Last week Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen wrote in The Politico that people who think that Hillary Clinton can still win the Democratic nomination "are living on another planet." Yet today on CNN, the mid-day anchor referred to Barack Obama’s lead in delegates as "razor thin". Giving CNN and other media the benefit of the doubt, it is worth examining how Hillary Clinton can catch up to Barack Obama and claim the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
According to CNN’s count Barack Obama currently leads Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates won by a margin of 171 delegates. Barack Obama has 1413 delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 1242. There are 10 primaries remaining. Barack Obama has built his delegate lead steadily since the primaries and caucuses began in Iowa on January 3rd. The graph below shows how each candidate has collected their delegates since the contest began [click image to enlarge]:
The graph below shows how Obama’s delegate lead over Clinton has grown over time [click image to enlarge]:
The graph below shows the popular vote counts and Barack Obama’s lead over time [click image to enlarge]:
Barack Obama has steadily increased and now holds approximately a 700,000 vote lead over Hillary Clinton in the primaries contested so far. The graph above does not take into account the delegate counts from the caucuses. In a contest for delegates that comprises both primaries and caucuses, the popular vote count is a flawed measure of the will of the people since it unfairly penalizes states that have held caucuses. Nonetheless, I have provided the data for completeness.
The ten contests that remain have a total of 566 delegates up for grabs distributed as follows:
| State | Delegates |
| Pennsylvania | 158 |
| Guam | 4 |
| Indiana | 72 |
| North Carolina | 115 |
| West Virginia | 28 |
| Kentucky | 51 |
| Oregon | 52 |
| Puerto Rico | 55 |
| Montana | 16 |
| South Dakota | 15 |
| TOTAL | 566 |
Of the ten primaries remaining, Hillary Clinton is favored to win in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Barack Obama is favored to win in Guam, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Indiana is considered a toss-up slightly favoring Hillary Clinton. In raw numbers, Hillary Clinton would have to win 369 out of the remaining 566 delegates to edge out Barack Obama in the delegate count. That is, Hillary Clinton would have to win slightly over 65% of the remaining delegates. The only contests so far where Clinton has garnered over 65% of the delegates are American Samoa, where she got 2 out of the 3 delegates, and Arkansas, where she was First Lady.
However, Hillary Clinton is not likely to win the states Barack Obama is favored in. Being conservative, if we assume she ties Obama in these states and territories (Guam, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota), they will each get 101 delegates, leaving 364 delegates up for grabs in the remaining states. Hillary Clinton would have to win 268 out of the remaining 364 delegates to overcome Obama’s delegate lead. That is, Hillary Clinton would have to win slightly over 73% of the delegates in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. The only contest so far where Clinton has garnered more than 73% of the delegates is Arkansas. In her "triumph" in Ohio, she garnered 53% of the delegates. In other words, to win 73% of the delegates, she would have to beat Barack Obama by around 46 points in each of these states (assuming the delegate percentages will roughly track the popular vote margins in these states). To put things in perspective, according to the polls she currently leads Barack Obama by about 14 points in Pennsylvania (51.2% to 37.5%). She would have to more than triple her lead to 46 points to garner the margin of victory she needs in Pennsylvania. A victory in Pennsylvania of less than 46 points will seriously hurt her chances of overcoming Barack Obama’s "razor thin" delegate lead.
Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination becomes even more remote if Barack Obama actually wins any of the states he is favored to win. However, since this post is an exploration of Clinton’s path to the nomination I will leave the less rosy scenarios as an exercise for the reader.
As this post demonstrates, Hillary Clinton definitely has a chance to become the nominee of the Democratic party. The anchors on CNN are correct. It is not impossible for her to win. To win, however, given the proportional delegate system in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton would have to do significantly better in the remaining states than Ronald Reagan did in his landslide victory over Walter Mondale in 1984. If she pulls off this historic (and to some observers, other-wordly) feat, she will have earned the bragging rights of being called a true Reagan Democrat.
[Click to download the source data for the graphs in this post]
Geez, my Maple Leafs have a shot at making the playoffs but they have to go 6-0-0 and get some help to make it.
The funny thing is that they have a better chance of pulling that off than Hillary does.
Whoops. I keep forgetting to change the link for my blog location. LOL
I truly believe that Hillary can win 75% of the remaining states and will either tie or exceed BO’s delegate count.
I believe Sen Clinton is the best choice to meet McCain in Nov. Before the primaries in Tx I might have voted for Obama if Clinton had not won but I would never support him now. I saw first hand how the Obama supporters won these caucus’s- alot of what they did was absolutely unneccessary- they were bullies and there was alot of problems caused by Obama people. I wouldnt doubt that there will be many challenges to the delegate count. So the delegate count from Texas may change.
we are all known by the company we keep and these people for Obama at least in Tx were people who did what they had to, to get their delegate count up. I wouldnt trust a man with this kind of support to become the Pres of the USA.
Its not over yet and i encourage all Clinton supporters to donate money now to her.
I know Barney Frank is trying to legalize marijuana, but please don’t act like it’s already happened.
Here is the scenario that I think is underway, as we speak, by Hillary Clinton: She will continue to demonize and get exponentially vicious towards Obama (and I am sure he will react somewhat viciously as well) in hopes that McCain will defeat Obama in 2008. She is currently looking at 2012.
The media should be careful predicting Obama will win Montana, Oregon and South Dakota. Most of Obama’s previous midwest/rocky mountain victories were in states that held caucuses… MT, OR and SD will hold regular primaries.