Hillary erasing the pledged delegate lead. The numbers.

[dbmk]

Yeah, sorry to drag you in under what many will probably find a slightly misleading header. :)

But I have seen and heard many theories and numbers thrown about, as to what it would take for Hillary to make up the differences in pledged delegates fighting over the last 566 pledged delegates.

So I figured I would sit down and do the numbers like I had done for Pennsylvania http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5575980">here.

I have applied different popular vote percentages uniformly across the board, district and state level, for all the remaining districts and state delegate lots.
(Would take quite some time and probably be close to impossible for me to make specific projections for the remaining 66 districts in play.)
This is including Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

So here are the numbers (EDIT: correction from original numbers, where PLEOs and At-large from PA wasn't in):
Popular vote and corresponding HRC gain:
55-45 = +56
60-40 = +110
65-35 = +188
70-30 = +242

So even if Hillary lands 60-40 in ALL the remaining contests - again applied evenly over all districts - she will still be just under 50 short as I see it. (That is including the current committed SDs. In only pledged delegates she is currently around 160 behind.)

Of course, if she does that, her case with super delegates will prob. look rather different than it does now.
But as far as this post goes I am just a numbers man. :)

So there you have them. Questions, petitions for other numbers(Superball/Lotto/Bingo excluded), criticism and general applause is very welcome.

(One note: Guam is treated as a normal 4 delegate district in this - while it will in fact send 8 ½vote delegates. So there is a +/- 1 delegate error margin on the numbers :) )

Oh, and I know this is boring numbers stuff, but if you appreciate that I did them nonetheless, please rec. :)

[Warren Stupidity]

1. That is why the tactic is now to destroy Obama.

It is the only way Clinton gets the nomination. It is a selfish and despicable tactic.

[rodeodance]

2. Obama and this fans have been hour to destroy Hillary for a long time now.

[mckeown1128]

4. Did you even read the OP????

It is over... why aren't you facing it? Explain to us all how Hillary wins the nomination when she won't even come close to catching up in PD's?


Will you admit that the nomination is pretty muched locked in for Obama? Or will you flail idiotically into the night talking about SD's deciding that the Democratic Party has a little too much democracy in it and that they the wise leaders will overule the vote????

[Warren Stupidity]

5. eh? an entire hour, or a long time hour?

"Obama and this fans have been hour to destroy Hillary for a long time now."?

[TahitiNut]

20. "Arithmetic 'Destroys' Hillary - Obama Blamed For Winning"

:rofl: :rofl:

What a tool!

[intaglio]

30. Hi Rodeo care to answer some questions

Or will you keep quiet like all the other Hillary fans?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5592970

[Mags]

6. do You BO folk really think you have not tried to destroy the Clinton?

you will say or do anything to win.

[KSinTX]

9. I'm curious, what have I said or done to destroy her? nt

[Warren Stupidity]

10. The Obama campaign has not gone 'kitchen sink'.

Which does not mean that they haven't done anything to attack Clinton, it just has not been on the level of all out warfare anything goes, which is what the kitchen sink strategy is.

[Mags]

19. you're such a newcomer that no one on here knows what you stand for.

[KSinTX]

35. I stand for fairness & civility - now all y'all know

(I'm betting your response was really for me as Warren has so many more posts than I) I would say it's telling that in over 100 posts in this very uncivil war, you haven't quite gotten a handle on my partisanship. That should speak volumes and demonstrate that while I am rabidly for a certain candidate, I haven't damaged another, thus proving what I said in the subject line.

P.s. My response to your initial post is actually a great clue!

[Warren Stupidity]

37. That's like totally random

you are failing to reach the level of idiotic discourse.

[CreekDog]

16. Obama didn't start winning in Iowa by having his surrogates point out that she is white

:eyes:

Hillary tried to win by having her surrogates point out that Obama is black.

We all saw it for a few weeks and it was disgusting. It wasn't racist in the sense that pointing out that Obama is black was meant to say something bad about him, but it was used to imply, "he can't win the general election because white people won't vote for him."

Those are appeals to racial characteristics which have the unseemly effect of getting white voters who would have no trouble voting for Obama to vote against him because he is black not because they are racist, but because other "hypothetical" whites are racist.

