Why Obama is Closer to the Nomination Than You Think

Since Super Tuesday, I’ve been struck by the media’s inability to recognize how close Barack Obama is to winning the nomination. Part of this is to Obama’s advantage – frontrunner status often comes with a lot of political baggage – but it occurs to me that a lot of people may not be getting a clear picture of where the election currently stands. Combine the closeness of the race, the lack of modern historical precedent for this, and the complexity of delegate allocation rules, and it’s no wonder that confusion abounds. Here’s a quick primer on everything you need to know, as of February 11, 2008.

Delegates, Sweet Delegates
By now you probably know that the nominee is defined as the person who receives a majority of the delegates. There are two types of delegates – pledged delegates and super delegates (also referred to as unpledged delegates). Pledged delegates are delegates that are awarded to a candidate when that candidate wins a state. They are proportionally allocated based on Congressional District. The super delegates are Democratic Members of Congress, Democratic governors, DNC members, and party elders (former presidents, vice-presidents, and nominees). Super delegates are allowed to cast one vote for whomever they want at the convention. They are not bound to vote with their state, or for the winner of the pledged delegates. They can choose whomever they want.

Now for the important numbers:

There are 4,049 total delegates. Of those 796 of them are super delegates. In order to get a majority of delegates, a candidate has to get 2,025 delegates, thus making them the presumptive nominee.

As of February 11th, Obama has 1,030 pledged delegates and Clinton has 946.

But there are only 1,277 pledged delegates remaining up for grabs. For Obama to get to the 2,025 threshold without using super delegates, he would have to win 1,013 out of 1,277, or 79% of the remaining delegates. For Hillary to do that, she would have to win 1,076 out of 1,277 or 85% of the remaining delegates. That is virtually (make that actually) impossible.

What does that mean? It means that the super delegates get to decide the race. The problem with that, of course, is how shockingly undemocratic it is – party insiders choosing the nominee when we were led to believe that primaries would do that. But what’s worse is that we could have a situation where Obama wins a majority of the pledged delegates and the super delegates decide to hand the nomination to Hillary anyway. This would cause an all out civil war in the party, and would make Hillary one of the weakest nominees in modern Democratic politics, virtually assuring a President John McCain.

Here’s the catch: The party understands this, as do the super delegates. Though the above scenario is possible, it’s exceptionally unlikely. Elaine Kamarck, a senior DNC official and super delegate herself, told me Thursday that it would never happen. “Super delegates are cowards – we would never do that.” This, by the way, from a woman who has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Chuck Todd, political director for NBC News said on Saturday that super delegates are likely to follow the pledged delegate winner, especially if that winner is also ahead of McCain in the polls. And because more than half of the super delegates have yet to pledge, it’s likely that this would be more than enough for Obama to maintain his lead, even when super delegates are added to the mix.

So what does that all mean? Counter-intuitively, the fact that, mathematically, the super delegates get to decide the race means they don’t actually matter. If the super delegates are unwilling to throw the race against the public will, then they are just going to support the winner of the pledged delegates. So that should be the only number we care about during the analysis: the number of pledged delegates.

News sources have been giving wildly different delegate counts for a couple of boring reasons. First, some are adding super delegates without knowing exactly who is voting for who; as a result, each network has a different list of the super delegates they think are already committed. Second, many states (as ridiculous as this will sound) actually vote for state delegates, not national delegates, during these primaries and caucuses. Those state delegates then go to a state convention where they vote for national delegates. Even though we know exactly how many national delegates will be pledged to each candidate after that process is over, some networks are refusing to add those delegates into the count until it actually happens. Basically, this means that every news outlet has a different count, and almost none of them are accurate. Bottom line is this: As of right now, in terms of pledged delegates, Obama leads Hillary by 84 (1,030-946).

All of the remaining primary contests in February heavily favor Obama (with the possible exception of Wisconsin), and the few larger-state contests in March favor Hillary. But because delegates are proportionally allocated, it’s difficult for either to pull away from each other, or for Hillary to catch up. Good news if you’re an Obama fan.

Florida and Michigan
The one odd issue remaining is Florida and Michigan. The DNC had rules that dictated that no state could move their primary up before February 5th, with the exception of four states determined by the DNC (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada). Both Michigan and Florida defied this rule and moved their primaries up before February 5th. The DNC threatened to strip them of their delegates if they didn’t comply, and when they still didn’t comply, all of their delegates were stripped. The candidates, including Hillary Clinton, all signed a pledge that they would not campaign in those states. In Michigan, Barack Obama and John Edwards took their names off the ballot. They tried to do the same in Florida, but the deadline had passed.

Hillary Clinton never complained about this earlier in the race. Complaining about it would have pissed off Iowa and New Hampshire and she wasn’t interested in doing that. But now that she recognizes that she’s likely to lose the pledged delegate count, she has been calling for the Florida and Michigan delegations to be counted after all. (It should be noted that in Michigan, she won against her only other opponent “Uncommitted” and that she won in Florida as well.) So despite the fact that no one campaigned in these states, that both campaigns acknowledged that these races didn’t count, and that Barack Obama’s name wasn’t on the Michigan ballot, today, Hillary thinks these delegates should count. One wonders if she would feel the same way had she lost.

