A quick Table of Contents for this diary:
I. State of the Delegate Race
Entering the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6, 46 of the 55 Democratic primary contests have been completed. (Those numbers, like nearly everything else in this diary, do not include the votes conducted in Michigan and Florida, because the DNC does not regard those contests as valid.) Of the 3,253 pledged delegates that will be attending the national convention in Denver, 2,830 (just a hair under 87%) have already been awarded to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. At present, John Edwards retains 19 additional delegates.
So in the nine contests remaining, the grand total of pledged delegates at stake is only 404, or less than 12.5% of the national total. Moreover, nearly half (187) of those remaining pledged delegates are going to be awarded on the basis of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. All of this is to say: the pledged-delegate process is almost over.
Given the Democratic Party's proportional system of allocating delegates, Barack Obama maintains an overwhelming lead among pledged delegates. According to DemConWatch's numbers (which Kos has now put atop the front page), Obama currently leads Hillary Clinton 1490.5 pledged delegates to 1339.5. (There are half-delegates because some of the smaller contests--notably Democrats Abroad--award delegates in increments of one-half.)
With 3,253 pledged delegates available, the first candidate to reach a total of 1,627 (that's 3,253 ÷ 2, plus a half-delegate that puts the candidate over the top) is guaranteed to have a majority of the pledged delegates going to Denver. This ignores the possibility that one or more pledged delegates could be convinced to betray the voters who sent him or her to the convention and vote for the non-majority candidate--but that possibility is sufficiently remote that I think we're safe in ruling it out.
To get to 1,627 pledged delegates (without help from Edwards' 19 pledged delegates or others), then, Obama needs to win 136.5 of the remaining 404 delegates, or 33.79%. Clinton, meanwhile, has an analogous "magic number" of 287.5 delegates, or 71.16% of what's left.
Meanwhile, among the superdelegates, the elected officials and DNC members who have votes at the convention on a par with the pledged folks, DemConWatch shows Clinton holding on to a shrinking lead that currently stands at 15.5 delegates (269.5-254). Here, too, we're getting late in the race; there are only 271.5 more superdelegates (34.15% of the total) who have yet to declare their support for a candidate. Superdelegates are substantially more likely than pledged delegates to change their support--though it's worth noting that, thus far, only a few have done so, and all of those have switched from Clinton to Obama.
So in the total-delegate race, Obama currently leads Clinton 1,744.5 to 1,609. Because it takes 2,024.5 delegates to guarantee a majority at the national convention, Obama needs to win 280 of the remaining 694.5 delegates--pledged and super--to gain the nomination. That's only 40.32%, and it presumes that no more superdelegates will change their support from Clinton to Obama.
Barring massive Clinton blowouts in more or less all of the remaining contests (and they absolutely must begin in Indiana and North Carolina), the proportion of currently-undeclared superdelegates Obama will need to put him over 2,024 is small--certainly well under 40%. It is hard to see how Clinton can win the nomination.
I should probably also note that the Obama campaign is keeping track of the delegate race as well--and the tallies on their Results Center are somewhat more favorable for the home team: the Obama delegate lead proclaimed on that site is slightly bigger in both categories he leads (pledged and total) than it is in the count that DemConWatch, and Daily Kos by proxy, have posted. Anyway, if this diary were based on the Obama site’s numbers rather than DemConWatch’s, Obama’s hold on the nomination would look even stronger.
II. State of the "Popular Vote" Race
With the pledged delegate race looking bleak for her, Clinton and her surrogates and supporters have recently been demanding attention on what they call the "popular vote" race. With the proper baseline presumptions, one can assert (as Clinton has been) that she has received more votes in the swath of Democratic contests this season than any other candidate.
