Updated Delegate Math

If you can, try to remember way back to January, back when there were eight Democratic candidates for President. Back in January the all important state of Iowa voted to determine who would be the Democratic candidate for President. Back then people complained that Iowa had to much sway, that it didn't adequately represent America, that it is as diverse as a Mayflower reunion, and that other states ought to have a say. This year the primary season has lasted longer than any other time in recent memory, and as it turns out the other states went with the same guy Iowa did anyway.

If you will also remember about that night, John Edwards came in second, and earned some delegates that night, some of whom have now been reapportioned. Also, California finally finished counting out their votes and their final totals are in. As always, the updated math is reported first here at AskHodder.com



Obama 1618 Clinton 1479

The magic number still sits at 2025

There are 603 pledged delegates remaining, 957 including super delegates

Number of remaining pledged delegates needed to clinch:

Obama 407, 68%
Clinton 546, 91%

Including Super Delegates
Obama 43%
Clinton 57%

Mrs. Clinton needs 73% of all pledged delgates to be aloted in order to pull even with Mr. Obama, 65% including Super Delegates

Much Ado about Nothing

On Tuesday Senator Clinton won three out of five contests. Bam! She’s smack back in it, right? No. According to John Zogby, going into the Tuesday contests she needed about 62% of all the remaining pledged delegates to catch up to Senator Obama, by my math she took 53% (the actual percentage is likely a little lower because the Texas Caucus results are not in yet). She now needs 65% of the remaining delegates to catch up to her opponent by the convention, so in a way, Mrs. Clinton actually lost some ground Tuesday night, despite picking up 18 delegates. On the positive side for her, she did push back the goal posts on Mr. Obama’s hopes of clinching before the convention.

The magic number to clinch the nomination is 2,025. Including the Texas Caucus, by my math there are 747 pledged delegates left, and if we use the AP numbers, Mr. Obama has 1,567 delegates and would then need 458, or 61% to clinch, and Mrs. Clinton would need 563, or 75%. Sticking with the AP numbers there are 272 non-committed Super Delegates, if included there are then 1019 votes up for grabs and the break down becomes 45% for Mr. Obama to seal the nomination and 55% for Mrs. Clinton. The Super Delegate math is really pretty fuzzy because their support is so fluid it makes them hard to factor them in. I would guess that most of the remaining non-committed will not endorse before the convention, as Al Gore and John Edwards have pledged to do (or not do, depending on how you look at it.) So in the interest of simplicity I will not use the
Super Delegates.

There are twelve contests left (see chart). Right now it looks like Mr. Obama will win the Texas Caucus, and it is predicted that he will also carry Wyoming and Mississippi. Based on the trends that have been established Mr. Obama should also carry Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, North Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana. Because the contests are now so spaced out, I’m willing to bet that Obama runs the table. Why am I willing to make such a bold statement? Because so far, everywhere he has campaigned, his numbers have gone up, and everywhere Mrs. Clinton has campaigned, her numbers have gone down.

I was an early Clinton supporter, I went to some of her rallies, gave money to her campaign, I voted for her in the Senate, wrote and spoke favorably about her. I was excited to think about having another Clinton in the White House, and even more so at the thought of a woman finally being elected President. But the more I listened to her speak, the deeper I looked at her record, the closer I looked at her specifics, the more hollow her vanilla message rang and I became disenchanted. I am inclined to think that many other people had a somewhat similar experience.

Texas Caucus - ?? 67

Wyoming – 3/8 18

Mississippi – 3/11 40

Pennsylvania – 4/22 188

Indiana – 5/6 84

North Carolina – 5/6 134

West Virginia – 5/13 39

Kentucky – 5/20 60

Oregon – 5/20 65

Montana – 6/3 24

South Dakota – 6/3 23

Puerto Rico – 6/7 63

Florida - ??

Michigan - ??

Clinton Vs Obama =/= Women Vs Black People

For every African American that supports Senator Barack Obama there are almost two that support Senator Hilary Clinton, and for every woman that supports Mrs. Clinton, there are three that support Mr. Obama. This seems to be cause for much head-scratching and confusion for people, especially political pundits, writers and commentators. Everyone is asking “why?”

I’m going to explain it to you, sure, it may seem arrogant that one kid can explain something that many serious people don’t understand, but it’s actually pretty simple, are you ready? Here it is: WOMEN AND BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T STUPID! So stop acting like it. It is embarrassing to think that women would be so closed minded as to support a candidate just because she is a woman. It is even more mortifying, degrading and shameful for white people to assume that a race that has fought for hundreds of years, generation after generation for people to “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” would be so hypocritical that they would turn around and do the same thing.

