The Real Delegate Count: Ignoring the Super(fluous) Delegates

It may seem amazing with all the analysis out there, but I had to assemble these basic facts on non-super delegates myself.

Assumptions/sources:

• Pledged delegates will decide it. Superdelegates won’t override because it would cause a nuclear meltdown. (Nightmare scenario: Clinton wins some even-vaguely-construable semblance of the popular vote, somehow assembled from some combination of some states’ primary and caucus results.)

• Michigan and Florida are meaningless unless they revote. (See “nuclear meltdown,” above.)

• Data from wikipedia.

• Various outfits seem confused about how many non-super delegates there are in each state. See NYT, for instance, showing different counters giving different numbers for non-super delegates in states that have already voted. They range from 2,243 to 2,622.

• The wiki data is unambiguous on the simple facts of how many non-super delegates there are in each state.

• Wikipedia lists a trivial number of unpledged delegates (16.5:
  Colorado 9, democrats abroad 2.5, Mississippi 5). I allocated these in
  each state according to each candidate’s share of pledged delegates in
  that state.

• There is some small-change disagreement about delegate-allocation details in some states. But they won’t make any significant difference in the bottom line of percentages needed by each candidate in the future.

Absent a pop-vote anomaly or an Obama meltdown, it’s over.

Obama (and all the rest of us): Time to go after McCain and (sadly) ignore Hillary.

If he wants to look presidential (or at least nominational), that’s the ticket. It’s also his best strategy for the primary.