Barack: To the victor, belongs the spoils.
Hillary: Why don't you get the (heck) out of here, before I shove your quotation book up your ...
With Obama declaring himself victorious based on his a lead of 1762 to 1637 over Hillary in Pledged Delegates, I wondered if there is better way to assign Superdelegates.
I purposefully did not include Obama's 'pledged' SD's in the above count. SD's were created as a safety net for the DNC to stop the nomination of a sure loser as their candidate. They have gotten away from that in the 2008 election and have now essentially become pre-election endorsements.
I understand the Democrats desire to proportionally assign pledged delegates based on the primary election results within each state. But their process should also consider the Electoral College which is how the general election for President (the ultimate goal for their party) is decided. My process would have the Superdelegates assigned to the candidates on a winner-take-all basis based on each state's primary election results (or caucus results for states without primaries).
I did the math, assigning "electors" for each state (e.g., HRC gets 55 for California, BHO receives 21 for Illinois), then proportionally multiplying (by 823.5/538) to get to the total number of Superdelegates of 823.5. This resulted in 355 SD's being assigned to Barack and 468 to Hillary. These results mimick one case Clinton supporters have made for her remaining in the race.
This left me with an interesting result. Using my system, Clinton would be at 2105 total delegates (pledged plus super), which is only 12 behind Obama. Obama would have 2117 total delegates, one short of the 2118 needed to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.
Sorry Hillary. Too little, too late.
I purposefully did not include Obama's 'pledged' SD's in the above count. SD's were created as a safety net for the DNC to stop the nomination of a sure loser as their candidate. They have gotten away from that in the 2008 election and have now essentially become pre-election endorsements.
I understand the Democrats desire to proportionally assign pledged delegates based on the primary election results within each state. But their process should also consider the Electoral College which is how the general election for President (the ultimate goal for their party) is decided. My process would have the Superdelegates assigned to the candidates on a winner-take-all basis based on each state's primary election results (or caucus results for states without primaries).
I did the math, assigning "electors" for each state (e.g., HRC gets 55 for California, BHO receives 21 for Illinois), then proportionally multiplying (by 823.5/538) to get to the total number of Superdelegates of 823.5. This resulted in 355 SD's being assigned to Barack and 468 to Hillary. These results mimick one case Clinton supporters have made for her remaining in the race.
This left me with an interesting result. Using my system, Clinton would be at 2105 total delegates (pledged plus super), which is only 12 behind Obama. Obama would have 2117 total delegates, one short of the 2118 needed to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.
Sorry Hillary. Too little, too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment