April. Also like Ohio, western Pennsylvania has a strong union presence. Despite Obama's strength in cities, Pittsburgh's working-class whites are likely to swing the region toward Clinton.
On the other side of the state, you’ve got a bona fide liberal city in Philadelphia. With its mix of college students and African-Americans, Philly is more like New York and Atlanta than Midwestern cities like Columbus. It seems like a natural fit for Obama—blacks make up 43 percent of the city's population, as opposed to only 27 percent of Pittsburgh's—but keep in mind that cities in New York state and New Jersey gave Clinton their blessing.
Then, in the middle of the state, there’s the wide-open, rural areas that trend Republican. (The state’s two coasts and its middle are always struggling for dominance; hence its “swing state” status.) The boonies aren't particularly delegate-rich for Dems, but Obama could pick up a few extra votes with his red-state mojo. The candidates will also focus on the burgeoning suburbs surrounding Philly and Pittsburgh, which, thanks to an influx of immigrants and an exodus from the cities, are trending more Democratic than in the past.
Who lives there? The state’s demographics are nearly identical to Ohio’s. Pennsylvania is 86 percent white, compared to Ohio’s 85 percent. Same with its African-American population: 10 percent compared to Ohio’s 12 percent. It’s hard to say exactly how this population is distributed among Democrats, since there were no exit polls conducted in Pennsylvania in 2004. But Ohio exit polls show that 18 percent of Democratic voters were African-American, and that could be an indicator for Pennsylvania’s black turnout.
The state’s Hispanic population, meanwhile, was twice that of Ohio in 2006, percentage-wise. It has also increased over the past several years, which could give Clinton yet another boost. But that demographic doesn’t break down neatly, given that many of the state’s Latinos are relatively well-off. Obama did better than expected among Latinos in Arizona and New Mexico—Pennsylvania's might drift toward him as well.
What do the neighbors think? It’s instructive to look at how counties that border Pennsylvania voted in this year’s primaries. Pennsylvania borders six states—three of them went for Clinton (Ohio, New York, New Jersey), two of them swung toward Obama (Maryland, Delaware) and one of them (West Virginia) doesn’t vote till May.
In New York, the southwest counties that border Pennsylvania went overwhelmingly for Clinton, mostly by a margin of 30 points. You see similar results in the counties along Ohio’s eastern border.
The results are more mixed in New Jersey. Sussex County in the north and Gloucester County in the south swung for Hillary. But when you look at the swath of counties surrounding Philadelphia (Hunterdon, Mercer, Somerset), those areas voted for Obama. Like Jersey, Maryland’s border is ambivalent. The western panhandle favored Clinton, but, further east, Frederick and Baltimore counties favored Obama. That said, Baltimore’s influence isn’t likely to carry over into Pennsylvania.
Overall, if bordering counties are any indicator, Clinton is the clear fave.
The system. Pennsylvania holds a closed primary, meaning that Obama won’t benefit from the votes of independents and Republicans who might otherwise vote in the GOP race. This helps Clinton, given her strength among party faithful. Also, Pennsylvania doesn’t have any of that caucus nonsense.
Endorsement watch. Clinton has 13 of the state’s superdelegates, compared to Obama’s four, with nine still undecided. Among them, Clinton won the endorsement of Pennsylvania’s governor, Ed Rendell, who, while perhaps not the state’s most important endorser, is certainly the loudest. Six weeks is a long time, during which he could also stick his foot in his mouth, as he did when he told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that white people wouldn’t vote for a black person. And while Obama is strong in cities, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter endorsed Clinton back in December.
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By all accounts, last night’s Texas caucuses were about as calm and orderly as Cloverfield. Voting irregularities kept cropping up. (See the Clinton camp’s accusations, plus scattered reports of “individuals preying on elderly.”) People claimed they were getting shut out of polling locations. Police even descended on at least one Houston polling location to break up the “rowdy” crowd.
