Obama vs. Clinton: How over is it?

[cos]

A month ago I posted to show that Obama would win the Democratic nomination - that he'd already won enough votes and delegates to ensure his eventual victory, and there was no reasonable scenario for Clinton to campaign her way to a win.*

Yesterday, Clinton won West Virginia 67% - 26% - 7% (Edwards), her second-biggest percentage win so far, and only the second state where she's hit 60%. She gave a victory speech where she implied she could still win. In case this leaves you wondering whether she's making a comeback, or has a chance, here's an update on the delegate math:

WV has 28 pledged delegates. Edwards got 7% - his first time getting over 2% since early February. Since he didn't meet the threshold to earn delegates, WV's actual delegate split was determined only by the 93% of voters who voted for Clinton or Obama, so it was as if Clinton won 72%-28%. She'll probably get 20, and Obama will get 8.

There are 3253 total pledged delegates. Edwards has 19 of them, leaving 3234. 50% of that is 1617.

	Obama	Clinton
Before West Virginia
pledged delegates already won	~1592	~1425
pledged delegates remaining	217	217
% of remaining needed to end up ahead	12%	88%
After West Virginia
pledged delegates from WV	8	20
new total pledged delegates	~1600	~1445
pledged delegates remaining	189	189
% of remaining needed to end up ahead	9%	91%

West Virginia was always going to be Clinton's best non-home state, beacuse of its demographics. All you really need to see it clearly is this map. She could do almost as well in Kentucky, but she won't do nearly this well in Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota (in fact, she'll probably lose several of them).

WV + KY = 79 delegates, or 36% of the 217 that were remaining.
OR + PR + MT + SD = 138 delegates, or 64% of the 217 that were remaining.

Still, let's speculate: What if Clinton does as well in all the remaining states as she did in WV. We'll split the remaining 189 delegates 72%-28%:

	Obama	Clinton
new pledged delegates	53	136
new total pledged delegates	~1653	~1581

That leaves Obama ahead by 72. Even if Clinton were to gain 38 from seating Florida as-is, plus 10 from the Michigan Democratic Party's compromise proposal of 59-69, he still wins! Not that that's going to happen, but even that unrealistically optimistic scenario doesn't win it for her.

As for superdelegates: I said in my original post that:

• As a group, superdelegates won't let Clinton get the nomination if she can't lead in pledged delegates.
• Remaining undeclared superdelegates will not break strongly for Clinton; if they liked her that much, they wouldn't still be undeclared.

Support for my hypothesis has emerged: Over the past week, Obama has gained several superdelegate endorsements almost every day, while Clinton has gained very few, all of which have been cancelled out by superdelegates who had formerly endorsed her switching to Obama. He pulled ahead of her last week in the superdelegate count. He even netted several new ones the day before West Virginia, and several more today.

In order to further her goal of winning the pledged delegate counts, Clinton needed to win WV by at least 88%. She didn't do nearly that well. In order to further her goal of getting close enough to Obama to challenge him at the convention on the basis of Michigan and Florida, she needed to win WV in the low 70's. She fell just short of that goal, too.

She now needs to win remaining states by an average of 92% to win outright, or by an average of 76% to come within "Michigan & Florida" range of winning. Her top three states so far have been Arkansas (70%), West Virginia (67%), and New York (58%). To win, by any scenario, she needs to average significantly better than her best states so far, in all remaining states. And that's assuming the superdelegates don't keep flooding to Obama, which they probably will, at least in part because they want to head off any chance of a convention fight.

Short answer: No. She's so far behind that her WV win actually left her worse off.

Oregon will probably finish it.

