NBC & CNN Call Ohio for Clinton

Congratulations, HIllary and all your supporters! It's a great race and you're putting up a great fight. On to the next contest!

I was browsing the Texas results as they are at about 11:30 PM Central time. Some interesting items. First, black voters are not showing the gender division that both Latino and white voters show. Clinton wins white women about 60-40 and white men are split clean down the middle at 50-50, while Obama wins both black women and black men at 85-15. Virtually no difference.

The other intriguing thing is that Obama is winning every major Texan city - Houston, DFW, and Austin, while Clinton is winning virtually everywhere else. This is interesting because Obama's generally been doing well in more rural areas, killing in Idaho and elsewhere. But here Clinton is sweeping rural Texas.

It looks like it's going to be a tie. Clinton is winning the primary about 50 - 48, but Obama has a greater lead in the caucuses. While the caucuses give a smaller number of delegates, his greater margin might bring things back to the middle.

We will see...

And while one part of me wants to say about the Democratic race, "Make it stop!!" congrats to Sen. Clinton about the Ohio win regardless.

I've been eating up the polling data for Ohio and Texas from the NY Times web site.

Ohio
Texas

There are many fascinating and sometimes surprising things. Here's one. Of the people who think that gender is an important issue, both in both Texas and Ohio, they vote close to 60% for Clinton. If you think it's not important, it's 50/50. No surprise there. In Texas, if you think race is either important or not important, it makes no difference to how you voted, remains 50/50 in both conditions. Ohio is the same for the "race is unimportant" block, but, in Ohio, if race IS important, they voted 57% for Clinton. Isn't that a bit odd, considering one crack against Obama is that people are just voting for his race? One way to read that poll is that there's actually a causal effect. You think race is important and therefore you voted for the white person. But it could also be that you think race is important, but it had nothing to do with your vote at all. After all 57% is about Clinton's percentage across the state.

Anyway, it's fascinating stuff in these polls.

It sure looks like Texas is going to be a draw. As I read it, there are 126 delegates from the primaries and 60-odd from the caucuses. Clinton is currently winning 51%-47%. However, this will probably narrow a bit as the main places we don't have full results from yet are Harris and Dallas Counties, where Obama is ahead. However, unless my math is horrible, there aren't enough votes left for Obama to come all the way back (he's down about 100,000 votes). That gives Clinton a primary victory, but perhaps at a 50-48 margin or something like that. However, the State of Texas office is already giving a delegate number of 63 to Clinton and 62 to Obama. A single delegate. Again this will likely shift a bit before the night is through, but Clinton's strongest place with many voters is in South Texas and, due to Texas' delegate allocation rules in which delegates are alloted based upon area participation in the last election, it looks like fewer actual delegates will go there as opposed to the large cities (Obama's stronghold). All of this sound like it will keep the primary delegate count about even, with a delegate or two victory going to one of the candidates.

But then you have the 60 delegates from the caucuses. With only 34% reporting as of now, Obama is winning the caucuses 55-45. Assuming this holds up, that gives Obama a 33-27 delegate win. Putting all that together, Obama may lose the Texas primary vote by about 3%, but either pick up about 4 delegates in Texas.

Putting the whole night together, Vermont and RI almost cancel each other out, but Clinton picks up about 2 or so. Adding this difference to my Texas prediction puts Obama up about 2. Finally, adding in Ohio, where it looks like Clinton will have a delegate margin of about 17, you end up with a net Clinton gain of approximately 15 delegates over Obama for the night.

Obama currently has about a 100 vote margin in total delegates, which would narrow to 85. It's 130 pledged delegates which would narrow to 115.

Can Clinton really come back?

How many primaries are left? Looks to be 12. Here they are listed in chronological order with my random guess on their outcomes:

Wyoming caucus: This has been a protypical Obama victory so far
Mississippi primary: Should go for Obama like the other deep south states
Pennsylvania primary: I'll call for Clinton, based on the Ohio results (but Philly?)
Guam: no idea, but only 9 delegates
Indiana primary: no idea really (anyone?)
North Carolina: Based on Virginia and SC victories, research triangle: Obama
West Virginia: Clinton just because of the poverty demographics (anyone?)
Kentucky: Don't know. Clinton took Tennessee and Ark., right?
Oregon: should be classic Obama Dems here, but prim., not caucus
Montana: again Obama's been winning all of these
South Dakota: ditto to Montana
Puerto Rico: Clinton just because of the Hispanic trend in her favor.

Giving all my I-don't-knows to Clinton, it's 1/2 for Obama and 1/2 for Clinton.

If after everything that's happened today, the entire delegate pick-up is 15, it's hard to imagine Clinton making up another 85 delegates from this list, even if she takes six of them.

Doing the delegate count, there are 747 pledged delegates left. Clinton needs to gain 85 delegates on Obama to pull even (in the superdelegate+pledged delegate count, 115 for just pledged). It looks like she needs to win about 56% of the delegates from here on out to hit the 85 number. That would give her 418 more delegates and Obama 329 more, a margin of 89. If she actually wants to have more pledged delegates, she needs 57.5% or so.

Due to the states listed above, I think that's harder than it looks. Even if she wins PA by 60%, Obama will surely have substantial victories in places like Mississippi and South Dakota, probably Oregon... NC and IN could become critical here. Still 56% will not look impossible to Clinton supporters.

Looks like we're going to at least Pennsylvania.

(And I know my math is messed up here in places.)

The short version of my above comment: For Clinton to pull even in the delegate count before the convention, she'll need to win 56% in every single state remaining, or win by 60-65% in PA, IN, NC, and PR. For the former scenario, she will have to win in the sorts of states she has not won in yet in the entire contest (Wyoming, Mississippi). For the latter, she will have to win by margins that she's only seen a single time in every victory she's had so far. She's only gotten 60% or more of a state's votes one time -- Arkansas. She needs a complete momentum shift in her favor such that the Obama campaign collapses.

The other alternative is to go to the conventions trailing by some amount in pledged delegates and pull out a superdelegate win.

I warned the silliest adn more boorish on here, on the Obama side (not that they'll ever learn) -- they have been premature.

Pennsylvania is next, and it is big.

And something will likely be done with Florida and Michigan before this is over.

I'm no fan of Clinton, and I'm glad to see this contest continue. I want it to continue all the way to a meaningful convention in Denver.

"she'll need to win 56% in every single state remaining, or win by 60-65% in PA, IN, NC, and PR"

but

"trailing by some amount in pledged delegates and pull out a superdelegate win"

Now consider the addition somehow of votes from Michigan and Florida. They can't be seated as regular delegates but what if it's possible to increase the number of superdelegates, which would come from -- Michigan and Florida?