How will this be resolved? There are three possibilities: The DNC has been begging Florida and Michigan to revote, by holding caucuses now that February 5th has passed, allowing their delegates to be seated and both candidates to campaign there. Both states, as of now, are resistant to that idea, with some indication that Michigan may eventually come around.

If that doesn’t happen, the question of who gets seated at the convention will be decided by the DNC Credentials Committee. The Credentials Committee is going to be staffed with Hillary loyalists and Obama loyalists and the number of seats they get on the committee will be determined proportionally according to the winner of the pledged delegates. This means that, most likely, if Obama wins the pledged delegates, his loyalists will control the Credentials Committee and not allow Florida and Michigan to be added into the mix. If Hillary wins the pledged delegate count, she will control the Credentials Committee and will allow the Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated. This is a relatively moot point because, essentially, the only way that Michigan and Florida get seated is if Hillary has already won the pledged delegates (and as was said before, the winner of the pledged delegates will end up winning the super delegates and, ultimately, the nomination).

There is, however, one possible circumstance where this wouldn’t happen. It’s possible that the delegate counts will be so close that the Credentials Committee will be evenly divided between Obama and Clinton loyalists. This means that neither would have control over the committee. But, keep in mind, the current status quo is that Florida and Michigan don’t count. If the vote on the Credentials Committee is a tie, the vote loses and we keep the status quo.

All that is a long way of saying, it’s likely that, though you’ll hear a lot about Florida and Michigan, they are probably not going to end up mattering in any significant way. It’s possible, but unlikely.

John McCain
Now that we know that John McCain is the nominee, the media loves to talk about what a great advantage it is that the Republicans have their nominee but the Democrats don’t. To some extent, there are advantages for McCain, but keep in mind, they are not advantages with respect to the Democrats; they are advantages with respect to the other possible scenario – a long, drawn-out Republican nomination fight.

McCain now has time to focus on trying to get the right-wing of his party to like him. He can do things that make him look presidential, like traveling overseas. He also has time to develop a state-to-state strategy, and to begin the process of raising money for a national campaign.
But while McCain is enjoying a number of advantages, Barack Obama also gets to enjoy advantages with McCain as the nominee:

1. He gets to make the electability argument: For months, Hillary’s trump card against Obama is that she’s tested and ready, capable of fending off the Republicans better than Obama. But recent polling shows this to be unlikely. In four of six recent polls, Hillary loses a general election match-up with McCain. Obama wins in every poll. The most recent, done by Time Magazine has Obama winning 48-41, and Hillary tying 46-46. This allows Obama to say that he is more electable than Hillary (a message already put out in a memo from the campaign, and incorporated into his stump speech).

2. He gets to collect Independent voters: Throughout much of the campaign, Obama and McCain have been fighting with each other for Independents. Many states hold open primaries, in which Independents are allowed to choose whether to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary. One of the reasons that Obama lost New Hampshire, for example, was that the Independents chose to play in the Republican primary instead of the Democratic primary. But now that McCain is the nominee, there is little reason for the Independents to vote in the Republican primary. As a result, in every remaining open primary (including Virginia, Texas, and Ohio, among others) we should expect a larger segment of independent voters on the Democratic side. And to put this in perspective, Obama has been beating Hillary among independents by 25-40 point margins.

3. McCain doesn’t have a target: If Obama was already the nominee, McCain would focus all of his venom at him. Instead, he has to choose who to target. Since he has a much stronger rationale for his race against Hillary, throughout the campaign, he has focused most of his attention on attacking her. The more that happens, the less Obama needs to respond.

4. The big news story isn’t about McCain: Because of the unprecedented nature of this Democratic race, it will continue to be the front page story and top headline on TV for some time. McCain is going to see a lot less air time than Barack Obama over the next two months, and most of the conversation about him will be that conservatives can’t stand him and that people like Ann Coulter have said they would vote for Hillary before McCain. He’s stuck with the third story on the news, and it’s usually a bad one.

Ultimately, this is obviously an exceptionally close race with a lot of complexity and none of the analysis above takes into account the possibility for an unpredictable, trajectory-changing event. But given the current situation, Obama is better positioned than Hillary to win the nomination. Her numbers in most polls have remained high, but relatively static throughout the last 6 months. His, on the other hand, continue to grow at staggering rates. Add to that the fact that he was able to raise $32 million in January and will probably raise more than $40 million in February, his will be one of the only campaigns in history (if not the only) that doesn’t have to concern itself with how to allocate limited resources. They can spend their money on whatever they want. The more people get to know him, the more they like him – and money buys exposure.

So despite everything you’ve been reading about a deadlock, it turns out, it’s Obama’s to lose.