March 4 primary discussion and results

[Crossroads Inc.]

you do realize that if Clinton gets both Texas and Ohio, the Media is going to basiclly declare her "Winner" completly forgetting the whole 11st win in a row for Obama?

Im being serious, if Clinton takes both Texas and Ohio, Obama has effectivly "lost"

[Darth Wong]

bah, Hillary just took a small lead in texas.

Hillary always had an advantage in Texas anyway. She's not really that much different from a typical Republican, after all.

[Cairber]

Ohio goes to Hlillary...sigh....and this goes on and on and on...

[D.Turtle]

CNN projects that Clinton wins Ohio.

The thing with Texas is this: The way the delegates are assigned is favorable for Obama. In addition, there is still the Caucus which will go strongly for Obama.

[Frank Hipper]

Mike, the intelligent people in Ohio would like for you to stop making blanket statements that include all 10 of us.

We would, yes.

On the bright side, Jean fucking Schmidt might just be on her way out; Vic Wulfsin has won the Democratic nomination for her district, and she only very narrowly lost to Schmidt last time around when the Repubs were in better shape than they are today.

Ohio goes to Hlillary...sigh....and this goes on and on and on...

She can win Ohio yet still lose in the number of delegates she gets with that "victory", you know.

[Xisiqomelir]

Is it state law in OH to drop the ball when the eyes of the nation are upon you?

[Cairber]

I know she will still be behind in delegates even with 3 victories tonight, but that won't stop the media from turning pro-Hillary and the whole thing dragging on and on and turning into a dirty battle over superdelegates.

[Surlethe]

NBC is projecting Clinton to win Ohio. NPR still says it's too close to call.

[Fire Fly]

According to the exit polls from Texas, Latinos made up 30% of the primary electorate while African Americans made up only 19% of the primary electorate. I don't understand, when you have the most viable African American candidate in American election history, the African American turnout is incredibly pathetic. Why do they keep thinking that the country isn't ready for a black president? He's fucking made it this far!

Fuck...this is going to be a depressing night because the media will proclaim Hillary's comeback and the fight will go on and the Clinton machine will continue to throw more false accusations and dirt in every direction and cling to whatever straws they can find.

[D.Turtle]

Erm, maybe there are more Hispanics (35.7%) than African-Americans(11.9%) in Texas (from here?

However, the important thing is this:
Most Hispanics live in Districts that have an even number of delegates, which means you need very large advantages in order to get a delegate advantage out of it.

Most African-Americans are in Districts with an odd number of Delegates, which means even a small lead will get Obama a Delegate advantage out of it.

Clinton speech just starting. She won't quit.

Amazing how successful moving the goalposts is.

[Xisiqomelir]

According to the exit polls from Texas, Latinos made up 30% of the primary electorate while African Americans made up only 19% of the primary electorate. I don't understand, when you have the most viable African American candidate in American election history, the African American turnout is incredibly pathetic.

Uh...that's pretty close to Texas' actual demographics (36% Latino, 12% black).

[Fire Fly]

Well I was expecting there to be an unrepresentative, biased poll given how late this primary election is and how close to the end it is.

[Natorgator]

Goddammit, it looks like she may win Texas too.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Which means that Obama has obviouslly "Lost"

Look forward to the media talking about "the comeback kid" for the next month and support for Obama evaporating overnight

[That NOS Guy]

Which means that Obama has obviouslly "Lost"

Look forward to the media talking about "the comeback kid" for the next month and support for Obama evaporating overnight

Just like after New Hampshire right? Remember how that turned out?

[Patrick Degan]

A mixed bag which means a bloody road ahead to the convention.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman points out that even if Clinton wins both the crucial primaries (so far it's looking like she and Obama will both go 2-2 for the day), the pressure will mount for her to drop out of the race:

Howard Fineman

Chris Matthews just made fun of me on "Hardball"—it wouldn't be the first time!—for saying that we won't know how dire, how hopeless, Sen. Hillary Clinton's situation is until later tonight. We'll know it when we see it, I said. What are you, the Supreme Court? Chris asked with justifiable glee.

But the fact is, after all of the money and message and machinations, the fate of the Clinton campaign depends not just on the vote totals or delegates won per se, but on how the whole thing feels by, say, midnight.

It's no longer a question of what Hillary herself thinks—she wants to stay for the duration, a close friend of hers tells me—but whether and when the leaders of the Democratic Party unite, publicly and privately, to tell her to get out if she wants to have a future leadership role in her own party.

As my colleague Jon Alter convincing showed today—calculator in hand-there is just no way, barring some kind of cataclysmic event, that Clinton can overtake Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates. Obama won't have enough of them to clinch the nomination on that basis alone, but she can't catch him.

