Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

There’s been a lot of action in the Democratic presidential nomination race since I last posted, not least the rules committee meeting over the weekend that decided how Florida and Michigan’s delegates were allocated. Hillary Clinton picked up some extra delegates from that process, and also did better than expected in the Puerto Rico primary. Overall, she’s picked up 183 pledged delegates since we last checked in, easily outpacing Barack Obama’s 137 new pledged delegates. However, Obama continues to pick up unpledged delegates, and so he ends the big shuffle almost exactly where he began it: 27 delegates short by my calculation (based on CNN’s estimates of unpledged delegate support).

However, the decision by the rules committee now makes the final outcome pretty clear, and unpledged delegates are committing to Obama at an increased rate, which makes it likely he’ll cross the finish line today or tomorrow. The AP has already called the race for Obama, although their analysis is based on private rather than public announcements.

Obama can hasten the end by doing well in the last two primaries today. Since there’s been so little polling in Montana and South Dakota, my projections should be taken with a large grain of salt, but the model predicts Obama will win the day 16 delegates to 15. There’s talk he’ll do better in South Dakota than the polls have indicated so far, which could flip another delegate his way. Montana’s governor and senators have also committed their support to the winner of the primary. Along with the party state chair and vice-chair, that will net him another five delegates if he wins.

Adding in those net six delegates, Obama needs the support of 21 more unpledged delegates today to be able to announce victory in his speech tonight. My bet is that he’ll manage to do so. Whether Senator Clinton concedes or not is going to be the favorite talking point for the pundits for the next few hours. (My guess is that she’ll concede tomorrow, once the dust has settled.)

Montana
Clinton: 7 delegates (44% of vote)
Obama: 9 delegates (56% of vote)

South Dakota
Clinton: 8 delegates (54% of vote)
Obama: 7 delegates (46% of vote)

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

Although Barack Obama still has the Democratic nomination practically sewn up, today’s primaries aren’t looking as though they’ll shape up to provide him with the deluge of delegates he needs to push him past the winning post in our projections.

Kentucky
Clinton: 34 delegates (67% of vote)
Obama: 17 delegates (33% of vote)

Oregon
Clinton: 23 delegates (43% of vote)
Obama: 29 delegates (57% of vote)

Overall, Clinton looks like she’ll win the day 57-56, and she’s gained a net 8 delegates in our predictions for all remaining states (including Kentucky and Oregon), based on the latest polls from Pollster.com. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any movement in Obama’s direction among voters, even though the press coverage is treating him more and more as the presumptive nominee. If Clinton does win the most delegates tonight, I can’t see her dropping out before the primaries in Montana and South Dakota.

Obama, meanwhile, has gained an extra 21 unpledged delegates since we last checked in with CNN, leaving him 26 delegates away from the nomination, based on our projected results for the remaining primaries.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

West Virginia’s result last night fell almost exactly in line with my projection, with one slight wrinkle. I hadn’t included John Edwards in the analysis, and his name appeared on the ballot. Along with other candidates, he took 7% of the vote, which pulled down Hillary Clinton’s actual share of the vote by 5% and reduced Barack Obama’s total by 2%. That was immaterial in the allocation of delegates, which split 20-8, as predicted.

What has changed since yesterday is that Pollster.com has added two more polls from Oregon that look good for Obama.  Good enough, in fact, that he’s predicted to pick up 3 more delegates from that primary.  With another 7 unpledged delegates coming out in his support yesterday, according to CNN’s analysis, Obama just needs 43 more delegates to reach the 2,025 target that is the official threshold for victory, assuming no delegates from Florida or Michigan are seated.

Note that the target for victory technically went up by half a delegate yesterday because of Travis Childers’ victory in the MS-01 special election.  He becomes another unpledged delegate.

The trend towards Obama remains strong.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

Given that the Democratic nomination race is winding down, it’s ironic that Hillary Clinton is about to have her best day in the contest so far, in terms of dominating a primary and winning a big majority of the delegates. Here’s my prediction, based on recent opinion polls:

West Virginia
Clinton: 20 delegates (72% of vote)
Obama: 8 delegates (28% of vote)

Note that, as usual, this result is factored in to the summary chart above. With Clinton needing to win 90% of the remaining delegates, this result actually leaves her further from her goal, in a technical sense.

