2008 It’s the Delegates, Stupid.
posted by on February 5 at 18:42 PM
A number of commenters keep complaining that we’re focusing too much on popular-vote wins and not enough on delegates. They’re right that delegates are what matter in this race, not popular vote totals.
However, it’s too early in the evening for us to bring you delegate breakdowns. Honestly, you probably won’t get them until tomorrow for many states.
Until then, the popular vote is a rough guide to who might win the most delegates in a given state.
I say rough because, as many commenters already know, it’s possible to win the popular vote in a given state and still lose the delegate count. But, by and large, if a candidate wins a state by a wide margin, he or she is likely to win the delegate count.
On a similar topic, I think it's really inaccurate for the media to say so-and-so "wins" a state, when many of them are apportioning delegates. So a "win" might not really mean that much, and lets people think that the election isn't as close as it is.
Yay American politics: where the popular vote is put there to keep the proles distracted while the important folks make decisions.
By my very rough count -- multiplying the percentages times the delegates for the called states only, at 7:30 Clinton leads 473 delegates to 468 for Obama. That, my friends, is a statistical tie.
This just in...
Obama wins Conneticutt 51% to 48%
ABC has just announced that tonight's delegate count now looks like:
Obama 197
Clinton 190
I have 469 each right now. My statistics are not scientific, but I'll bet they come out really close, just you watch. It's a tie.
I think it's going to be a tie on the night, EVEN THOUGH Clinton is going to win California. Before Cal, Obama's well in the lead now. He's just gone ahead in MO.
as of 1030 eastern this morning, here are the delegate counts....
MSNBC:
Clinton has an overall 70 delegate lead according to their newscast, when all is said and done and all 1500+ delegates from yesterday are accounted for. Their website says Clinton 582 to Obama 485 currently.
(MSNBC is the only network that did a credible job talking about who was winning what delegates last night... their political director seemed to know beforehand how the delegates would be divided)
AP:
Clinton: 845
Obama: 765
CNN:
Clinton: 825 (includes 193 superdelegates) -- 335 super tues delegates so far
Obama: 732 (includes 106 superdelegates) -- 301 super tues delegates so far
NPR:
Clinton: 803 total -- 542 super tues
Obama: 742 total -- 540 super tues
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