Caucus-goer and friend of the blog Grace Parra happened to be exercising her democratic rights at the Judson W. Robinson Jr. Westchase Branch Library in Houston when the fuzz showed up. Before that, people were getting shut out without explanation. She e-mails:
By 8 p.m., the crowd was still waiting to get in. Leaders (self-designated?) from the Obama camp would occasionally call out stats affirming Obama's early lead (these news flashes stopped as Hillary gained momentum), and bags of Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were passed around (even to Hillary fans, as an olive branch of sorts). Fueled by sugar, Obama fans repeated their war-cry, but the increasingly sassy Clinton camp shot back with "Men-o-pause!" and "Pantsuits! Pantsuits!"
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Actually sounds kind of fun.
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You hear the idea batted around that Democrats want this race to be over (perhaps among Obama supporters more than others). Republicans have chosen their man, the thinking goes—it’s time for Dems to wrap this up.
But that doesn’t take into account the extent to which the longest primary in history has energized the Democratic Party. Take this estimate that Texas’ primary turnout is expected to be more than 3.6 million on the Democratic side. Compare that with the 2.8 million Texans who turned out for John Kerry in the 2004 general election. I thought Clinton was delusional when she said in her acceptance speech tonight that she thinks Democrats can win Texas in the general. But look at those numbers.
By that logic, the longer the primary drags on, the more the party benefits. Democrats will probably turn out in record numbers in Wyoming and Mississippi next week, and again in Pennsylvania in April. And in swing states (Pennsylvania, North Carolina), energizing new Democratic voters could make a huge difference in the general.
The question is, how long can the race continue before the candidates really start to bruise each other? Sure, it’s great to get new voters mobilized in South Dakota, but at what cost? Hillary’s victories in Ohio and Texas owe partly to her heightened attacks on Obama (“3 a.m.,” NAFTA, Rezko). The coming months could make the past week look tame by comparison.
It’s a trade-off, no doubt. But it’s a trade-off that some members of the party’s leadership, Howard Dean in particular, would be happy to make. Dean’s 50-state strategy earned him scorn from Democratic establishment types. But it also set the stage for this year’s long primary, in which almost every state in the union may command the candidates’ attention. If anything, Dean himself couldn’t have designed a better primary narrative. It might enrage people concerned with solidifying a nominee. But in terms of party-building, it could be transformational.
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For those who made the smart decision to skip tonight’s circus, you’ve missed one especially exciting bit of news. Clinton’s campaign is alleging that Obama supporters committed various illegal acts during the caucus proceedings that discriminated against Clinton supporters. They say they have proof of the discrimination, but it’s unclear what that proof is. Now that we’ve soaked in some perspective (at least a few hours’ worth) on Clinton’s EMERGENCY conference call announcing the allegations, we’re ready to declare it an ultrashrewd political move.
Clinton has effectively pinned Obama into a catch-22. Obama can’t say that his supporters didn’t do it, because he has no control over his supporters. If he goes out on a limb and erroneously trusts his supporters’ morals, he could look like a naive liar and a cheater—never a good option heading into a six-week marathon to Pennsylvania. If he takes the other route and says nothing (which is what his campaign has done thus far), then he looks like he’s admitting defeat and recognizes that he can’t control his own supporters. As Michelle Obama infamously said, “[I]f you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House.” In reality, Obama’s supporters are the equivalent of his across-town neighbors, but voters may not see it that way.
This catch-22 ploy isn’t new. Two weeks ago the Obama campaign trapped Clinton in a similar scheme by crying foul over a picture of Obama in native Somali garb—pictures that were reportedly leaked by Clinton staffers to make Obama appear to be a Muslim (which he is not). Obama demanded that the Clinton campaign take responsibility for the leak, but the Clintonites were silent during the first hours of the hubbub because they couldn’t verify that none of their 700 staffers released the picture. Eventually they said they knew nothing about it.
That’s the only way out of this catch-22, to claim ignorance and hope the scandal doesn’t trickle up. There are still too many details missing for us to know whether Obama will suffer because of his supporters’ alleged indiscretions. It’s hard for Obama to take umbrage at the allegations, especially because the claims are more serious and the potential fallout is steeper. It’s telling that we still haven’t heard Obama’s campaign directly respond to Clinton’s conference call. (Outside of an Obama lawyer’s heated exchange with a Clinton spokesman.) That doesn’t mean his supporters are guilty, it just means he has no way of knowing that they’re not.