Obama, meanwhile, continues to pick up the endorsement of more unpledged delegates, and also earns an additional projected pledged delegate in Oregon, based on new polls in that state. So he’s moved 10 delegates closer to the nomination since Thursday.

The trend points to Obama crossing the threshold needed to claim victory sometime next week. I’m wavering in my opinion that Clinton will concede on May 21, after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries. I think she can make a legitimate case for staying in the race until everyone has voted. But I do still think she will bow out in early June, after the last of the primaries.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

My predictions for the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on Tuesday proved to be pretty accurate. While Barack Obama did about 2% better in each state than predicted, the delegates broke slightly in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Obama’s win in North Carolina translated into a 65-50 delegate victory, a net gain of four over my prediction, and Clinton’s win in Indiana gave her a delegate win of 38-34, exactly what the model forecast.

So, at the end of the night, Obama picked up a net gain of 11 delegates over Clinton, 4 more than predicted. Funnily enough, today’s updates to the opinion polls for the upcoming races (courtesy of Pollster.com) give Clinton back those 4 net delegates. Which means that our prediction of the total number of pledged delegates each candidate will end up with hasn’t changed since the beginning of the week.

What has changed is the share of the delegates each candidate needs to reach their “magic number” (which I’ve defined as a lead of 1 delegate for Clinton and a lead of 150 delegates for Obama). Clinton now needs 90% of the remaining delegates to win the pledged delegates race while Obama needs 46% of the delegates to keep his lead above 150.

And what that means is that, while the situation in the pledged delegate race is essentially exactly where it was before Indiana and North Carolina, the perception of the race has changed. Clinton is now seen as defeated, and Obama is now picking up unpledged delegates at an increased pace — he’s up 16 since the primaries on Tuesday, while Clinton is up a net 6, according to CNN’s tally. (I’ve seen other lists that say that Obama has now taken the lead in unpledged delegates.)

So our trend graph shows Obama accelerating towards the nomination again.

If this trend holds, then Obama will effectively wrap up the nomination on May 21, the day after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries. If I was a gambling man, I would bet that’s the day Clinton will concede defeat, although there’s a chance she’ll wait until June 4, once the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota are over.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls (Excel spreadsheet)

Today sees the last of the big primaries in the Democractic presidential nomination race: Indiana and North Carolina. Right now, the momentum in the race is with Senator Clinton, who has gained 9 extra pledged delegates in our prediction since the Pennsylvania primary thanks to better scores in the opinion polls for upcoming states. However, Senator Obama’s continued courting of unpledged delegates has kept him inching closer to the nomination. More on that in a second. First, my predictions for today’s primary states.

Indiana
Clinton: 38 delegates (52% of vote)
Obama: 34 delegates (48% of vote)

North Carolina
Clinton: 52 delegates (46% of vote)
Obama: 63 delegates (54% of vote)

Overall, Obama should gain 7 net delegates today. That’s what is factored in to the projection above. As usual, in order for the dynamics of the race to change, one candidate will need to do considerably better or worse than these projections.

Speaking of the overall dynamics of the race, I though it would be interesting to look at how each candidate’s “Unpledged Delegates Needed” total in my chart has changed since I started projecting the final results (click on the image for the full-sized version).

As the chart shows, Obama had a lot of momentum coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries, and pretty much every result and new opinion poll showed him closing in on the nomination. The big pause before Pennsylvania gave Clinton a chance to regroup, and since then she’s started to move into a more competitive situation.

However, time is running out fast for Clinton. She’s still 200 delegates away from winning, according to our projection, while Obama’s goal is down to 79. So he just needs to convince one unpledged delegate to support him for every two that Clinton persuades to support her. If Obama does better than expected tonight, he could pull his target down closer to 70, and the ratio would be practically 3 to 1… surely too much for Clinton to overcome.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls (Excel spreadsheet)

Opinion poll averages for Pennsylvania:

Clinton: 49%
Obama: 43%
Undecided: 8%

Predicted delegates:

Clinton: 84
Obama: 74

My last couple of updates on the Democratic primary race have shown a slight shift towards Clinton, although nothing like the kind of momentum that she needs to win the eventual nomination.  Right now, it looks as though Obama will finish the primaries with a delegate lead of around 153 — above the “magic number” lead of 150 delegates.

