Brianland

You’re not going to believe this — it’s right out of a great espionage novel — but just after Super Tuesday, the great veteran politico Al Hunt, now Executive Editor at Bloomberg News, was emailing with the Obama campaign, who mistakenly included in a dispatch to Hunt the campaign’s projections for all the remaining states.  But what’s really amazing is how accurate it turned out to be. 

The mighty Tim Russert was on the best political show on TV, “Morning Joe”, this morning and read out the memo’s results.  On February 6th, the Obama campaign knew they were going to win 12 in a row!  Well, except that they thought they’d lose Maine 51-49, when they actually won it.  But they called every other state exactly. 

If this was a movie review, I’d have to write:  SPOILERS AHEAD at this point.  So, stop reading if you don’t want to know what’s going to happen.

Back on Feb. 6th, the Obama campaign figured they would lose Ohio 53-46 (and they did, 54-44), lose Texas 51-47 (it was 51-48), lose Rhode Island 57-42 (it was 58-40), and that they’d win Vermont 55-45 (where they again out-performed expectations in New England, winning 59-39). 

So . . . how’s it going to play out?  In the next week:

Obama wins the Wyoming caucus 60-40 (13 delegates), and

wins the open primary in Mississippi 62-38 (34 delegates). 

The campaign thinks he will lose Pennsylvania 52-47 (the remaining big cheese-steak, with 161 proportional delegates), but then will win Guam (9 dels), Indiana (72), and the last big state North Carolina (115). 

They will then lose West Virginia (28) and Kentucky (51),

But will win Oregon (52), Montana (16), and South Dakota (15), before losing the final caucus in Puerto Rico (55). 

There was no projection of a do-over in Florida and Michigan, which are now looking increasingly likely. 

The proportional delegates divvied up in states she should win: 295

In states he should win:  326. 

After the Ohio-Texas Mini-Tuesday, NBC News estimates Hillary will gain only 8-10 delegates — leaving Obama with a net lead of around 140 voter-elected “pledged” delegates:  1,355 to 1,213.  ie; after her “big” wins last night, she hardly made a dent in his delegate lead. 

Since the campaign’s projections of the prior states have been spot-on, if the rest of it plays out as predicted, he will not lose his current lead, and will probably add to it — especially since all the delegates are allocated proportionally, and he keeps his losses much closer than she does.  She lost the 11 states before this Mini-Tuesday by an average of 33%.  Last night she only won Texas by 3%, and Ohio by 10%. 

This looks good for an Obama nomination. 

And in terms of him winning over super-delegates, besides his pretty commanding pledged delegate lead, Obama is also still ahead in the total popular vote by over 600,000, and has won 23 primaries & caucuses to her 14  —  with 2 more likely victories coming in the next week leading into the six-week primary “intermission” before Pennsylvania.