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Hillary Clinton now needs a larger percentage of remaining superdelegates than she did before Pennsylvania.
<a href="http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/hillary-clinton-now-needs-70-o.php">One month ago</a>, Hillary Clinton needed 70% of the remaining superdelegates. Since a fairly large primary just occurred, I figured I'd see what she needs now.
According to CBS, the current pledged delegate counts are the following:
Obama, pledged: 1486
Clinton, pledged: 1328
In total, there are 3253 pledged delegates. This means that there are 439 pledged delegates who are currently unaccounted for.
Let's
assume that each candidate will get roughly half (which doesn't seem
like an awful assumption) - 219 or 220. Let's say Obama gets 219, and Clinton 220.
That means that at the end of the primaries, the pledged delegate count will be approximately:
Obama: 1705
Clinton: 1548
Again according to CBS, the current superdelegate counts are:
Obama: 229
Clinton: 257
Which brings us to:
Obama: 1934
Clinton: 1805
A candidate will need at least 2025 votes to wrap it up. Which means:
Obama needs 91 more superdelegates
Clinton needs 220 more superdelegates
There
are a total of 795 superdelegates, 462 of which have already expressed
a preference. Leaving 309 superdelegates currently available.
Which means:
Obama needs 29.4% of the remaining superdelegates.
Clinton needs 71.2% of the remaining superdelegates.
Comments (1)
Additionally, according to this link, there are some superdelegates who are not typically counted as being for a particular candidate but who are, in fact, obligated to go for a specific candidate. It says that 23 are currently known to be obligated for Obama, and 7 for Clinton.
I don't know whether this is entirely accurate or not. I also don't know whether it's still accurate, even if it was at the time that that link was written. I also don't know whether CBS, in fact, is not counting those delegates. For all of those reasons, I did not include these 30 in this post. However, assuming that it's correct, then the situation is:
Of 279 remaining superdelegates, Obama needs 68, and Clinton needs 213.
That is:
Obama needs 24.4% of the remaining superdelegates.
Clinton needs 76.3% of the remaining superdelegates.
The link also suggests that of 32 additional superdelegates of this type, 15 are likely to go to Obama, and 17 to Clinton. Again, I don't know the veracity of this, neither at the time of the original writing nor at the present. But assuming it's correct:
Of 247 remaining superdelegates, Obama needs 53, and Clinton needs 196.
That is:
Obama needs 21.5% of the remaining superdelegates.
Clinton needs 79.4% of the remaining superdelegates.
April 23, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
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