If the Democratic Presidential bid is a three way race (it’s not by any means, but it is certainly being framed that way) and the assumption is that women will support the woman, blacks will support the black, are we to also assume that the white men support the white guy? No. This is not the case because people assume that white men have enough brain power to makeup their minds based sound reasoning and personal ideology. Stop acting like women and blacks are stupid, they aren’t, and neither is the populace as a whole, we just get treated like we are every four years.

The Iowa caucus

Senator Obama has opened an impressive lead in the state wide Iowa polls, and though the Clinton campaign is sinking quickly she has somehow managed to hold onto second place with Mr. Edwards consistently showing up in third, just ahead of Governor Richardson. Don’t believe the hype. Former Senator John Edwards will win the Iowa caucus on Thursday. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

In order to understand what I’m saying you have to first understand what a caucus is and how it differs from a primary. In a primary the states votes like in any election and the candidates are ranked from first to last by virtue of the number of votes received. In an Iowa Democratic caucus, the candidates are still ranked from first to last, but each county gets one list, and each list is waited equally. Confused? You should be, it’s a stupid system. Let’s look at some mach Results:

New Hampshire primary
1 Sen. Edwards 32%
2 Gov. Richardson 30%
3 Sen. Obama 20%
4 Sen. Biden 10%
5 Sen. Clinton 5%
6 Sen. Dodd 1%
7 Rep. Kucinich 1%
8 Sen. Gravel > 1%

Nevada Primary
1 Gov. Richardson 40%
2 Sen. Edwards 25%
3 Sen. Obama 20%
4 Sen. Biden 10%
5 Sen. Clinton 4%
6 Sen. Dodd 1%
7 Rep. Kucinich 1%
8 Sen. Gravel > 1%
Vs

Polk County Iowa (population 408,888)
1 Obama
2 Richardson
3 Edwards
4 Clinton
5 Biden
6 Dodd
7 Kucinich
8 Gravel



Adams Iowa (population 4,482)
1 Edwards
2 Richardson
3 Obama
4 Biden
5 Dodd
6 Clinton
7 Kucinich
8 Gravel



In primaries the rankings are done by percentage of the vote from the whole state, but in the Iowa caucus it is the percentage of the vote with in the county, then all the county scores are added together, regardless of the number of votes cast, or the county’s population. Think of it like this, eight points for finishing first in a county, seven for second and so on. Using the example above it would be a three way tie for first place if Iowa had only two counties.

Why does this matter? because in the small rural counties like Adams, with 1% the population of Polk county, the individual votes count much more. John Edwards is much more popular than his rivals in the smaller more rural counties so he is likely to clean up there where votes count more, as we see sometimes as much as 100:1, this little quirk in the system skews polling done on a statewide, rather than on a county by county basis. In fact if we look at the example above, it would be entirely possible for Obama and Richardson to have staggeringly higher vote totals than Edwards but still come out tied.

Got all that? I hope so, because it gets more complicated. To this point in our discussion the rules for the Democrats and the Republicans are the same. The major difference between the two is the 15% “legitimacy threshold”. In the Republican caucuses the voters vote by secret ballot and the rankings are done from there. For the Democrats the process is much more open, because, if a candidate fails to get 15% of the vote, their county is considered illegitimate and its votes are not counted. In this likely event, the voters discuss and revote until someone is able to break 15%. Supporters of the bottom tier candidates are wooed by the contenders to switch their votes. Since the voters are intimately familiar with all eight candidates, and their peers are not in a position to offer rewards, those changing their votes will instead vote for their “second favorite”. Statewide, John Edwards consistently rates as Iowa’s second favorite, followed by Bill Richardson and Joe Biden, this will give all three candidates a large boost that is not noted in the polls. It should be noted that John Kerry was in 6th place in some polls going into the caucus four years ago, but was the number one second choice.

You know what the bitch of the whole thing is, only about 120,000 people in each party will actually show up and vote. That’s it, and less if it snows. Less than ¼ of million people, less than 1/100th of the population of LA will take the most important step in determining the 2008 contenders. Mitt Romney figures to finish second or third, he’ll be lucky if he is able to get 15,000 votes, even though he has spent in the neighborhood of 30 million dollars, or about $2000 per vote.

