Handicapping Super Tuesday

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday in America, and it's shaping up to be a unique election day. Millions have been spent, thousands of miles logged, hundreds of barbs tossed, and it's all supposed to culminate in tomorrow's 22-state voting extravaganza. But — at least for the Democrats — it may decide nothing at all.

It's being portrayed as a foregone conclusion that John McCain will seal up the Republican nomination tomorrow, but much like 2000 taught us about hanging chads, tomorrow is looking like it will be the first segment in 2008's ongoing civics lesson: Democratic delegate math.

First: the polls. They're all over the place, but one trend is certain — Barack Obama is has gained significant ground on Hillary Clinton in the nine days since his massive victory in the South Carolina primary. Today, for the first time, a national opinion poll put Obama ahead of Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Other national polls have shown Obama closing the gap on Clinton, but what really matters are the state-by-state votes, or even the votes of individual Congressional districts, on the basis of which individual delegate calculations are determined.

Westmonster doesn't know the exact formula by which the Democratic Party allocates delegates for the nominating convention, but it appears it's roughly as transparent a process as a Papal selection, but without the palace intrigue. From the information we have, if Obama and Clinton split the vote tomorrow by roughly 60%-40%, or anything closer, delegates will be apportioned more or less equally. In other words, with the race having tightened significantly and both candidates positioned to take a significant number of states, it's highly unlikely either candidate will emerge Wednesday morning with the sort of delegate count that would either (a) force out the other candidate, or (b) force the other candidate's money to dry up.

This could lead to what Politico's Ben Smith calls The Pennsylvania Scenario. There is a gap in primaries from Mississippi's on 11th March to Pennsylvania's on 22nd April. Smith does a better job explaining than Westmonster ever could, but this scenario dictates that if neither Super Tuesday nor the handful of primaries occurring over the course of the following month yields a nominee, that would give Clinton and Obama about 6 weeks of retail campaigning leading up to Pennsylvania.

Did you get all that? Westmonster didn't either. But we're very much looking forward to see how Super Tuesday plays out. Gordon bottled our election, so we've gone all-in on the American contest.

It's Barack v Hillary, Bill v Oprah, Scarlett Johanssen v Barbra Streisand.

In short, 'tis a very American election.

Written by Andrew Levy on 4 Feb 2008 3:42 PM. Permalink