Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker does some number crunching and comes up with some interesting conclusions:
Let's look down the road a bit. In 2004, Democratic turnout in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania combined was about three million. We can reasonably expect that it will be about 20 per cent higher this year, or about 3,600,000.For Clinton to even the popular score, she needs to win those three states by a collective 54 to 46 per cent, or 8 points. That's unlikely but not inconceivable. However, this calculation includes the votes Clinton got in Michigan (where Obama was not on the ballot) and the totals for Florida (where no one campaigned). Including these, especially Michigan's, is politically and morally dubious.
If Florida's votes are counted but not Michigan's, then Clinton needs to carry Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania by 59 per cent to 41 per cent, or 17 points, in order to match Obama's vote totals. And if results from both Florida and Michigan are excluded, she needs to win by 62 per cent to 38 per cent. Margins like these do not seem within the realm of possibility.
One more number. In this year's Democratic primaries, the equivalent of Al Gore's national popular-vote margin in the 2000 general election would be around 125,000 votes. So if the final difference between Clinton and Obama is more than that, it will be awkward, to say the least, for the superdelegates to take it upon themselves to reverse the voters' choice.
As I said in my last post, national polling is somewhat meaningless at this point -- at least in terms of predicting where the race for the Democratic nomination stands (because the majority of the states have already voted but they're nevertheless still included in the national polls).
That said, the actual nationwide popular vote could be important come this summer, particularly in the eventuality that nether candidate can hit the magic number of 2,025 delegates. In such a case, it just doesn't look possible that Hillary Clinton would be able to overtake Barack Obama in the overall popular vote in the states in which both were on the ballot (every state except for Michigan) -- and certainly not in the states in which both were on the ballot and actively campaigned (i.e. every state save for Florida and Michigan). As Hertzberg says in a section not quoted above, while this would not be binding in a legal sense, it could be "politically dispositive."
Update [2008-2-21 19:47:45 by Jonathan Singer]: To be clear, I'm not advocating for deciding the nomination on the basis of the nationwide primary vote, because that's not my intent. This is all about delegates. At the same time, because superdelegates do matter and, in the case that this goes all the way to the convention, this metric will likely be important to these superdelegates, I think it's worth noting that Clinton faces a significant uphill climb (and perhaps an impossible one) to take a lead in the overall vote in states that will be seated at the Democratic convention.
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