Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

Wonder why there is such a sharp difference in polling trends between the two graphs....

Wonder why there is such a sharp difference in polling trends between the two graphs....

Expectations that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Presidential nominee soared following the Senator's weekend string of victories in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and Maine. As of Monday morning, Rasmussen Markets data gave Obama a 70% chance of representing the Democratic Party in November's election (current price 70.9%).

Quote:

Expectations that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Presidential nominee soared following the Senator's weekend string of victories in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and Maine. As of Monday morning, Rasmussen Markets data gave Obama a 70% chance of representing the Democratic Party in November's election (current price 70.9%).

Rasmussen

Post Politics Hour, with Paul Kane, Washington Post Congressional Reporter

Paul Kane: Sorry Reading, Ohio is not at all where Clinton could wrap things up. We've done a bad job of explaing this, but it is now basically mathematically impossible for either Clinton or Obama to win the nomination through the regular voting process (meaning the super-delegates decide this one, baby!).

Here's the math. There are 3,253 pledged delegates, those doled out based on actual voting in primaries and caucuses. And you need 2,025 to win the nomination.

To date, about 55% of those 3,253 delegates have been pledged in the voting process -- with Clinton and Obamb roughly splitting them at about 900 delegates a piece.

That means there are now only about 1,400 delegates left up for grabs in the remaining states and territories voting.

So, do the math. If they both have about 900 pledged delegates so far, they need to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates to win the nomination through actual voting.

Ain't gonna happen, barring a stunning scandal or some new crazy revelation. So, they'll keep fighting this thing out, each accumulating their chunk of delegates, one of them holding a slight edge and bothing finishing the voting process with 1,600 or so delegates.

And then the super delegates decide this thing.

That's the math.

Paul Kane: Super delegates can back a candidate one day, then back another candidate the next day, and still another the day after that. There are 796 of them (excluding those from Michigan and Florida), and they are Democratic members of Congress, Democratic governors and elder statesmen of the party (Gore, Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle, etc). But, the largest bloc of them are just old fashioned rank-and-file local activists, 411 of them being members of the DNC.

Nimh's last post is important indeed.

Superdelegates can tilt the nomination. There's no way either candidate can break that, unless the other retires.

This means it becomes less a matter of polling and voting, and more a matter of quintaessencial politics.

The question is, if the trend remains (and say, Obama also wins Wisconsin and Texas or Ohio), will the party risk backing the candidate with less pledged delegates?
Ambitions are strong, but who wants to "win" a probable defeat on November, with the party split?

I see a compromise coming its way. In April, maybe.

If Obama wins WI and either TX or Ohio, they won't have a choice; he will have a nearly insurmountable lead in PLEDGED delegates, let alone super-delegates. It will be difficult to find a rationale for backing Clinton at that point.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

If Obama wins WI and either TX or Ohio, they won't have a choice; he will have a nearly insurmountable lead in PLEDGED delegates, let alone super-delegates. It will be difficult to find a rationale for backing Clinton at that point.

The question is, do they need one?

I mean, some of the superdelegates are prominent elected officials. US Senators, US Representatives. Governors. They cannot afford to go too much against the grain of their constituents, or risk embittering too many of them.

But we're talking hundreds upon hundreds of superdelegates. Many of 'em are close to political nobodies - they're not much accountable to anyone. I mean, they're not going to be voted out of the local town council in two years time over what they did as superdelegate. But they're often long-standing local pols, loyal clogs in the local party machines, which is likely to often mean a deep-seated loyalty to the Clintons. I dunno.

Then again, I'm the resident pessimist here, you're the resident optimist, so...