The question seems to have been percolating, just below the surface, for a while now. When Barack Obama won 11 consecutive contests in February, he built up a noticeable lead in the race for delegates. Given that the competition is for delegates, not states, it created the impression that Obama was the frontrunner for the nomination.
But, the Clinton campaign argued, there’s still time and plenty of delegates left, and Clinton has the resources (and the attack ads) to come back and re-take the lead. Is that true? Can Clinton still do well enough to catch Obama in the race for delegates?
Marc Ambinder interviewed himself yesterday afternoon and concluded that it’s still “mathematically possible” for Clinton to win the nomination, but based on “the math alone and a reasonable projection of external events,” it’s unlikely.
Q. But you said it’s possible.
A. Yes. But lots of things have to break her way. If, say, voting ends and the press discovers that Obama has a secret second family in Idaho and all his superdelegates abandon him; if, for some reason, she wins 75% of the popular vote in the states after Ohio and Texas and half the remaining superdelegates; if, by slow attrition, she closes the delegate gap to about 70 and picks off two thirds of the remaining superdelegates; if the pledged (Obama) delegates concur with the credentials committee and seat the (Clintonian) Florida and Michigan delegations — then, yes, it’s possible.
Q. So should she drop out?
A. I don’t know. Obama’s campaign emphasizes the math. The Clinton campaign emphasizes… well, the more external factors.
I’ll concede I haven’t given “the math” too much thought, so I started fiddling with the numbers today, trying to see exactly what kind of odds Clinton is up against. I was a little surprised by the results.
Slate has a fun “Delegate Calculator” in which folks can guess what the results might be in the remaining contests and see how many delegates Clinton and Obama can win. Even assuming a very favorable calendar for Clinton — which seems like a stretch, given likely Obama victories in states like North Carolina — Clinton almost certainly can’t catch up.
I have a hunch Jonathan Chait has been playing with the same calculator.
With the Clinton campaign now saying they will stay in the race even if they lose delegates in Texas, it’s worth putting into perspective just how difficult it would be for them to close Barack Obama’s lead in pledged delegates. For Clinton to pull ahead, she will need to win 57% of the remaining pledged delegates. To keep that number from rising even higher, they of course need to win 57% of the delegates on Tuesday, which would mean getting at least 213 delegates to Obama’s 161 — a 52 delegate advantage. If they net anything below 52 delegates, they fall even further behind. This is the key number to keep in mind when watching the election returns.
And, of course, even netting 52 delegates is hardly a big win. The Clinton campaign picked Texas and Ohio as its battleground because those states are particularly Clinton-friendly. The remaining primary states include several — like Mississippi, Oregon, and North Carolina — where Obama is likely to rack up major wins. That means that Clinton needs to gain well over 57% of the delegates in the states that are better for her. The only way she could possibly do this would be to utterly destroy Obama’s reputation, make him a radioactive figure, like Al Sharpton. This also seems like an extreme longshot, though the Clinton campaign appears to be attempting to pull it off with its flurry of attacks.
The WaPo’s Dan Balz ran the numbers and reached a similar conclusion.
There are 370 pledged delegates at stake today. After Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont have been counted, only 611 pledged delegates will be left in the remaining contests. No matter how you run the numbers, the conclusion is always the same: There is virtually no realistic way for Clinton to emerge from the primary-caucus season with more pledged delegates than Obama.
“His delegate advantage is too great, his resource advantage is too powerful and the effect of PR is too much for her to overcome his pledged delegate lead,” wrote Tad Devine, the Democratic strategist who helped create the proportional system that governs the nomination battle.
So, if Clinton has no realistic chance of catching Obama in the delegate race before the convention, why keep fighting? Because of the superdelegates — the Clinton campaign maintains hope that she can keep the race close, and that party insiders will push her over the top this summer.
Of course, in order for that to happen, Clinton will have to make great strides in narrowing Obama’s delegate lead. To do that, narrow victories won’t be good enough for Clinton — she’ll have to start, as early as today, winning by large margins.
Update: Apparently, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter has been making use of the same Slate Delegate Calculator, and has come to the same conclusion: “For all of those who have been trashing me for saying this thing is over, please feel free to do your own math. Give Hillary 75 percent in Kentucky and Indiana. Give her a blowout in Oregon. You will still have a hard time getting her through the process with a pledged-delegate lead.”