Three days after the voting ended, the race for Democratic delegates in Super Tuesday’s contests was still too close to call. With nearly 1,600 delegates from Tuesday contests awarded, Sen. Barack Obama led by two delegates Friday night, with 91 delegates still to be awarded. Obama won 796 delegates in Tuesday’s contests, to 794 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to an analysis of voting results by The Associated Press.
In the Republican contest, Sen. John McCain had a commanding lead in the race for delegates.
Nearly a third of the outstanding delegates are from Colorado, a state where Obama won the popular vote. California, a state that Clinton carried, had 20 Democratic delegates still to be awarded. Neither state expected to have complete results before next week.
Obama won the popular vote in 13 states Tuesday, while Clinton won in eight states and American Samoa.
In the overall race for the nomination, Clinton has 1,055 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Obama has 998.
A total of 2,025 delegates are need to secure the Democratic nomination.
Read it all. I see on Intrade that Mr. Obama is at 59.2 and Mrs. Clinton is at 38.7.
This makes the “Nightmare Scenario” of Hillary winning on the strength of the unelected “super-delegates” more likely. (Nightmare for the Democrats as Obama supporters would likely be quite alienated if that were to happen.)
1. Indeed. Think something roughly equivalent to the 2000 presidential election. Electoral College vs popular vote.
One thing this does is keeps the Republicans guessing. They can’t use “primary time” to attack only one candidate, they must attack both (and spend more money to do so). Where the Democrats can focus on McCain.
Additionally this will make the Democratic race look more interesting while it makes McCain look (even more) dull.
Of course if Hillary does win by political manipulation, then it will upset many of the new Obama disciples and may push independents to McCain.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
News is saying they predict Obama taking three more states today.
Heh heh. [i] Everything [/i] is going according to Karl Rove’s plan.
Well, I did my bit in a Washington state caucus today, albeit reluctantly. I’ve avoided declaring even temporary affiliation with any party until now, but the stakes seemed high enough I felt I had to go this time.
‘if Hillary does win by political manipulation’
What would a Clinton know about that?
… though I do wonder if 2008 is turning out like an odd version of the final series of ‘The West Wing’ – Obama = Santos, McCain = Vinick ….