Arithmecrats 4

Last night, Hillary Clinton won West Virginia by a huge margin, but it did not really make much of a difference in the math. Clinton will likely gain about 10 more pledged delegates in West Virginia than will Obama. For some perspective, Obama has picked up 27 Superdelegates in the last week. Clinton won a landslide margin, but there is not an avalanche of delegates in West Virginia.

So, she won big, but this is not a big win, mathematically speaking. She may be able to make some political hay out of this wide margin, but she is under growing pressure from the party to scale back the negative ads and not damage Obama further as he looks to be the nominee. Obama is already acting like the winner, being very gracious to her in his defeat, scooting off to Michigan and Florida to generate general election support, and talking about debates with John McCain.

The next potential milestone is next Tuesday when Obama could conceivably secure a majority of pledged delegates with a solid win in Oregon (Obama leads by 14 points in current polls) and a decent showing in Kentucky (Clinton leads and is expected to win handily, currently up 28 points).

Arithmecrats 3

I'm sure you know the old cliche about statistics, and I'm sure you know people who (or maybe YOU) have unfairly twisted statistics to support a point or bolster an argument. But, the numbers, as well as the "feel," of Democratic presidential nomination race has been pretty one-sided for quite awhile. And, we hit another milestone over the weekend.

In January, Clinton led Obama by 100+ Superdelegates. Exactly one month ago, Obama had whittled that lead to 25. According to the Associated Press, Obama passed Clinton over the weekend and now leads 277-271 in Superdelegates. Obama has secured 21 Supers to Clinton's 2 since last Tuesday's NC and IN primaries.

Obama now leads in pledged delegates, Superdelegates, primaries/caucuses won, and the Superdel support is swelling from a trickle to a small stream. Some of those are even defectors from Clinton's camp. She will win big in West Virginia and slightly less big in Kentucky (most likely), but Obama will have more total delegates when this is done. And, if the Superdelegates want to end this, he may even secure enough to claim the nomination outright.

How close is he? Well, he needs 2,025 total delegates to win the nomination. He currently sits at 1,867 (Clinton: 1,697)--that means he needs 158 more. Here is what remains.

West Virginia: 28 pledged delegates
Kentucky: 51
Oregon: 52
Montana: 16
South Dakota: 15
Puerto Rico: 55

That's 217 pledged delegates and, as of today, there are about 250 (+/-) uncommitted Superdelegates. So, here is the simple math.

Obama needs 158 of those those 467 total delegates (33%).
Clinton needs 328 of that same group (70%).

In the last month, the math has gone from "tough" to "this one stumped Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting." Clinton needs 1) a miracle, 2) an Obama gaffe of historic proportions, 3) to cheat, or 4) a good exit strategy.

Arithmecrats 2

Christopher Beam from Slate.com tells us that the math for Hillary is even tougher than you might think.

Say Clinton wins all the remaining contests by a 10-point margin. (That's impossible, barring revelations that Obama does lines on the campaign bus, but bear with us.) Obama would still be ahead in pledged delegates, 1671 to 1563. Add on their current superdelegate tallies—226 for Obama and 251 for Clinton, according to Politico—and they’d be at 1897 and 1814, respectively. Even then, Clinton would need to win 211 of the still-uncommitted 300 delegates, or about 70 percent.

This is worth restating: Even if Hillary Clinton wins every single one of the remaining contests by 10 points, she still needs to win 70 percent of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates. Given that since Feb. 5, Obama has netted 69 superdelegates and Clinton has lost a net of five, it’s fair to say the pendulum is not swinging her way.

Oy. It's STILL eleven days until Pennsylvania. Clinton currently has a slight lead in the polls, and it's probably going to be a very tight race.

Hillary's Conundrum

She tried being (somewhat for her) nice to Obama leading up to Super Tuesday. It did not work. She fired her campaign manager and took the gloves off for the last few primaries, sharpening her attacks on Obama. She has gotten thoroughly thrashed since then (it's 10 in a row now). The conventional wisdom is that negative campaigning works. Well, it did not work in Wisconsin for Hillary, as Obama beat her by more than two touchdowns (58%-41%).

So, does she play nice and try to win by drawing contrasts with Obama, or does she turn her negativity amp up to 11 to try to squeeze out wins in Texas and Ohio on March 4? I think I know the answer to that query.

And, this brings me back to where I started in this election process. People do not like Hillary Clinton. They like the IDEA of Hillary Clinton.

Go Arithmecrats!

Your average Joe/Jane (or Republican who does not care about the Dem primary) might have glanced at Tuesday's results and said, "Well, Hillary is going to win again." After all, she took the big prizes in California and New York, and some papers even touted her "win." But, headlines and conventional wisdom do not nominate candidates. Delegates do. And, the Arithmecrats on Slate.com remind us of this fact. In that count, it was a dead heat, with both sides claiming a small win on Tuesday.

Add to that that Obama has closed a MASSIVE poll gap on Clinton in the last two months and won 13 states to Clinton's 8 on Tuesday, and it seems to me that Obama has both math and momentum on his side. The more people see Obama, the more support he garners. Further, the next several races favor Obama (Maine, Nebraska, Washington state, Louisiana, and the three Potomac races). If he wins all five, that is going to help with momentum in upcoming delegate-rich states like Texas and Ohio, where Clinton currently leads. Clinton has focused on the big prizes, which makes sense. However, Obama is cleaning up in smaller states and has drawn even in national polling numbers. If that trend continues and he pulls off a win in Texas or Ohio, it's trouble for Clinton.

Also, he hauled in $32 million in support in January while Hillary Clinton just wrote a $5 million personal check to her campaign.

Hmmm. I thought only Mitt Romney was doing that? EDIT: And Romney dropped out soon after I typed this.