Update: Last night, John Edwards endorsed Obama. Edwards' pledged delegates, like all pledged delegates, have always been technically free to vote for whoever they want to; however, now that his campaign is officially over, they will feel freer to vote for their second choice, and their second choices aren't all known. Traditionally, though, they should mostly vote for Edwards' choice, Obama. They're somewhere between pledged delegates and superdelegates. How many are there? Official counts all say 19, but that's not quite true. There are 3 different kinds of Edwards delegates:

• 16 - real live pledged delegates who were elected from IA, NH, and SC. These are people, whose names are known, whose first choice candidate was Edwards. Chances are most, though not necessarily all, will vote for Obama.
  Net gain for Obama: 10-16


• 3 - An estimate of how many statewide Iowa delegates Edwards would've gotten at the upcoming Iowa state Democratic convention. That's where the reported "19" (16+3) comes from. Since he's ended his campaign & endorsed, though, it is probable (though uncertain) that the Edwards organization won't be active & organized enough at the state convention to get these delegates. If so, these 3 slots will go to the other candidates in proportion to their relative strengths in Iowa: 2 for Obama, 1 for Hillary.
  Net gain for Obama: 1


• 13 - Edwards actually won 13 more delegates in Florida, but these haven't been counted because Florida isn't supposed to count. This means Hillary probably doesn't gain as much from Florida as she was hoping to, if there's a compromise. For example, maybe the DNC will decide to seat Florida as-is but assign all 13 to Obama. Or maybe they'll give Florida half delegates, and the 6.5 Edwards delegates (13 people with 50% voting strength each) will mostly go for Obama.
  Net gain for Obama: ~6-13 if Florida is seated

Overall, this probably means a +11 - +17 delegate gain for Obama, and cuts Clinton's possible advantage from seating Florida by ~6-13 depending on how Florida is handled.

* Clinton could still be nominated if some big unexpected thing happens, such as a Spitzer-like scandal, but that's not something she can campaign for; if it happens, it'll happen, regardless of what she does.

Comments

[pandagenma.livejournal.com]

http://www.alternet.org/election08/85321/

You added me on okcupid, so I added you to my LJ. :P

[cos]

Hi! Hmm, I'm considering going to Denver for the DNC this summer.

[killersmart1.livejournal.com]

Oh, you SO should! I have a friend in TX (freenotfurry) who might be there, as well. I will reserve time to hang out with you if you're out here in August.

[ratontheroad.livejournal.com]

Gotta drop me a line too. I'm hoping to be around for it.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

* Clinton could still be nominated if some big unexpected thing happens, such as a Spitzer-like scandal, but that's not something she can campaign for; if it happens, it'll happen, regardless of what she does.

Hrm. It seems to me that she could make it happen if she could dig up a scandal herself. Or orchestrate one for him. Is there a reason she wouldn't try to do that? (beyond common decency, I mean)

no, I mean *big*

[cos]

That's not what I mean by "something big". I mean something big. The Clinton campaign has already tried contriving, manufacturing, or dredging up whatever "scandals" they can, from the supposed Obama comment to the Canadians that he didn't mean it about NAFTA, to his neighbor who used to be in The Weathermen, to Jeremiah Wright, along with a bunch of others some of which didn't catch on with the press. None of this stuff has done, or will do, the trick.

To win by campaigning, Clinton needs to shift the voting pattern by more than 20% in under a month. That simply does not happen through normal campaigning, no matter how negative. Only a 9/11-sized event has that sort of effect. In truth, even Spitzer's hooker scandal wouldn't have moved more than 20% in under a month, so a "Spitzer scenario" requires more than just the scandal itself, it also requires that Obama respond to it by dropping out. Anything big enough to move voting patterns by over 20% in under a month, is big enough to give her the nomination even if she drops out.

Re: no, I mean *big*

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't disagree with you that it looks really unlikely for her to win; I was just trying to understand your assertion that she can't do anything to move that forward. I see the point now, though, so thanks for the clarification :).

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Comments on the demographics implications of the WV win? Clinton took a lot of flack for saying that blue collar white voters were going to go for her and not Obama, but the articles I've been reading have said that's just about what happened, and that 2 in 10 polled even went so far as to say that race was the deciding factor.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I think people were pissed off not because she made that prediction, but because the way she put it implied pretty strongly that this makes her the better candidate because those votes are the important ones.

[dpolicar]

Well, the rhetorical equation of "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans" offended a lot of people, campaign notwithstanding. But mostly I think people were pissed off because she said out loud that race was an issue in this election, and for the most part we prefer not to say that out loud.