As (at least) hundreds of Obama supporters and independent figures have noted, however, the Clinton campaign's assertions on this score depend upon at least two presumptions that are (to put it mildly) extremely controversial. First, the "Clinton leads in popular vote" conclusion requires one to include the totals from the votes conducted in January in Michigan and Florida, two contests that the DNC has refused to recognize and that all candidates promised not to participate in. In Florida, Obama almost certainly earned fewer votes, and a smaller proportion, than he would have had he been allowed to campaign there--and in Michigan, Obama got no votes at all, because he made good on his "no participation" pledge by removing his name from the ballot. (Attempts to do the same in Florida were refused as untimely.) Thus, the Clinton argument that Michigan's votes should be counted involves counting zero Obama votes in that state.
The second flaw that numerous Obama supporters (e.g., in a post I recommend highly, PocketNines) have pointed out is that the whole concept of counting "popular votes" in a long season of Democratic contests severely devalues the voices of states (such as mine) that hold caucuses rather than primaries. Turnout in caucuses is commonly a small fraction of turnout in primaries in the same jurisdiction, and indeed caucus states have recorded many fewer votes this season than primary states have. The "popular vote" argument, then, effectively wipes out the landslide victories that Obama won in states like Colorado and (my) Minnesota. Had we known that our voices in choosing the Democratic nominee would be strangled by a campaign gesticulating at "popular vote," we would have stopped holding caucuses and organized primaries instead.
The other problem that "popular vote" counts cause with caucus states is that in at least four caucus states --Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington--state parties did not record popular vote totals. Thus, Clinton's "popular vote" counts give Obama zero votes from those four states (three of which he won) just as they do from Michigan.
All this said, there is evidence that some superdelegates are paying attention to popular vote totals, so I am trying to do the same in my delegate-tracker diary. As politics website RealClearPolitics documents, the various permutations of how one deals with Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington lead to various permutations of the popular vote count. I'm going with the simplest version, which disregards all votes for either candidate in those six states. (Please note that I'm not arguing, as did an op-ed writer that Hunter recently dismantled, that such a count is "fair." It isn't; nothing about "popular vote" is fair to caucus states. This permutation is just simpler than the other ones.)
Going into the May 6 primaries, according to RCP, Obama led in the "popular vote" race by 501,414 votes, or 1.7%. Again, if Clinton hopes to "win" by this metric, she needs to make up substantial ground on May 6, because the remaining contests are all in smaller jurisdictions (smaller than Indiana, that is) that are unlikely to yield big differences in vote total.
III. The May 6 Primaries
The two contests being held on Tuesday, May 6, will award 187 pledged delegates and three add-on superdelegates. Here's how those delegates will be apportioned:
Indiana will award 72 pledged delegates:
* 25 based on the statewide vote, in two separate pools: 16 "at large" delegates and 9
PLEOs; and
* 47 district delegates, split up between Indiana's nine
congressional districts.
At its state convention on June 21, the Indiana Democratic Party will also award one add-on superdelegate based on the results of the May 6 primary. And there are twelve other superdelegates from Indiana, several of whom have already stated their support of a candidate.
North Carolina will award 115 pledged delegates:
* 38 based on the statewide vote, in two separate pools: 26 "at large" delegates and 12
PLEOs; and
* 77 district delegates, split up between North Carolina's thirteen
congressional districts.
At its state convention on June 21 (the same day as Indiana's), the North Carolina Democratic Party will also award two add-on superdelegates based on the results of the May 6 primary. And there are seventeen other superdelegates from North Carolina, several of whom have already stated their support of a candidate.
Starting at about 6:00 P.M. Central time on May 6, I’ll be calculating and reporting the projected delegate splits in Indiana and North Carolina at my delegate tracker thread.
If you’d like to follow the raw vote results as they come in, you could do worse than the USA Today results site (here are the pages for Indiana and North Carolina). The advantage to the USA Today pages is that they report Congressional District-specific numbers, which is vital to tracking delegate splits. My delegate tracker thread, indeed, is almost entirely based on the USA Today numbers.
