Tuesday 1 April 2008

Hillary's lead in the real world

Michael Barone has a fascinating piece on the US News and World Report website which shows that on a winner-takes-all basis, where all delegates were allocated to the winner of states in Democratic primaries, Hillary's lead over Obama would be the same as his over her now. Moreover, confirming the notion advanced here on 7 March that she is winning the electorally viable states, he notes that when the population of her winning states is added up
Clinton's states have 132,214,460 people (160,537,525 if you include Florida and Michigan), and Obama's states have 101,689,480 people. States with 39,394,152 people have yet to vote. In percentage terms this means Clinton's states have 44 percent of the nation's population (53 percent if you include Florida and Michigan) and Obama's states have 34 percent of the nation's population. The yet-to-vote states have 13 percent of the nation's population.
So long as there are no more Bosnia-style gaffes, those are some more very good reasons for super-delegates to vote for Clinton. Do read it in full.

1 comment:

donpaskini said...

The problem with Barone's analysis is that both Clinton and Obama's campaigns knew the rules about how delegates were elected. Obviously, if delegates had been assigned on WTA, then both candidates would have used different strategies.

An inability to run a campaign which is most efficient at winning according to the rules in place isn't really a recommendation (for all that I think Hillary Clinton would be a great President).

It's a bit like when the Tories run a core vote strategy and then whinge about the fact that Labour won a majority with 36% of the vote.