Been holding this one back until the numbers were clearer. BTW, I did manage to get the winners of SC and OK right, guessed very badly wrong on DE, sorta badly about Dean in general (he came pretty close in AZ to picking up delegates, but not quite, and didn’t do nearly well enough in NM) and more or less called it about Edwards and second place. IOW, ehh.
Now, according to my I-don’t-think-I-screwed-anything-up numbers, and assuming that the statewide pledged delegates go the way of the rest, the delegate breakdown went like this (as 12:14 AM, February 4, 2004):
State SC MO OK AZ NM DE ND
Kerry 18 49 12 34 13 15 10 Total 151 56%
Edwrd 27 25 14 — — — — Total 066 25%
Clark — — 14 21 07 — 04 Total 046 17%
Dean — — — — 06 — — Total 006 02%
Total 45 74 40 55 26 15 14 Total 269
So far, so good. Thus, total pledged delegates are
Kerry 183 54%
Edwards 84 25%
Clark 46 14%
Dean 23 7%
or
Kerry 164 56%
Edwards 66 23%
Clark 46 16%
Dean 15 5%
for purists who don’t count their Iowa delegates until they actually, like, get actually chosen. What does this mean?
For starters, Kerry isn’t quite in as good shape as he thinks he is. Yup, he won five of the races above, including the biggest two. So stipulated. However, of the other three NM was a 3-way split and the other two, combined, gave him a mere 25 delegates. More to the point, his percentage of delegate acquisition was essentially unchanged from when he was going into this contest: Kerry started with 56% (or 54%) of pledged delegates to date… and ended with 56%. He needs 61% of the pledged delegates to have a lock on the nomination (actually, soon he’ll start needing more). He doesn’t get those, he has to make deals to get the rest. He could still get those delegates – but Edwards is definitely showing promise, Clark’s finally on the board (and rumored to be backed by the same people that Kerry may need to appease in order to get the nomination*) and the fate of Dean has yet to be seen.
Second, front-loading the primaries may end up backfiring on those who wanted to avoid a brokered convention. A nonbrokered one is still the safe way to bet… but it ain’t a sure thing anymore.
Third, I desperately need a real life. This kind of wonkery cannot be good for me.
Moe
*Funny, that.