A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep

A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep

Why Hilary Clinton will not and should not be the Democratic nominee for President

We’ve all heard the national polls, seen the news reports, read the blogs – it’s a forgone conclusion: Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President. In a crowded field she polls at commanding lead of over 40% nationally, compared to distant second Senator Obama in the high 20’s, and with all the money she is raising she shows no signs of letting anyone catch her. It’s all bogus.

First let me just address the money. Yes, candidates need to raise lots of it to win, and yes, typically the candidate who has raised the most money wins the race, leading to the conventional wisdom that money wins an election. Post hoc ergo promter hoc. It’s not that the candidate who raises the most money will win; it’s that the candidate with the best shot at winning will raise the most money. People, PACs, bundlers and corporations donate money to candidates in an effort to make people of power beholden to them, they simply want to bet on the winning horse.

Consider that independently wealthy people often try to win elections by grossly outspending their opponents with funds from their personal bank accounts; Steve Forbes and Ross Perot come to mind. Despite virtually unlimited spending power up against a comparatively measly war chest, they both, and countless like them, got their teeth soundly kicked in. Get over the money; yes it’s important, just not nearly as much as everyone seems to think. Now for the polls.

National polls are 100% irrelevant until after the primary season ends because we don’t choose our nominee nationally, we do so in as state-by-state system. The only polls that matter right now are the ones in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Iowa matters about 10 times more.

Since 2000 there has been a palpable fervor among the Democratic base for a new leader, the future, for a human face ready to put them back in power, the 04 election, the 06 midterms and the disappointment from mediocre results, have combined with continued frustration from the Bush administration to further seep blood into the water. Right now that face is Hilary. Four years ago it was Howard Dean. Dean, like Clinton was out to a commanding lead in the national polls, he raised record amounts of money and seemed a sure-fire lock for the nomination, but in Iowa, the race was much closer; John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Wesley Clark and John Kerry were all polling close to Dean. He finished a distant third. Since most people had no real attachments to Howard Dean, they simply switched loyalties to the new face of hope, John Kerry, and his Iowa victory served to sling shot his seemingly struggling campaign to a cake walk as he become the eventual nominee. (This is not to say that whoever wins Iowa will sweep to the general. The combined momentum of Iowa and New Hampshire really locked it for Kerry. Being from Massachusetts he had a notable advantage in New Hampshire that no Democrat has this time around. Also, Dean was the leading money raiser and spender to that point, John Kerry quickly overtook him once he became the party favorite)

Four years later, Iowa is a virtual three way tie between John Edwards, Barrack Obama and of course Hilary Clinton, with Bill Richardson polling respectably close. What does that mean? It means that if Iowa were to caucus tomorrow anyone of those four could end up in first, second, third or fourth place making New Hampshire and the nomination up for grabs. In most polls Obama is first and John Edwards is second in Iowa, and with all the hype and the bar set so high for Hilary, anything less than first, even a second place finish, will knock her off her pedestal.

The conventional wisdom on Hilary is that people either love her or hate her, but this is not true. Most people either hate her or are fairly ambivalent toward her. This may sound crazy, but how do you feel about her? Not her husband, not her sex, but Hilary Clinton, the substance? How many people do you know that have read and loved her books? Did you? She has been able to maintain the numbers she has with smoke and mirrors, because of peoples desire for hope and she is a brilliant political mind, but she flounders so much in genuine appeal because she is a terrible political presence.

Prior to her term as Senator her only political position had been as first lady. Her major ambition in that role was healthcare, a piece of legislation her husband gift wrapped for her, a major cornerstone of his campaign, somewhere around 75% of the country supported it, with a blue congress and seven years to get it done. The result? A train wreck of historic proportions.

As Senator she has consistently enjoyed very large approval ratings, and in 2006 was reelected in a landslide. Every vote she has cast, every speech has given has been focus grouped and taste tested to the minutest detail. Not to make sure it’s popular enough to win support, but to make sure it is bland enough to not lose anyone, or force her to take an actual stance on anything. She has been a major political player in the spot light for fifteen years; tell me, where does she stand on the issues? Campaigns are supposed to be about ideas, what are Hilary’s ideas? I know she’s for winning, and against other people winning, but beyond that is anyone’s guess.

She is always championing her experience and leadership, but she has no legislative victories, only failures. She is a major player in the Senate and spent eight years as first lady and has nothing to show for it but a couple electoral victories. It is a terrible résumé, one of unwavering utter failure and demonstrated demonstrable inept incompetence. Her style of politics is exactly why people hate the political process, and exactly why she does not deserve and will not get my vote.