So Clinton's only chance rests with winning over party elders, and the 794 superdelegates who are free to vote for whomever they choose regardless of the primary or caucus results in their own state. By my count, about 350 of them remain up for grabs.

But she needs to do more than just eke out a victory or two tonight to make the claim that Obama is somehow unelectable. Instead of having won 11 in a row, he will have won, say, 13 out of the last 15 events. Not exactly a collapse.

Obama won Vermont, the home of Ben and Jerry. So that means Hillary essentially has to sweep the rest to fully forestall a move by party leaders to tell her to quit.

I have spent a good part of the day listening to dueling conference calls from the Clinton and Obama camps. Howard Dean is right in what he just said to Chris on Hardball. So far, the "attacks" are a "tea party" compared with what is to come.

But if Clinton continues to the next stage-if the results tonight allow her to fend off those telling her to quit—the next round is going to be a lot nastier. It's going to get into Obama's South Side Chicago roots; into some of the wilder statements of his longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright; and into the not-so-sly raising of doubts about Obama's religious beliefs.

Does Hillary really want to go there? Maybe not, which is why I think some of her own supporters (and maybe even some of her own campaign aides) would just as soon that this thing end tonight.

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

Next, Jonathan Alter points out why the delegate math doesn't work out for Clinton to retake the lead enough (if at all) to win the nomination outright:

Jonathan Alter

Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There's only one problem with this analysis: they can't count.

I'm no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I've scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don't look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries.

So here we go: Let's assume Hillary beats expectations and wins Ohio tonight 55-45, Rhode Island 55-45, Texas, 53-47 and (this is highly improbable), ties in Vermont, 50-50.

Then it's on to Wyoming on Saturday, where, let's say, the momentum of today helps her win 53-47. Next Tuesday in Mississippi—where African-Americans play a big role in the Democratic primary—she shocks the political world by winning 52-48.

Then on April 22, the big one, Pennsylvania—and it's a Hillary blowout, 60-40, with Clinton picking up a whopping 32 delegates. She wins both of Guam's two delegates on May 30, and Indiana's proximity to Illinois does Obama no good on May 6, with the Hoosiers going for Hillary 55-45. The same day brings another huge upset in a heavily African-American state: enough North Carolina blacks desert Obama to give the state to Hillary 52-48, netting her five more delegates.

Suppose May 13 in West Virginia is no kinder to Obama, and he loses by double digits, netting Clinton two delegates. The identical 55-45 result on May 20 in Kentucky nets her five more. The same day brings Oregon, a classic Obama state. Oops! He loses there 52-48. Hillary wins by 10 in Montana and South Dakota on June 3, and primary season ends on June 7 in Puerto Rico with another big Viva Clinton! Hillary pulls off a 60-40 landslide, giving her another 11 delegates. She has enjoyed a string of 16 victories in a row over three months.

So at the end of regulation, Hillary's the nominee, right? Actually, this much-too-generous scenario (which doesn't even account for Texas's weird "pri-caucus" system, which favors Obama in delegate selection) still leaves the pledged-delegate score at 1,634 for Obama to 1,576 for Clinton. That's a 58-delegate lead.

Let's say the Democratic National Committee schedules do-overs in Florida and (heavily African-American) Michigan. Hillary wins big yet again. But the chances of her netting 56 delegates out of those two states would require two more huge margins. (Unfortunately the Slate calculator isn't helping me here.)

So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

For all of those who have been trashing me for saying this thing is over, please feel free to do your own math. Give Hillary 75 percent in Kentucky and Indiana. Give her a blowout in Oregon. You will still have a hard time getting her through the process with a pledged-delegate lead.

The Clintonites can spin to their heart's content about how Obama can't carry any large states besides Illinois. How he can't close the deal. How they've got the Big Mo now.

Tell it to Slate's Delegate Calculator.

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

The aforementioned delegate counter:

Slate's delegate counter

Methodology

* The current number of pledged delegates comes from NBC News' tally.

* We estimate the number of delegates based on the overall state vote, even though delegates are awarded by congressional district as well. We felt comfortable making this approximation because in the primaries through Super Tuesday there was only a 1.6 percent deviation between the percentage of the overall vote and the percentage of delegates awarded in primaries. The proportion of delegates awarded by congressional district, therefore, does not differ greatly from the statewide breakdown.

* The calculator does not include Michigan's and Florida's delegations because the DNC stripped the states of their delegates for moving their primaries earlier in the electoral calendar. It is possible that these states' delegations will be seated at the convention but unlikely if it's a close contest.

* The calculator does not incorporate superdelegates into its calculations. Superdelegates are unpledged and uncommitted and therefore can change their endorsements and convention votes at any time. As a result, we've simply noted at the bottom of the calculator how many superdelegates the leading candidate needs to win the nomination in a given scenario.