That prediction assumes Clinton wins by 6 or 7 points today, and gains a net 10 delegate advantage.  So, that’s her baseline…  I think she needs to win by at least 10 points to retain any sort of a hope in the overall race — and even then, she will still need a complete collapse by Obama in the remaining states.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls (spreadsheet)

It’s been a little while since I last updated the delegate counts for the Democratic Presidential Primaries, but, even though Mississippi is the only state to have voted since my last article, there’s actually been some movement in my predictions.

I was just a single delegate out on my prediction for Mississippi, with Hillary Clinton doing slightly worse in the overall vote, but slightly better in the delegate battle than predicted. That obviously didn’t change the shape of the race much.

What did have an impact was the Iowa County Conventions, which determined the final delegates for the state. This proved to be a major boost for Barack Obama, who gained many of the delegates formerly pledged to John Edwards, and thereby had a net gain of 10 delegates. Finally, I got some updated delegate counts from the Democrats Abroad.

Looking forward to future races, Hillary Clinton has gained somewhat from my last survey, thanks in part to improved polling in Pennsylvania, and also because Pollster.com dug up a poll from West Virginia that heavily favors Clinton. She also gained 5 superdelegates to Obama’s 3, according to CNN’s count.

All of which adds up to Hillary Clinton getting 24 delegates closer to the nomination while Barack Obama picked up 13 delegates.

That all sounds like pretty good news for Clinton, but what’s interesting is that even with these good numbers, she has actually fallen further behind on my “magic number” analysis. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’ll know that I believe that Clinton will win the nomination if she reaches the convention with the majority of the pledged delegates, while Obama will win the nomination if he gets to the convention with a lead of 150 delegates. If the margin is less than 150 delegates, Clinton could still win by virtue of picking up enough superdelegates (although her chances get increasingly slim as Obama’s lead gets closer to 150).

Because we’re now coming down to the last few states, and Obama’s current lead in the pledged delegate race is 168, Clinton needs to pull off some really big victories in order to make the situation competitive. In fact, Obama now just needs 49% of the delegates across all the remaining states to secure his 150 delegate advantage — the first time his goal has fallen to less than 50%. Clinton, meanwhile would need to secure 66% of the delegates to go to the convention in the lead. That’s pretty much impossible, unless Obama suffers a catastrophic collapse.

In short, Clinton needs to win Pennsylvania by a big margin to keep the race alive. If she doesn’t, I think the remaining superdelegates will start breaking decisively for Obama, as it becomes apparent that he can’t be beaten.

A follow up to my earlier post about the state of the Democratic race…

My prediction for the Mississippi Primary today, based on polls from Pollster.com, is that Barack Obama will gain 20 extra delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 13.  That’s factored in to the overall prediction below.  Based on current polling, Obama should score something like 59% of the vote in Mississippi, which would be another comfortable win, but not enough to get a really big bump in his delegate lead.

Download: PresidentialPrimaries.xls

The past week has been an interesting one for the Democratic primaries. The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton kept the race alive with her performance in last Tuesday’s elections, and that now the race will head to the convention without a clear winner. In reality, everything turned out pretty much as predicted. Based on the best information I can find, it looks as though Clinton won last Tuesday 188-182, which compares to my prediction of 187-183… a net difference of 2 delegates. Clinton also picked up the last 2 delegates from Maryland, according to CNN. Meanwhile, based on this careful research, Obama did a little better in California than previously estimated (although my count was already pretty close to the numbers calculated by David Deyan).

The overall result is that Clinton gained a couple of pledged delegates and Obama lost three over the last week, based on my model. That leaves Obama leading by 182 delegates going in to the convention.

Meanwhile, on the unpledged delegate side, CNN reports Obama’s total as having increased by 21 since my last review, and Clinton has gained two. So, overall, Obama is 18 delegates closer to the nomination, Clinton is 4 delegates closer, and Obama looks a more clear favorite than he did a week ago, if one looks solely at likely delegate scores.

Of course, perception counts for a lot in politics, and Obama could yet lose ground if Clinton does well in the remaining states and picks up some more endorsements. But, right now, he still looks to have a healthy lead.

Sources: CNN, The Green Papers, Calitics