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One advantage of the 2008 Primary: Director’s
Cut: Extended Edition is the opportunity to learn every last minutia
of the Democratic nomination process. What used to be a complex, impenetrable
system no one had time to examine has now become a complex, impenetrable system
we have way, way, too much time to examine.
Under the microscope today is a group of superdelegates
called add-on delegates. The 76 add-ons are unbound,
just like other superdelegates. The difference is that they’re not named until the
spring, when the states hold their conventions. Most states have just one
add-on delegate, but some bigger states have more. (Pennsylvania,
for example, has three; California
has five.) Each state has a different process for selecting add-ons—sometimes
the state party chair picks them, sometimes it’s a committee, sometimes an
entire convention. If you’re curious, DemConWatch lists
when and how each state picks.
So although you can’t predict their behavior perfectly,
there’s at least some logic behind
which way the add-ons swing. For example, California
state party chairman Art Torres says
he plans to pick the state’s five add-ons proportionally according to the
primary results—three for Clinton,
two for Obama. In Washington,
D.C., where Obama won
overwhelmingly, one add-on has declared
for Obama and one is still undecided. In states with only one add-on, the
delegate is likely to go to the candidate who won the state. That’s why Clinton won
Arkansas’ single
add-on delegate. In general, the add-ons seem to break down roughly according
to which candidate won where.
So here’s an experiment: What happens if each of the states
that haven’t yet selected their add-ons pick proportionally according to the
primary results? (For the sake of argument, we’ll go with ABC’s prediction
yesterday that Clinton wins Pennsylvania,
Indiana, West Virginia,
Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, and that Obama wins
Guam, North Carolina,
Oregon, Montana,
and South Dakota.)
In states that have more than one delegate, we split them roughly proportionally.
For example, each candidate gets one of South Carolina’s
two add-ons; likewise, each gets two of New
York’s four. In Pennsylvania,
we’ll give Clinton
two and Obama one.
In this scenario, of the 63 add-on delegates that have yet
to be selected, Obama gets 35 and Clinton
gets 28. Factor in the add-ons who have already declared their allegiances, and
Obama gets 41, Clinton
29. (Another five have been selected, but not yet announced whom they’re
backing.) In other words, it’s likely the add-ons will split in Obama’s favor,
or at worst roughly 50-50.
The takeaway point being that the superdelegate
wall we discussed yesterday is even
higher if you take the add-on situation into account. Seeing as the add-ons
are likely to favor Obama, Clinton
needs even more than 70 percent of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates
(our ballpark prediction) in order to reach 2025. One Frayster, “Independent Don,”
crunched the
numbers (an excellent post I encourage you to read) and concluded that if
the two candidates hypothetically split the remaining pledged delegates 50-50, then,
given the likely allocation of add-ons, Clinton would need to win a whopping 90 percent of the remaining 230 or so superdelegates
to get the nomination.
It’s not often we use the word
“impossible” around here. But it’s starting to look like there is no other way to describe Clinton's chances.
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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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As we went to bed last night, the juicy New York Times headline "Black Leader, a Clinton Ally, Tilts to Obama" tucked us in. The story explained the soon-to-be defection of Georgia Rep. John Lewis from Hillary Clinton's camp to Barack Obama's. Lewis is a superdelegate and a civil rights leader whose district voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in Georgia's Super Tuesday primary. If he officially defected, his change of heart was thought to be a bellwhether for all of Clinton's superdelegates whose districts voted for Obama. The Times reported that Lewis "said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention," but that Lewis was still weighing whether to officially endorse Obama.
But after changing his mind on Clinton, he may be changing his mind on Obama. The Times fronted the story as an off-lead this morning, but the denials came flooding in before the story even appeared in its dead-tree version. Lewis' spokesperson says the Times' story and a similar one from the AP were inaccurate, and both campaigns say they haven't heard from Lewis about a switch. Jeff Zeleny, who co-wrote the Times piece, is standing by his story, and Lewis' spokesperson later told NBC News that he's switching his superdelegate vote, but not his endorsement. It seems Lewis has settled on hedging his bets—endorse Clinton (whom he almost surely voted for on Super Tuesday) but give his superdelegate vote to Obama (because his district liked Obama better).
If that's the case, Obama has an old-fashioned political dilemma on his hands. Lewis is essentially swallowing his pride and personal feelings to listen to his constituents, a process Obama's campaign has advocated (especially when it favors them). In Lewis they now have a poster boy for "ethical" (read: pro-Obama) superdelegate behavior. Lewis is an elected official, and elected officials get paid to follow the wills of the people—endorsement be damned.
And now Obama is damned if he does praise Lewis and damned if he doesn't. He can't exalt Lewis' switch too strongly or he stands to lose some of his own supers. John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Deval Patrick, for example, would all follow suit and abandon Obama for Clinton because Clinton won Massachusetts. Clinton would be happy to let Obama keep their endorsements, just as long as she got those precious superdelegate votes. As the Democratic race becomes a high-stakes scavenger hunt for superdelegates, it doesn't matter if a super actually likes you best—just as long as they vote for you first.