Thursday, March 6, 2008

How much do Florida and Michigan really matter?

The Green Papers says that Clinton gains 38 delegates from Florida, if they're all counted. If the Rules Committee reverses its action, and seats half the Florida delegates (as would have happened if they hadn't acted to strip all the delegates), that will be a 19 delegate boost for Clinton. In Michigan, Clinton has 73, and Uncommitted has 55. Again, halving the delegates gives Clinton a max of 37 delegate gain, ignoring the fact that probably more Uncommitted delegates are going to go for Obama than Clinton. Therefore, Clinton can hope to get at most 56 delegates from these two states. That still puts her about 100 delegates behind Obama, meaning she has to win the remaining primaries at a 66% clip to catch him in pledged delegates -- higher than any state she's won so far besides Arkansas. Note also, that according to 20(C).1.a, of the DNC delegate selection rules, all unpledged delegates are stripped from states that violate primary timings, so the superdelegate count will not change.

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