Several other websites report statewide vote totals (as well as county totals, which I find totally useless); in previous contests, CNN has generally been faster than other sources--USA Today, other media sites, and even state-government pages--in reporting statewide and county vote totals. (Even CNN’s site tends to be a few minutes behind the numbers they put on the TV screen, though.) I’m reasonably sure that CNN gets its statewide numbers from the same source--Associated Press, I think--as USA Today, and the differences between those media numbers and the state-government numbers are frequently interesting.
Speaking of state governments, the Indiana Secretary of State and North Carolina State Board of Elections tell us that they will be reporting statewide and county vote totals at those two sites. I don’t expect to spend much time consulting those pages on the night of May 6-7 (I’ll be too busy spastically refreshing USA Today), but something interesting may appear there.
It's worth noting that all of the vote percentages in this diary and in the delegate tracker are calculated by including only votes for Clinton and Obama. Voters in Indiana and North Carolina are of course casting votes for other presidential candidates in their primaries, and those votes may have some effect on the Obama and Clinton percentages reported by media and state-government outlets. Nonetheless, for the purposes of allocating delegates, the only number that matters is each candidate's share of the total votes cast for viable candidates in a given district. As long as (say) Joe Biden's vote total is under 15% in any particular district, votes for him are disregarded when we calculate the delegate hauls for the viable candidates.
IV. Prognosticators' Picks
I've found five pundits on the Web (three of whom post here on DKos) who have posted district-by-district projections for the delegate totals from both the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. For some reason, one of the five sources--CQPolitics.com--consistently makes no predictions about the result of the statewide races.
Put together, though, the five sets of predictions show a significant number of similarities, and they make it somewhat clear which districts we can expect to be the "close calls" on May 6. I've listed all five sets (along with a sixth column that carries the average of the five in each district) from the May 6 states on the tables below.
I'm hoping these projections will present a expected "par" of sorts, to determine whether either candidate is doing considerably better than educated observers had thought (s)he would. (The delegate splits below are all stated as [Obama delegates]-[Clinton delegates] because, well, I'm biased.)
Here are the Indiana predictions from our five resident prognosticators:
| Dist | PDels | PS37 | Al G | EI | Pob | CQP | Avgs |
| At Large | 16 | 7-9 | 7-9 | 8-8 | 8-8 | N/A | 7.5-8.5 |
| PLEO | 9 | 4-5 | 4-5 | 4-5 | 4-5 | N/A | 4-5 |
| CD-1 | 6 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 4-2 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 |
| 2 | 6 | 3-3 | 2-4 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 |
| 3 | 4 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 |
| 4 | 4 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 |
| 5 | 4 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 1-3 | 2-2 |
| 6 | 5 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 |
| 7 | 6 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 |
| 8 | 6 | 2-4 | 2-4 | 2-4 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 2-4 |
| 9 | 6 | 3-3 | 2-4 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 |
| IN Totals | 72 | 34-38 | 32-40 | 36-36 | 36-36 | 23-24 | 34.5-37.5 |
| Swing | | C+4 | C+8 | Tie | Tie | C+1 | C+3 |
From the same five sources, here are the North Carolina predictions:
| Dist | PDels | PS37 | Al G | EI | Pob | CQP | Avgs |
| At Large | 26 | 15-11 | 14-12 | 15-11 | 15-11 | N/A | 15-11 |
| PLEO | 12 | 7-5 | 7-5 | 7-5 | 7-5 | N/A | 7-5 |
| CD-1 | 6 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 |
| 2 | 6 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 3-3 | 4-2 | 3-3 | 4-2 |
| 3 | 4 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 |
| 4 | 9 | 6-3 | 5-4 | 6-3 | 6-3 | 6-3 | 6-3 |
| 5 | 5 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 |
| 6 | 5 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 |
| 7 | 6 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 3-3 |
| 8 | 5 | 3-2 | 3-2 | 3-2 | 3-2 | 2-3 | 3-2 |
| 9 | 6 | 3-3 | 3-3 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 3-3 | 3-3 |
| 10 | 5 | 1-4 | 1-4 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 2-3 |
| 11 | 6 | 2-4 | 2-4 | 2-4 | 3-3 | 2-4 | 2-4 |
| 12 | 7 | 5-2 | 5-2 | 5-2 | 5-2 | 5-2 | 5-2 |
| 13 | 7 | 4-3 | 4-3 | 5-2 | 4-3 | 4-3 | 4-3 |
| NC Totals | 115 | 63-52 | 61-54 | 65-50 | 66-49 | 40-37 | 64-51 |
| Swing | | O+11 | O+7 | O+15 | O+17 | O+3 | O+13 |
Adding up each source’s projections from the two states, here are the total delegate predictions from each of the five sources (remember that CQ Politics doesn’t believe in projecting statewide delegates, for some reason):
| PDels | PS37 | Al G | EI | Pob | CQP | Avgs |
| May 6 | 187 | 97-90 | 93-94 | 101-86 | 102-85 | 63-61 | 98.5-88.5 |
| Swing | | O+7 | C+1 | O+15 | O+17 | O+2 | O+10 |
If you’re dying for lots more delegate projections, Al Giordano has been polling readers of his blog, “The Field,” and their delegate predictions are being recorded on spreadsheets here (IN) and here (NC).