* All of the calculator's formulas and data come from Jason Furman, the director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.

Tonight's numbers do not look encouraging for Team Clinton. She will gain only an extra thirty delegates over Obama in Ohio and Texas is going to erase that gain thanks to its weird little system which only Texas could conceivably concoct which will give Obama a delegate tie even if he loses the vote margin (though it looks like he may win even the primary vote at this point). If tonight's results hold, Hillary picks up 190 pledged delegates to Obama's 181. Which means that her campaign effort in four states netted her only a nine delegate lead for the day and she's still 116 behind in pledged delegates.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Damnit. And I hoped for a crushing defeat for Hillary. Guess either a drawn out fight, or the Democrats will implode. I will rue it if we have McCain as the President.

[Fire Fly]

If Hillary takes just the Texas primary, that's all the pretext she needs to keep her campaign going until Puerto Rico.

[D.Turtle]

Well it seems this will continue to go on.

The question is if Hillary can hold on much longer.

It is quite clear that Hillary can not catch up with the pledged delegates.

In other words: She needs the superdelegates. I'm wondering how much something like this will put a stop to that idea: Tom Brokaw Says Obama Has 50 More Superdelegates in His Back Pocket

Basically, Obama will go out of this day having a pledged delegate lead just as big as before. He now needs to continue to cut into the superdelegate lead. Once he has both a pledged delegate and a superdelegate lead, Hillary will have no way to seriously stay in the campaign and survive it politically.

From the 2008 Democratic Convention Watch

If Obama really has 50 superdelegates who will announce within the next few days, he can finish her off. Within the next few days, people will have time to look at the results from today and really take a look at the consequences: Hillary has made no (significant) inroads to closing the pledged delegate gap, she has defended some states that she had a humongous lead in just a few weeks ago, etc. She needed to win big today. She didn't.

She is finished. Its just a question of her realizing this.

[D.Turtle]

And CNN calls the Texas Primary for Hillary Clinton.

The important thing about this is this: They are calling the primary result, not the delegates. The delegates, who are more important, will most probably (with Caucus results definitely) go to Obama. It will just take a day or two for the media to realize this.

The role of the Obama campaign will be to drive this point home again and again.

[Patrick Degan]

With the results being more or less final, Hillary, for her March Super Tuesday effort in four states, netted a grand total of 18 delegates over Obama. Overall, nothing has changed —as if today's vote didn't even happen as far as momentum is concerned.

[Knife]

With the results being more or less final, Hillary, for her March Super Tuesday effort in four states, netted a grand total of 18 delegates over Obama. Overall, nothing has changed —as if today's vote didn't even happen as far as momentum is concerned.

I'm behind a bit... 18 delegates in total count or 18 delegates in that particular race?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Hillary always had an advantage in Texas anyway. She's not really that much different from a typical Republican, after all.

Funny you should mention that. Take look at the Democratic Results by County maps of Ohio and Texas and compare how they split for Clinton and Obama against how they tend to split in general elections. Obama carried all the urban counties and Hillary took the rural ones, just as the Dems and GOP do in general elections, respectively. It's kind of interesting. If you scroll over the Ohio map county by county, you'll find that the state split pretty close all around, except where the state rolls up into Appalachia near WV and KY--the very nicest part of Ohio, in other words.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hillary always had an advantage in Texas anyway. She's not really that much different from a typical Republican, after all.

Funny you should mention that. Take look at the Democratic Results by County maps of Ohio and Texas and compare how they split for Clinton and Obama against how they tend to split in general elections. Obama carried all the urban counties and Hillary took the rural ones, just as the Dems and GOP do in general elections, respectively. It's kind of interesting. If you scroll over the Ohio map county by county, you'll find that the state split pretty close all around, except where the state rolls up into Appalachia near WV and KY--the very nicest part of Ohio, in other words.

It will get more ironic if the average IQ of the voter who votes for Obama is higher than voter who votes for Hillary. Not only ironic, it just adds to the fact that Hillary is a Republican hack.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Obama was probably hurt in Ohio by the recent news leak that some Obama staffer had confided to Canadian trade officials that Obama's threat to tear up NAFTA was nothing more than campaign posturing (never mind the fact that Clinton's identical threat is almost certainly the same thing).

Minor nitpick; Austan Goolsbee is Obama's go-to guy for economics stuff he may have a roll in Senator Obama's policy formation, and he was one of those who went to reassure Canadian officials.

If I were an Ohio voter I would be annoyed by the transparency of the lie about trade. If Clinton has sent someone to speak to the Canadians, it hasn't leaked out (as far as I know), so she looks a little better in that regard.