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It's a Tie -- Enter the Superdelegates

By Jack M. Balkin

According to the Obama campaign, he won 845 of the 1671 pledged delegates last night, to Senator Clinton's 836. This appears to be roughly consistent, give or take a few delegates, with others' estimates, as well -- see here and here. When added to his previous 63-48 lead, that would give Obama a 908 to 884 lead in pledged delegates. (The Obama campaign's estimate of his own pick-ups might even be a bit short -- he might have won four more delegates than he assumed in California, according to this calculation. There are also seven more delegates to be chosen from Democrats abroad who voted yesterday.)

Only 1428 pledged delegates are still to be chosen in the remaining primaries and caucuses. Thus, in order to enter the convention with a majority (2025 delegates), Senator Obama would need to win 1117 of those remaining delegates, or over 78 percent. Senator Clinton would need to win 1141 delegates, or 80 percent. Obviously, neither of the candidates is going to secure anywhere close to a majority before the August convention. It is more likely that each will end up with between 1500 and 1700 pledged delegates, i.e., at least 300 delegates short of what they need to win.

Therefore, the Democratic nomination will be decided by the 796 "superdelegates." They include all Democratic members of the Congress, Democratic governors, various other elected officials, and the members of the Democratic National Committee.

Just over 300 of the superdelegates have already announced who they intend to support, and Senator Clinton is ahead by about 90 such delegates in most counts. (Here is one list of those who have already announced their endorsement.) Most of those delegates presumably will stick by their announcements, but they are not bound to do so.

All of which is to say that over the next seven months the two candidates will likely be spending at least as much energy trying to secure commitments from superdelegates as they do trying to "win" primaries. That does not mean that the primaries themselves will be unimportant -- to the contrary, the results of the primaries (particularly the March 4th Ohio primary?) might well convince a majority of superdelegates that one candidate or the other is more likely to prevail against John McCain in November. But it is almost certain that those superdelegates will choose the nominee.

What about Florida and Michigan? One blogger's view: If and when the nominee is otherwise selected, the Florida and Michigan delegates will probably be allowed to vote. I can't imagine, however, that the party will permit the Florida and Michigan delegates to determine the winner of the election (that is, to break a virtual tie or to leapfrog Clinton over Obama), unless perhaps if Senator Clinton already has a substantial delegate lead over Senator Obama and would have been likely to win anyway.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers writes that the credentials committee that will rule on Florida and Michigan will itself roughly approximate the delegate allocation of the two candidates. Thus, if Clinton has more delegates, the committee will likely choose to count Florida and Michigan, which could give her a majority. If Obama is "clearly" ahead, the committee will likely vote not to count Florida and Michigan.

Similarly as to the superdelegates, Bowers surmises that "as long as there is a candidate with a clear edge in both pledged delegates and voter support during the nomination contests, in all likelihood the super delegates will back that candidate. While, as both pledged delegate totals and dueling popularity metrics show, we have not arrived at that point, odds are that we will arrive at that point by June 4th, the day after the nominating contests come to an end. It does not have to be a large advantage, just as long as it is a clear advantage."

The problem scenario, according to Bowers, is if Obama is ahead, but not "clearly," that is, by fewer than 100 delegates: "The only way we will faced with a brokered convention that produces a nominee with questionable legitimacy is if no clear popular vote or pledged delegate leader emerges at the end of the primary and caucus season. Basically, I think this means that if Obama wins pledged delegates, but does so outside of Michigan and Florida by less than 100, we are in for a real mess. Otherwise, the process should work pretty well, and I have probably been panicking unnecessarily. Hopefully, either Clinton or Obama will emerge a clear winner even without Michigan and Florida combined, and we will have nothing to worry about."

Full post as published by Balkinization on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).