Back in Kos-land, plenty of Kossacks have posted their projections regarding one state or the other: in addition to the folks included in the grids above, I’ve seen diaries from BooMan23 (C+4), urbanindy (C+4), and ObamaManiac2008 (tie) predicting the district delegates in Indiana. North Carolina seems to be generating less prognostication interest: besides the pundits in the tables above, I’ve only found a post from minvis (O+11) projecting the the delegate splits in North Carolina.
V. Delegate Split Thresholds
On primary nights, it's frequently important to know what percentage of the vote a candidate needs in a given district to gain additional delegates. The percentages needed are a matter of simple arithmetic, and they can be reflected in a more or less set-in-stone matrix, as shown in the next two tables.
To read the district table below, first find the column bearing the number of delegates in the district that you're curious about. Then find the row with the number of delegates you'd like to find the threshold for. The cell at the intersection of that row and column contains the percentage of the district vote a candidate needs to exceed in order to earn the number of delegates at the left end of the row.
| 9-del dist | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Win 1 | 15.00% | 15.00% | 15.00% | 15.00% | 15.00% |
| 2 | 16.67% | 21.43% | 25.00% | 30.00% | 37.50% |
| 3 | 27.78% | 35.71% | 41.67% | 50.00% | 62.50% |
| 4 | 38.89% | 50.00% | 58.33% | 70.00% | 85.00% |
| 5 | 50.00% | 64.29% | 75.00% | 85.00% |
| 6 | 61.11% | 78.57% | 85.00% |
| 7 | 72.22% | 85.00% |
| 8 | 83.33% |
| 9 | 85.00% |
For example, the italicized cell above shows that, in a 6-delegate district (such as Indiana's Second Congressional District), a candidate must get more than 58.33% of the viable-candidate votes in that district in order to receive four, rather than three, delegates from that district. (In a two-person race such as this one, rising above the 58.33% threshold means moving from a 3-3 delegate tie to a 4-2 delegate win. Note that that's a difference of +2 net delegates, not just one.)
I didn't put in a column for an 8-delegate district because neither North Carolina nor Indiana has an 8-delegate district. (Same thing with 3- and 2-delegate districts.)
In addition to the delegates allocated to the specific Congressional Districts, both states voting on May 6 will be awarding delegates according to the results of their respective statewide primaries: North Carolina will give out 38 delegates based on the statewide vote, and Indiana will give out 25. The delegate thresholds for a 38- or 25-delegate race wouldn't fit on the table above (and the calculations are slightly more complicated, too, because the statewide delegates are split into separate pools for "at-large" and PLEO delegates), so below is the table showing the net delegate hauls for the statewide delegate races. I'm presuming that neither candidate is going to win a state by much more than 25 percentage points.
