In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Wyoming was worth half of Texas, and considering that Texas has 46 times the population of Wyoming, that’s saying something. In the Texas primary and caucuses, Barack Obama gained 4 more delegates than Hillary Clinton. In the Wyoming caucuses, Barack Obama gained 2 more delegates than Hillary Clinton.
In the Mississippi primary today, 33 delegates are at stake, and Barack Obama is far ahead in the polls. Should he win by a margin of 60-40, approximately what the Wyoming caucuses brought out, then Barack Obama could come out of the primary with 7 delegates more than Hillary Clinton.
Every state bears watching, and today that means Mississippi. Polls close at 8 pm. I’ve found that CNN Politics has most speedily and consistently served up complete primary and caucus data this year. If you know of a better source, please pass it along.
Here’s a point that came up here a few days ago:
Everyone is reporting that Clinton or Obama need 2025 delegates to get the Democratic nomination. If Florida’s and Michigan’s delegates are not seated (210 and 156 delegates, respectively), then wouldn’t the number needed for nomination decrease to 1842 (half of the 3682 remaining + 1)? If this is the case then Obama has a good chance of reaching this number before the convention.
Does anyone know what the official rules for the Democratic convention state? In order to be nominated, does a candidate need a majority of the delegates assigned nationally (including FL and MI), or simply a majority of the delegates voting at the convention?
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen that expression on this site, and frankly I think it’s a bit misleading to say that any one states’ votes “matter” less because the race was close there. Having a huge pool of delegates split nearly evenly changes the dynamic of the rest of the race. I mean… if a baseball game goes scoreless for an inning, it still matters. Whoever was in the lead going in to the inning is still ahead and the trailing team has fewer chances to catch up.
“Matter” is an expression of net effect, and gaining in delegates is a net effect, and a measurable one at that. Your example is not spot on. A baseball game going scoreless for an inning is not what is going to happen here, unless the polls in Mississippi are hugely off. Barack Obama is going to increase his lead in delegates, and chances are reasonable that he’ll do so by more than the amount by which he increased his delegate lead in Texas. To use your baseball analogy, it’s as if in the fifth inning the Home Team got 152 runs and the Visitors got 150 runs. The net effect is +2 runs to the Home Team. The heroic efforts of the Visitors don’t “matter” because the efforts of the Home Team matched them.
But you’re correct that even if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were to come to a 50-50 result in Mississippi, the result would be disadvantageous to Hillary Clinton, because it’s one less opportunity to close the delegate gap.