Wednesday, 2 April 2008
A Look At The Democratic Presidential Race
« Democrats Disasterous Legislative Session | Main | Kentucky Democratic Politics 101 »For a while now, many have thought that Obama has wrapped up the Democratic nomination. The argument goes that he has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. Of course, I didn't think the delegate count would matter as much as the popular vote when it came time to decide on the nominee. Especially after the 2000 presidential election.
While some think Obama's lead in the popular vote was insurmountable, I wasn't so sure. I know Kentucky isn't the most populous state in the country, but it has interesting numbers that might allow us to extrapolate to other primaries. The latest polls show that Hillary has a 29 point lead in Kentucky.
Hillary winning Kentucky is not that surprising. She dominates among blue collar Democrats and Kentucky's Democratic party is dominated by this demographic. Looking at the internals a couple of things stick out to me. I believed Obama would win the Louisville area. Between the large black population and the Highlands I thought he would dominate in such numbers to easily outpace Hillary in the rest of the county. Instead, the numbers show Hillary with a 12 point lead in Louisville. I would think these numbers bode well for her in Southern Indiana.
The other surprise came from the fact that Hillary led Obama by a whopping 52 points in Eastern Kentucky. But looking at the national trends spotted by horacecox at Red State, we see that these lob sided numbers aren't all that unique for Appalachia.
It turns out that Hillary has been dominating the Appalachian area all along.
As the map shows this bodes very well for Hillary in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Huge victories in these three states would provide a massive boost for Hillary in the popular vote. As horacecox rightly points out, the rest of the states remaining may not be be as inhospitable to Hillary as many believe. Throw in Puerto Rico and she may gain enough votes in these states to give her the popular vote lead heading into the convention.
Sounds far fetched? Leading election prognosticator, Michael Barone, doesn't think it is.
My projections on Jay Cost's spreadsheet put Clinton ahead in popular votes, however they're measured. But my projections on my legal pads leave her behind in delegates. Each of these contests allocates most of a state's delegates by congressional districts, except for South Dakota which has only one congressional district; Montana also has only one congressional district, but it allocates most of its delegates in the two congressional districts it had in 1980, before the apportionment following the 1980 Census reduced its number of House seats to one. I give Obama small delegate edges in North Carolina (5) and Oregon (6), and Clinton relatively small edges in Pennsylvania (22), Indiana (12), West Virginia (10), Kentucky (17), Montana (3) and South Dakota (3) and a relatively big edge in Puerto Rico (20). Even so, that reduces Obama's current lead among "pledged" delegates (those selected in primaries and caucuses) from 1,414-1,247 to 1,655-1,565.
We could very easily have Obama with the delegate lead while Hillary has the popular vote lead. I wonder what the Democratic party will do when they have two candidates with equal claim to the nomination? Who knows, but it will be fun to watch.