Re: WV demographics

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

But mostly I think people were pissed off because she said out loud that race was an issue in this election, and for the most part we prefer not to say that out loud.


I think I agree with you. When I saw the demographics and polling (particularly the bit where 2 in 10 flat out said race was a factor) I thought, "and pretty much that's what Clinton just got pilloried for saying."

Below, cos points out that WV didn't break any differently than predicted - it was known that those demographics go for Clinton over Obama. :shrug: I certainly found it surprising that she hit that level of landslide, but can't pretend to have been paying a huge amount of attention.

Re: WV demographics

[cos]

As you can see on the map I linked to, the Appalachian belt has consistently been giving Clinton >65% wins throughout the primaries. WV is the only state that is 100% within that belt, hence WV was almost certainly going to be a >65% Clinton win. After WV, KY has the largest percentage of its population within that belt, so it is the other state likely to give Clinton a >65% win, though that depends on how Louisville balances it out (I predict Obama will win Louisville itself, though Clinton will probably win its suburbs, and I don't know how its turnout will compare with the eastern part of the state).

Re: WV demographics

[leora.livejournal.com]

Both race and sex are an issue for some voters. I've read comments from random people who say they won't vote for Obama because he's black and other comments from people saying they won't vote for Clinton because she is female.

We know that some Americans are racist and some are sexist (well, probably all are both, but I mean very racist/sexist not just a little bit). However, we expect the candidates not to be. That's the difference.

The problem isn't that she said she's supported by poor white working people, but that she sounded like she equated working with white. And while I do believe that it's easy to have something come out wrong, she or her husband have made racist comments before in this campaign, which makes it harder not to put the racism aside.

I liked both Clinton and Obama until the comment about how Obama took a state, but it didn't really count because a lot of Black people lived there. Would we say that a state didn't really count for Clinton because a lot of White people live there? There were other things too, but that was the first thing to really annoy me.

I condemn the racism in the people too, but we're not discussing whether we'd vote for any of those random people who won't vote for someone whose skin has a greater than average amount of pigment in it.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Hm... of course any votes one candidate would and one candidate would not get in a contest with the republican would seem to be important.

I'm surprised I'm not seeing more comment. Obama's the presumptive democratic candidate, and whether he carries WV (or other states with high blue collar populations) will be important in the general election.

[cos]

"any votes one candidate would and one candidate would not get in a contest with the republican would seem to be important" - that's a tautology, but it's also a different issue. You cannot take the fact that someone voted for A over B in the Democratic primary, to conclude that that voter would vote for the Republican over B in a general election. Statistically, the mere fact that someone voted in a Democratic primary means they're much more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee over the Republican, than someone who did not vote in either party's primary. And we don't know the preferences of those people.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

:shrug: I'm voting for whomever gets on the democratic ticket, and I was already uncomfortable enough with both of them that I essentially abstained from DC's primary. (DC going heavily to Obama was a foregone conclusion, so I was one of the 300 folk who voted for someone not technically running.)

Statistically, the mere fact that someone voted in a Democratic primary means they're much more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee over the Republican, than someone who did not vote in either party's primary.

I'd thought it was the Tribune article but it must have been another one from this morning - mentions 30+ percent of each of the candidates supporters saying they wouldn't vote for the other in a general elecction. Hopefully that will have changed by the actual election.

And we don't know the preferences of those people

Aren't those the polls that ciphergoth is using in his graphs?

[cos]

Asking someone how they feel about the other candidate in the midst of an intense primary is not a good way of predicting what they'll do in November. And "who would you vote for if the election were held today" general election polls taken in May are completely, utterly, 100% useless as predictors of the general election.

In the spring and summer of 2003, national "who would you vote for today?" polls for the 2004 Democratic primaries all showed Lieberman with a commanding lead over all other candidates. That did not shake my very firm belief that Lieberman had 0% chance of being one of the lead candidates in the actual voting. But it did mislead a lot of people into thinking he had the best chance of becoming the nominee. That's where believing early polls can get you. There *are* ways you can make educated guesses about an election in advance, and those ways *do* involve some of the things polls can bring to light (such as trends in candidates' positive/negatives among different groups of people), but "who would you vote for today?" numbers are completely, totally, fully, utterly useless. Really, I can't say that enough. There is zero value in them whatsoever. ZERO.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Well, they're useful in judging name recognition...