This was the troubling, insidious and awful argument that was made beginning around mid January.

"Shuck and jive", "HUSSEIN Obama", "Jesse Jackson won too..." were the public face of that strategy, in other words, her campaign felt safe saying those things because of what they implied while saying publicly that Obama can't win because he's black would have made her look worse -instead in public her campaign simply "implied" it and it happened so many times that it was no accident.

I remember having my CA absentee ballot and nearly filling it in for Hillary as this was going on, months prior, I was here on DU defending Hillary regularly (some called me her paid operative). Of course, I would defend Obama too from time to time).

Finally I decided to vote for Edwards but when he was fading fast I looked again at Obama. I thought about her experience and Obama's and didn't notice much difference in elected experience, the positions were the same but in the political game, he was showing some incredible ability whereas she was seemingly politically tone-deaf. She didn't seem to have any idea how something she would say would reasonate or boomerang on her --a critical political skill that she lacked. Certainly Bill Clinton has this skill in abundance (when applied to himself only strangely enough), it doesn't transfer to others very well.

[Mags]

21. what does BO mean by hoodwink or bamboozle? about experience,

he has been in Washington as a Sen. for one yr before he decides to run for President , after he said a year earlier he said that he wasn't qualified to run. He admitted it, why can't you?

[CreekDog]

36. he wasn't implicitly referring to Senator Clinton's religion, race or national origin

Unfortunately for Senator Clinton she cannot say the same in regards to her campaign, when her surrogates made explicit reference to "shuck and jive", "Hussein" and "Jesse Jackson", her campaign cannot say that they weren't implicitly calling attention to Barack Obama's (supposed) religion, race and (supposed) national origin.

Yup, that's when Clinton's "Barack Hussein Obama", "Jesse Jackson" and "Shuck and Jive" are worse than Obama's "bamboozle" and "hoodwink" (standard political, but not racial, religious or sexist terms).

[TahitiNut]

23. Clinton butt-licker Stephanopoulus has been banging the 'black' drum for over a year.

The smarmy little fuck has been carrying Hillary's piss for far too long.

On May 13, 2007 ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings, when you're out on the campaign trail. And I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

OBAMA: That's interesting.

:puke:

[Mika]

3. Don't forget Poland.

;)

[KSinTX]

7. Great number crunching K&R

[BlooInBloo]

8. The delegate calculcator would do this in about 30 seconds...

http://www.slate.com/id/2185278/

[KSinTX]

11. Not quite

It is a broad calculation based on percentage of overall vote and doesn't account for the district-level distribution of delegates. It is pretty cool to play with tho

[BlooInBloo]

15. Ah. Does it give significantly different results?

[KSinTX]

24. In this close a race, it surely can

In truth, that calculator disadvantages the candidate playing catch-up and by averaging the delegate count, it mutes the true nature of the system. A great example are states in which HRC won by percentage but either lost or broke even in the delegate math. The calculator distributes those evenly by percentage and missed those calls. Here in Texas it was totally off (although you can't go in and change it now, I did then) but you can see its inherent problems.

[dbmk]

14. Aah, but..

.. Slates calculator is not taking the districts into account, where there are some hard breaking points percentage wise.
They are applying it to the pledged delegate total for each state.
And thats too unprecise for me. :)

Example: There are 20 delegate districts left. If one candidate breaks 62,5% it breaks from 2-2 to 3-1. Over 20 districts thats a 30 delegate swing.
Where as their way of calculating it would make the shift more gradual as you increase percentages.

And at 60-40 I am getting their total to +169 for Hillary. I land on 110.

[KansasVoter]

12. Remember, this does not count congressional districts.....

Which Obama does really well in. So votes in Philly can add to more delegates than votes in other parts of the state and win more delegates.

[dbmk]

22. Sure

If we start looking at the reality of things, it changes those numbers. And not in a good direction for Senator Clinton.

[dbmk]

28. If I pull out NC and Oregon

basically calling it even there (Which is still a stretch I'd say), I get the following numbers;

55-45: +39
60-40: +75
65-35: +133
70-30: +174

[TheDoorbellRang]

13. Actually, there are 566 delegates left. Perhaps you left out PR

Puerto Rico has 55 delegates in play on June 1.

