Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Prepared to make a projection?

So, there's been a lot of talk about the race being "super close", since Obama only leads Clinton by 124 delegates. I've read countless comments blogs where Clinton supporters proclaim that Hillary is only 2% behind and that the race is wide-open.

Well, it's not--for two reasons:

1) Super-delegates are included in that tally, and they're not going to nominate the loser, as nearly every party leader has stated. Remember the original super delegate tally? Clinton was up by over 150. And now? -less that 50.

2) Since the race is almost over and there aren't that many delegates outstanding, the lead is considerably more daunting than it would have been a month ago when there were many more delegates up for grabs. If you're 100 delegates behind with 90 percent of the vote remaining, you're not as disadvantaged as you would be if you were 100 delegates behind with 5 percent of the vote remaining.

So, for illustration, consider if the race were being projected like on election night, where each candidate is given a percentage of the vote with a certain percent of precincts reporting. In this scenario, Obama has 1408 delegates and Clinton has 1251 with a total of 3250 delegates up for grabs. This is the equivalent of Obama having 53 percent of the vote to Clinton's 47 percent with 82 percent of precincts reporting.

That's a huge lead; in fact, if this were election night, all the networks would be projecting Obama as the winner, because for Clinton to overcome that 6 percent lead with only 18 percent of the vote outstanding, she'd have to receive a whopping 27 percent margin in the last 18 percent. She's only achieved a margin that size once--in Arkansas.

Which, of course, brings me to this point: The only reason that they have not called the race is because she is a Clinton.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have that right!

And does the Clinton name stike fear, demand respect or awe?

What I have witnessed in the past months only makes me question motives.

Anonymous said...

You are dead on!