[cos]

Yes. That's a separate question in most polls, and it is useful. That by itself doesn't help you predict a future election outcome, but it's useful for developing or judging strategies, and provides useful context for other information. There are various other things in polls that can be useful, though not necessarily for predicting the outcome. However, the "who would you vote for today?" portion of the polls, the part that's reported prominently, is NOT USEFUL. Not really even for name recognition - for that, you want to look at the appropriate portion of the poll.

[leora.livejournal.com]

When the Republican primary was still being contested, I remember countless Republicans saying they would not support McCain even if he won the primary. That they wouldn't vote or would vote for Clinton over McCain. I suspect most of them will, alas, fall in with their party and vote Republican even though they dislike McCain.

I'll probably here the same thing I've heard for multiple elections... I hate the candidate, but I can't let a Democrat win, because it'd be even worse! Oh yes, sure, the Republican has been even worse on what I care about than anyone before now, but now that the precedent is set, a Democrat would be even worse, plus this Republican supports some other issue I care about that the Democrats don't!

I expect many people who vote Democrat will do the same thing. I already know many people whose preferred candidate is out or never was a Democrat to start with who will vote Democrat because well, the Republican is worse. I'm one of them. Obama is my second choice and I don't like Clinton anymore. But I'd vote for either of them if they were the Dem candidate. I hate McCain.

WV demographics

[cos]

Look at the demographics article I linked to in my post, for more detail.

Clinton definitely beats Obama very big among:
- rural blue collar voters
- who are white, and
- who vote in Democratic primaries, and
- who are part of the Appalachian-Ozark population group located in the mountain regions roughtly from western New York to Arkansas, plus portions of Texas that saw lots of migration from those areas in the past.

Note that this is not a majority of "poor rural whites who vote in Democratic primaries" in general (Obama won by very large margins in Vermont, Kansas, North Dakota, western Colorado...), nor is it even a majority of "poor rural whites in the Appalachian-Ozark belt" (since only a minority of those vote in Democratic primaries). It sure as hell isn't anywhere near a majority of poor rural white voters in general.

The demographic implications of the WV win are exactly what we already knew, and the portend nothing new or interesting. There are demographic groups Clinton does better with and ones Obama does better with and ones where we don't know who does better with (the latter group is much larger than the first two), and WV just fit into the already-known pattern of those.

Re: WV demographics

[awfief.livejournal.com]

OK, so she's got the white blue-collar vote.

But Obama still has the blue white-collar vote.

So nyah.

Re: WV demographics

[amadea.livejournal.com]

Smurfs for Obama?

Re: WV demographics

[cos]

But which states have a significant smurf population?

Re: WV demographics

[ommango.livejournal.com]

What are the smurf demographics? Which way do they lean? lol This is really funny to me.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

I see no reason not to take her at her word: she'll stay in this until she loses a floor vote at the convention. Which gives her several more months to convince enough delegates (super or otherwise) that Obama is unelectable. America being America, it's not a bad strategy.

[cos]

I think "her word" these days is that she'll keep running until the last primaries, on June 3rd.

I think she was hoping that an edge in superdelegates would let her then say that she will go all the way to the convention, but when June 3rd arrives and she's far behind in superdelegate endorsements, that option won't look tempting anymore (and that is the reason superdelegates are starting to flood to Obama). But as far as her direct word goes, she hasn't said she plans to continue past June 3rd when asked, AFAIK.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

McAuliffe has said it would be over one way or the other by June 15.

[safetybitch.livejournal.com]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051302862.html?hpid=topnews

[cos]

Heh!

[scromp.livejournal.com]

I miss you on #politics. Now all we hear about is how awesome Hillary is and how Obama's secretly a Republican.

[cos]

Come visit one of my other IRC hangouts... (see email)

[ron_newman]

Edwards' endorsement of Obama: better late than never.

