As If March 4 Never Happened

Obscured in last night’s Mississippi results was the announcement by CNN that Obama won the Texas caucuses. The counting’s not done —we won’t have final results until March 29—but CNN still projected the likely delegate split:

After a comprehensive review of these results, CNN estimates that Obama won more support from Texas caucus-goers than Clinton. Based on the state party’s tally, Obama’s caucus victory translates into 38 national convention delegates, compared to 29 for Clinton.

And though Clinton won more delegates than Obama in the primary, 65 to 61, Obama’s wider delegate margin in the caucuses gives him the overall statewide delegate lead, 99 to 94 — or once superdelegate endorsements are factored in, 109 to 106. [Emphasis added]

So … Obama won Texas? Depends on which count you think matters more—the popular vote or the delegate count. (There’s plenty of debate over that.) It also depends on whose numbers you believe: MSNBC still has Texas as tied. But at the very least, if the final tallies on March 29 corroborate these numbers , Obama can make the case that he won Texas. (A case that, to be fair, his campaign has been making all along.)

Also, as First Read points out , this means that Obama’s victories in Wyoming and Mississippi do indeed cancel out Clinton’s March 4 victories. She netted about 15 delegates in the primaries that day, but Texas’ caucuses cut that number to six. In Wyoming, Obama netted two delegates and another five last night in Mississippi—thus erasing Clinton’s surge.

The math just gets uglier and uglier for Clinton.