To save space, I've formatted the table below (which is actually two separate tables, one for each state, side-by-side) slightly differently than the one above; to read this one, find the column for state you're interested in, and then, in that column, find the number of net delegates you're interested in the threshold for. The percentage listed to the right of the net-delegate number is the percentage that a candidate must exceed to receive that many net delegates in the state-level count.
| NC Net | % | | IN Net | % |
| -8 | 37.50% | | -7 | 34.38% |
| -6 | 40.38% | | -5 | 38.89% |
| -4 | 44.23% | | -3 | 40.63% |
| -2 | 45.83% | | -1 | 46.88% |
| 0 | 48.08% | | +1 | 50.00% |
| +2 | 51.92% | | +3 | 53.13% |
| +4 | 54.17% | | +5 | 59.38% |
| +6 | 55.77% | | +7 | 61.11% |
| +8 | 59.62% | | +9 | 65.63% |
| +10 | 62.50% |
VI. What the @#$&% Does "INF+2N" Mean?
Even when they show projected delegate splits, delegate-tracking tables typically don't give the reader much idea of how close the candidates are to changing the current state of the delegate race. I concocted "INF+2N" (Improvement Needed For +2 Net pledged delegates) as a number that reflects how difficult it will be, as returns continue to come in, for a candidate to improve his/her delegate haul. A high INF+2N number (say, more than 10%) means the candidate is not very likely to do any better in the delegate race in that district than (s)he's currently projected, barring the appearance of some precincts that are overwhelmingly in his/her favor.
The number isn't hard to calculate (well, if you've got a spreadsheet application, anyway). Given the current state of the race--the candidates' respective raw vote, and the percentage of precincts that have reported--the computer calculates what fraction of the remaining uncounted votes the candidate needs in order to improve his/her delegate haul by the smallest possible number--which, in a two-candidate race, is +2 net delegates. Subtract from that fraction the proportion of the district's vote the candidate has gained so far, and you've got his or her INF+2N.
If that explanation is too confusing (and it probably is), here's an example, in a hypothetical district race between Candidate A and Candidate B:
| Dist | PDels | %In | A% | B% | Dels (A-B) | A INF+2N | B INF+2N |
| 27 | 9 | 75% | 60.00% | 40.00% | 5-4 | 4.45% | 40.00% |
Here, with 75% of the precincts reporting in a nine-delegate district, Candidate A leads Candidate B by exactly 60%-40%. As you can see from the first delegate threshold table above, that translates to a 5-4 delegate split in A's favor. If you're wondering how good (or bad) those last 25% of precincts will have to be in order for A to get a 6-3 split, or for B to flip the 5-4 into his favor, INF+2N provides that answer.
Again from the delegate threshold table, A needs to exceed 61.11% of the total district vote, once it's all counted, in order to get a 6-3 split. B needs to push his share over 50% to win the district 5 delegates to 4. But with three-quarters of the precincts already counted,* either candidate needs to do considerably better than that in the remaining votes to shift his/her overall proportion over the relevant threshold.
As a spreadsheet can show you reasonably simply, A needs to win 64.45% of the uncounted quarter of the votes in order to push her fraction of the total district vote over the 61.11% threshold. That's difficult, because it's 4.45 percentage points better than A has performed over the first three-quarters of the vote counted. And thus A's INF+2N number is currently 4.45%.
B has it considerably tougher, though: in order to push his proportion from 40% to 50% (plus one vote), he needs to win a smidgen over 80% of the votes that currently remain uncounted. Those 80 minus B's current 40% of the vote = 40 percentage points, so B's INF+2N number is 40.00%.
* Keen observers will note that I'm using "precincts reported" as a direct proxy for "votes reported," which is... demonstrably false: some precincts, clearly, have a substantially larger number of voters than others. But I don't see any way around this problem; no one knows exactly how many votes will be counted tonight until they're counted. Obviously this means that there is a fair amount of imprecision in the INF+2N number.
I've just posted a new delegate-tracker diary along the same lines as the ones I maintained during the Texas district and county caucuses and the Pennsylvania primary.