Chuck Todd is reporting that the Rules and Bylaws Committee is very near to a decision. It seems based on his reporting that:
- Florida will be seated based on the primary results and treated as half-delegates.
- Michigan will be seated 69-59 (the state's compromise plan) and treated as half-delegates, meaning a split of 34.5-29.5 for accounting purposes. Since the 69-59 would represent a departure from the primary results, that would imply that uncommitted delegates would explicitly be designated as Obama delegates. Obama will also receive Michigan's two add-on superdelegates.
If I'm doing the math correctly, this would give Obama 2,054 delegates, with 2,117 2,118 required to clinch the nomination. That would leave him 63 64 delegates away. Obama should pick up something like 41 pledged delegates between Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana, meaning that he'll need around 20-25 more superdelegate endorsements to clinch the nomination.
This assumes, by the way, that Michigan and Florida *super*delegates are also treated as half-votes, which is something I'm not certain about. Also, Todd seems to think that a bunch more of the Florida Edwards delegates are for Obama than I'd seen reported elsewhere.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Obama's new magic number: 63? 64?
-- Nate Silver at 4:52 PM
Labels: florida, michigan, primaries, superdelegates
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19 comments
Since Obama has indicated that he would like South Dakota and Montana to be what puts him over the top, I suspect there will be about 25 delegates committing to him, perhaps on Monday.
Thats rather a stretch, isn't it?
Oxy, that's an ambiguous referent. "that" (what) is a bit of stretch?
As long as Clinton doesn't take it to the convention, I'm happy. It is time for this crap to be over with so we can focus on kicking the living shit out of John McBush.
25 supers coming out on Monday.
Oxy, not if Obama happens to have that many in reserve who have privately declared to him, which there were some rumors of.
Now that the delegates will need to be filed anew, there's no question that the 6.5 Edwards delegates will go to Obama. Thereby bringing Hillary's net gain tonight by less than 18 delegates.
Quite a generous concession by the Obama campaign. Whatever moves this nominating process forward!
Clinton's man Ickes said that they "reserve the right to challenge" at the Convention. His statement was not all that strongly worded though...I believe Clinton may step aside after Tuesday.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/clinton_campaign_statement_on.php
Anon 7:21, I thought the same thing. "Reserve the right" seems fairly weak language given all the posturing before the meeting. If there was already a definite intent in place to take it to Denver I think we would have heard something stronger. Lots of posters on Kos are getting unnecesarily worked up about this IMHO. Clinton needs some time to back away from mutually assured destruction, but she has been doing so ever since IN/NC. I still expect for her to concede sometime shortly after June 3, as the supers make it clear that they will support Obama.
"Since Obama has indicated that he would like South Dakota and Montana to be what puts him over the top, I suspect there will be about 25 delegates committing to him, perhaps on Monday."
I've never heard Obama say that, although many posters have speculated about this. First, I'm not sure it makes any difference whether Obama is put over the top by supers soon after MT/SD or by the states themselves. Second, I think supers will do what they think is right; and for those who have yet to announce, that's probably waiting until after the primaries are over before declaring their support.
Re Diamond,
Florida pledged delegates were elected in Congressional District caucuses on March 1. Pledged delegate candidates had to file documentation in December pledging their votes to the presidential candidate they chose, and voters in the caucuses had to choose only one ballot: either Clinton delegate candidates, Obama delegate candidates, or Edwards delegate candidates.
There will be no re-filing. Certainly the presidential candidate has a right to challenge his or her delegates, but the practical threshold involved is high.
That said, almost certainly the 13 Edwards delegates from Florida will vote for Obama following the endorsement of Edwards. So machs nix.
Greg in FL,
There seems to be disagreement (on the interwebs I've been scanning) about whether the 80 Edwards/Obama delegates in place pre-May 31 will indeed be placed on the Temporary Roll or if instead there will be a new selection process. Please let us know if you've heard anything definitive about that.
Greg in FL,
You mean macht nichts?
Didn't take German, eh?
No German, you are so right. I tried to be cute - I should know better. The essence of the phrase, or at least what I was trying to say, was that there would be no difference between the FL Edwards delegates and the FL Obama delegates from a practical point of view - all of the FL Edwards delegates who have publicly stated a decision have come out for Obama. Also, likewise for the SC and NH and IA Edwards delegates who have made their decision known.
Re Derek, there have never been anywhere near 80 Edwards delegates. There are 13 in FL, now having 6.5 total votes. The rest in SC, IA, and NH combined are around 18 or so (DemConWatch has the list).
The Florida Democratic Party is very much committed to those who were elected to the delegate seats. They are the activists of the state and are a very diverse and representative group. I suspect that next week there will be some e-mails from Tallahassee regarding the next steps. June 14 is the Florida JJ Dinner and I know that FDP Chair Karen Thurman wants to have final details such as logistics (Denver hotel and such) ready to disseminate then.
This weekend, the FDP leadership are in DC of course, so I don't expect to hear anything until early next week. I will yell when I find out.
Cheers, --Greg
I am sorry... You do a great job, but this analysis is mathematically inept, and shows your Obama bias. (I am an Obama supporter, but I support honesty even more.)
There is a temporal element here, too. 5 of the 6 states with the biggest turnout were Indiana, West Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky. Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were pretty up there, too. If you want to predict turn out based on other states, do so using RELEVANT numbers—states that voted on or before Super Tuesday.
You should redo this.
"machs nix" is gramatically correct for colloquial speech. I don't know if a native speaker would say "so" in front of those words, as I mostly hear them say "also" instead, but no one would misunderstand "so."
Anonymous at 23:53 objects to Nate saying turnout in MI was 1/3 that of other open primary states, on the grounds that Nate ignored an alleged temporal trend of increasing turnout. But even if you compare MI to the state with the second lowest turnout, UT, MI is less than half as large. So at the most, Nate's "about one third" might change to "less than one half." Nate's conclusion stands - MI was atypical, and Ickes' ~600,000 MI voters are more than matched by the 600,000+ non-voters who would have voted in MI if they had been told that their votes would count. Of course, if you use NH and SC as the exemplars of turnout in pre-Super Tuesday states, and not UT, then Nate's original "about one third" remains correct.
David in CA
""machs nix" is gramatically correct for colloquial speech. I don't know if a native speaker would say "so" in front of those words, as I mostly hear them say "also" instead, but no one would misunderstand "so.""
As a native speaker, I´d probably say "So ändert es nichts" or "So macht es nichts aus".
Anon@23:53,
along with what David in CA posted, the Super Tuesday primaries had much lower turnout because there was less campaigning. A Jan. 15 primary in Michigan would've had heavy campaigning, and thus almost certainly turnout in the neighborhood of NH and SC.
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