[ommango.livejournal.com]

Perfect timing for Edwards if you ask me.

How Hillary could still win...

[ommango.livejournal.com]

Did you see this? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/15/54516/7284

Summary:

all that’s necessary for her to snatch the nomination is:

1. A big, big win in Kentucky next Tuesday. Ideally, Obama should be limited to no more than 100 votes.

2. Oregon, scheduled for the same day, inexplicably breaks off and sinks into the Pacific Ocean.

3. Puerto Rico, clocking in on June 1, not only gives Clinton a huge majority, but also manages to become a state in advance of the vote.

4. Finally, on June 3 as the South Dakota polls open, Thomas Jefferson’s head on Mount Rushmore comes to life and starts shouting, "You go, girl."

[danceboy.livejournal.com]

Not disagreeing with your basic idea, just a pedantic point.

She now needs to win remaining states by an average of 92%

She only needs to win by 86%. Possibly a touch less since some votes will go to others besides Obama. As you allude to elsewhere, any candidate that gets less than 15% of the vote doesn't get any delegates.

[cos]

I don't think so. In most states in the past couple of months, other candidates have gotten 2% or less combined. WV was a fluke with 7% for Edwards. Kentucky is the only remaining state where I expect a similar (though lesser) fluke. In caucus states, of course, it'll be even less than 1%, since supporters of nonviable candidates will switch to their second choice right there, or not count. If they can get over 15% in some precincts they'll elect some delegates, and there may be some uncommitted delegates because of that, but I doubt there will be much - people who aren't supporting Obama or Clinton specifically are unlikely to show up to caucus in significant numbers.

Regarding the percentage: Starting with my table above (numbers as of Wednesday morning), if Clinton averaged 86% she'd get 163 of the 189, for a total of 1608; Obama would get 26 of them, for a total of 1626. He'd still be ahead by 18 pledged delegates. She would need to average 92% to end up ahead of him.

It's changed even more in his favor since then, due to Edwards' endorsement. 8 of Edwards' pledged delegates have already declared for Obama, and it's likely the rest (or most of them) will too.

[danceboy.livejournal.com]

I think that we're talking about different things.

It is my understanding that if he doesn't pick up at least 15% of the vote, he gets 0% of the delegates.

That is to say that if he would get 8 delegates from 15%, he'll get 0 from 14.9%. So if Hilary gets 85% even, everyone but her and Obama gets .1%, he gets nothing because he's shy of the magic 15%.

Again, I'm not disputing your basic premise, just picking a nit...

[cos]

Oh, I see what you mean. Technically, if one candidate gets 92% in each state and the other gets 8%, then candidate 1 is effectively averaging 100% and candidate 2 is effectively averaging 0%. But states vote very differently. To average 92% she'd have to shut him out (keep him under 15%) in some states, while getting 80-something in others. What she'd need to average is 92% across all the remaining states.

[macthud]

It remains astonishing to me that you see no possible goal other than the nomination.

You often present yourself as a rather sophisticated political participant, not merely following whichever leader, but this focus on Nothing But Nomination belies that presentation.

Unlike those in the current administration who continue to pretend that the Purple US, where Red and Blue mixed in very near 50% equal balance in both 2000 and 2004 (go back and look at the national maps that got more clever than the simple Red and Blue States -- such as the ones that mixed Red and Blue by percentage, and showed the varying shades of purple, whether by State or by District or Precinct...), *most* Democrats (and I daresay most Republicans, though they're good at ignoring it) are capable of recognizing that a tight race such as this one means that there perhaps should be a balanced platform and administration in the end -- taking elements from both Republican and Democrat platforms in the current national, and from both Clinton and Obama in the current contest.

To best argue such a point for whatever policy elements she sees as most important to those who are choosing her, it behooves Clinton to carry on through all primary contests, and through *at least* the first floor vote at the convention.

Doing so is not an affront to Democracy, not an affront to the Democrat Party, not an affront to *any* element of this process. However, I find it difficult to take analyses such as this one as little but an affront to and an insult of all those who have chosen Hillary to date.

