Below The Beltway

First of all, a little gloating given that the prediction I made on Monday turned out to be largely correct.

It’s nice to get at least one of these right this year.

It’s interesting to note that Clinton won 60 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. It was only in Philadelphia, it’s surrounding counties, and in two central Pennsylvania counties that happen to be home to Penn State University and Bucknell University that Obama managed to pull off a victory. Clinton won Pittsburgh and it’s surrounding counties. She won her adopted “home” areas by winning all of the counties surrounding Scranton. In other words, just like in Ohio, she cleaned up in the blue-color, Union, Catholic, Reagan Democrat demographic that makes up a large part of Pennsylvania, which could bode well for her chances in Indiana.

And, she did pretty well in the popular vote:

That’s a net gain of 215,948 popular votes, which slightly closes the gap against Obama.

But, of course, it’s still the delegate count that matters.

When I last looked at the delegate math it looked like this:

Pledged Delegates

1. Barack Obama — 1,406 delegates
2. Hillary Clinton — 1,246 delegates

Obama + 160

Total Delegates

1. Barack Obama — 1,608 delegates (416 needed to win)
2. Hillary Clinton — 1,494 delegates (530 needed to win)

Obama +124

And here’s how it looks today:

Pledged Delegates

1. Barack Obama — 1,479 delegates
2. Hillary Clinton — 1,328 delegates

Obama + 151

Total Delegates

1. Barack Obama — 1,713 delegates (311 needed to win)
2. Hillary Clinton — 1,586 delegates (438 needed to win)

Obama +127

In other words, even with her win in Pennsylvania, Clinton only picked up nine net pledged delegates and has actually lost ground to Obama in total delegates thanks to several superdelegate endorsements over the past six weeks. Moreover, between now and the end of the primary season there are only 408 delegates left to be allocated and nearly 1/3 of those (122) will be chosen via caucuses, which have favored Obama throughout the primary season.  [Ed. My mistake, those 122 delegates will be chosen via closed primaries, not caucuses]. Even if she wins 55% of the remaining delegates, that would still leave Obama with about 1,662 pledged delegates (1,896 total) and Clinton with about 1552 pledged delegates (1,810).

That leaves it to the 303 superdelegates who have yet to announce a preference to decide the nomination. And, the only way Clinton can win is to convince at least 214 (or about 70%) of those delegates to ignore the fact that Obama has won more primaries, more delegates, and more votes and give the nomination to her.

I don’t see how they do that without causing a firestorm unlike anything we’ve seen since 1968.