According to various sources at DemConWatch, Obama's lead over Clinton in pledged delegates is anywhere form 163 to 168.

Assuming an apportionment of delegates that parallels popular vote (more on that below), here is her net delegate gain if she maintains the following percentages in the remaining contests:

Clinton 50% Obama 50% net gain 0
Clinton 55% Obama 45% net gain +56
Clinton 60% Obama 40% net gain +114
Clinton 65% Obama 35% net gain +170

It is only by achieving 65% or more in all the remaining contests that Clinton has a chance of bypassing Obama in his current lead of @165 pledged delegates.

Now the above is assuming that the primaries will end up apportioning delegates according to popular vote. Because of the quirky little laws each state has for apportionment, it ain't necessarily so. I had a thread some time back that pointed out some of the inconsistent apportionments that have occurred -- mainly in reply to threads bemoaning the "unfairness" of caucuses. I would guess that because of the quirkiness in apportionment, Hillary will actually have to do better than 65% in popular vote to actually attain 65% of the available delegates.

[dbmk]

17. You know what..

.. I might have missed a contest. brb.

EDIT: Nope, my numbers look legit. 373 district delegates, 47 PLEOs, 91 At-large.

I will double check, though.

Double edit: I am missing the PLEOs and at large from PA. Correction coming. :)

Thanks!

Triple edit: Numbers are now updated. 60-40 now means +110 for Hillary.

Thanks for catching that.

[TheDoorbellRang]

25. Thank you. It looks like your results deal with the"quirkiness" I mentioned

What site did you use to figure out how the delegates are apportioned in districts in each state or territory?

[dbmk]

26. Now theres good story :)

I started using google. :)

Then I found out that I could go to Dem. partys website and get info for all the states.

But they dont list the district divisions - only the totals in each delegate category.

So I had to use the link from there to the Delegate Selection Plans for each state to see the district distribution. If it wasn't for the fact that 2/3s of those links are bogus.

So in all those cases I went to the individual state party websites and had to do quite a bit of digging in some to find the selection plans. (I recommend that all dem state parties with a search function in their website gets one more delegate next time!)

And presto!

(And yeah - I was missing 55 delegates. The PLEOs and At-large in PA amounts to 55 - which coincidently, as you suggested, is also what PR has in total.)

[TheDoorbellRang]

31. TheGreenPapers is a site with lots of good info and links

Here's their site: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/
They are also the first choice for source by DemConWatch.

BTW, we have a DUer who was personally responsible for getting a delegate reapportioned to Obama in Mississippi by checking the math. His/her name is thevoiceofreason. Here is the history of that find. Needless to say, math dudes on DU rejoiced. That's why I so appreciate all the math threads here. Pretty hard to spin basic arithmetic.

[dbmk]

33. Thanks

I did find that site in my quest for information. Good to have it confirmed as reliable.

And yeah, I saw what tvor did. Bloody fantastic. And slightly disturbing.

I love numbercrunching. And that was just grade A justification of it.

[dbmk]

27. Btw.

Would you happen to know what happens if they end up at fx. 50-50 precisely - in an odd number delegate district?
Will it then be a state party vote deciding who it goes to?

In my calculations I have given such a delegate to Hillary, btw.

[TheDoorbellRang]

29. Oh boy. What are the odds of it ending up at precisely 50-50?

They probably have to give the extra to whoever has the most votes, even if it's only one vote. That would seem the most logical solution -- of course, that doesn't mean they'd do it that way. :)

[dbmk]

34. Yeah.

As far as I can tell from the rules, they calculate the percentage with 3 decimals.

So, yeah, the chances of that ending up precisely equal is as close to never as you can get probably.

Could be any threshold, mind you, ending up on the exact splitting percentage and I think tvors work shifted Obama 0.012 past a threshold to get that shift, IIRC. So I won't be the one to say it would never happen. :)

[TheDonkey]

18. Those are some fuzzy numbers

:sarcasm:

great job!

[phrigndumass]

32. Guam is a toss-up. We should flip a coin.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5589329

K/R ... I appreciate your boring numbers stuff!