[cos]

"It remains astonishing to me that you see no possible goal other than the nomination."

That's pretty ridiculous. Why would you say that?

I posted that original post because I saw that the nomination contest was effectively over, but that fact was not being covered by the press much and most people I talked to didn't seem to know it. That is, a lot of people asked me my opinion on the primaries in context of clearly thinking it was still an open question. So I wanted to lay out the numbers to show people that it was no longer an open question at that point; that the nomination was effectively decided.

That you'd suggest this means that's all I care about is certainly an affront to something.

Now, you clearly have some opinions about the matter that are somewhat orthogonal to what I wrote. They do relate in some ways, and we probably disagree on some of them (for example, one of my goals is to ensure a Republican defeat in November, and I am firmly convinced that a convention fight would make that less likely, so while you seem to *want* a convention fight, I definitely want the convention to be planned with Obama's campaign in mind, and be the campaign kickoff, as normally happens these days). But most of that is beside the point, because my explanation of the fact that Obama has won is *not* an argument about whether he *should* have won. Any my earlier post actually explained why I thought it would be better for Clinton to continue running rather than drop out (for everyone but herself - she's damaging herself terribly, but I don't care about that anymore).

You seem to be blinded by some emotion I can't put my finger on. I don't know if you support Clinton or of it's something else. But whatever it is, you're not making any sense at all.

[cos]

So I thought about it some more, because it really didn't make any sense to me, and I thought of a set of assumptions under which your comment makes sense to me. IF:

1. You take it as axiomatic that Clinton fighting through to the convention would be beneficial or at least not harmful, AND
2. You assume that I obviously know that, AND
3. You read this post as expressing some sort of anger at Clinton for continuing to run,

THEN I understand how that leads to what you said.

Now, I think #1 is false. Obviously that makes #2 false. And #1 &2 don't even matter if #3 is false, which it is: All I'm saying in this post is that Clinton can't win. I'm making no statement about whether she should win, whether she should or should not keep running, or what outcome I want.

...

It's possible that you're responding to the last part of my previous post, where I said something more than just "she can't win", but if that's the case, then I can't make sense of it. In my previous post, I added a more complex argument at the end, specifically addressed to Democratic primary voters in (then-)upcoming states who want a Democratic president elected this year. I based it on this premise:

A1. Although Clinton can't win outright, she still has a small but realistic chance of doing well enough that she could have a case to try a convention fight.

A2. Even if she manages that, the convention fight would be a real long shot for her, but it's the only shot she has.

From that, I made this case:

B1. Having a convention fight rather than a planned campaign-kickoff sort of convention would be very harmful to Democratic chances of winning the general election.

B2. If Clinton actually won that convention fight, it would be absolutely devastating to Democratic chances, and almost equivalent to handing McCain the election.

B3. Whether Clinton could try to do that depended on how well she did in the next few states, SO:

C1. The only thing left to be determined by voting was whether Clinton would try a convention fight
C2. Even if all Clinton supporters voted for her, she still wouldn't become president
C3. Clinton supporters who want a Democratic president should vote Obama (to prevent a convention fight).

You can disagree with some of the steps in this chain (I think you do), but it is a perfectly logical chain. It's also something I didn't follow up on in this post, so let me do that now:

This scenario is now irrelevant. A1 is no longer true, so the rest of it no longer matters. To make A1 true she'd have had to win PA by something like 58% (that was very possible) and win Indiana by a solid margin, but she did neither of those, and there's no realistic way for her to get within range for a convention fight anymore. The superdelegates know it, and they're going to cut her off by endorsing Obama in droves (as they're already doing).

Nevertheless, even if it were still relevant and I were still arguing that case, your comment makes no sense, because I very specifically stated that I believe a convention fight would be very harmful. Therefore, you have to know that assumption #2 above is false (and #1 is not axiomatic). You could disagree with me on those points, and I could explain why I think what I think, but there's no way you can conclude that I "see no possible goal other than the nomination." Not only is that insulting, it's also a direct contradiction of what I wrote: I was clearly talking about the general election, which is "a goal other than the nomination".