Here's a real quick take on the results tonight in North Carolina and Indiana:
--Pretty good night for Obama. Did well in NC by beating Hillary by more than 10 points. Did well enough in Indiana by keeping it close. Expanded his delegate lead by at least five delegates, maybe a couple more.
--Conversely, a tough night for Hillary. Nothing that will help her with money, nothing to give her any real momentum. The inexorable mathematics of the race start to close in.
--The Curmudgeon's predictions were pretty accurate. The early voting in North Carolina clearly signalled a significant Obama victory there.
--Zogby polling, which many had doubted, came the closest to getting it right in both states, and Public Policy Polling was spot on in NC.
--There's nothing to suggest there will be any surprises down the road. Hillary will win big in West Virginia and Kentucky, but Obama should take Oregon. Hillary gets Puerto Rico; Obama gets Montana and South Dakota.
--By tomorrow morning, Obama should have his largest delegate lead yet, at somewhere between 145-150. More importantly, he will be less than 190 delegates from clinching the nomination (subject to disputations over Florida and Michigan).
--Here's our bold prediction for the week: by next Tuesday, Obama will have overtaken Clinton in superdelegates. We expect a surge of commitments for Obama from superdelegates who want to make sure they're not too late.
2 comments:
If you add the delegates from FL, and assume most or all of the uncommitted delegates from MI would vote for Sen. Obama, how close would that put him to clinching the nomination?
For everything you need to know about Florida and Michigan, go to Democratic Convention Watch at:
http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/fl-mi-by-numbers.html
The short answer is that Obama would be further away from clinching because, of course, if you include Florida and Michigan, then the magic number to clinch a majority for the nomination goes up (from 2025 to 2209). In your scenario, Obama would be 237 votes shy of the nomination, and would lead Hillary by 82 delegates. That means he would need considerably more superdelegates to win the nomination, but he'd still need a much smaller percentage of Super-D's than Hillary.
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