Weekly Primary Report: 3/2

This week we have five contests coming up, sort of. On Tuesday 3/4 there are primaries in Ohio, where Clinton holds a narrow lead in the polls, but Obama is rising fast, Texas, where Obama has passed Clinton, Rhode Island, where Clinton holds a commanding lead, and Vermont, where Obama holds a commanding lead. In addition, Texas has caucuses. Their hybrid system is best described as weird, so you can me sure that delegate counts will be slow in coming. On Saturday, 3/8 Democrats caucus in Wyoming. There is no polling data available from there. I world recommend against going to Wyoming for political celebration. The GOP has already caucused there, and as a result, 90% of the prostitutes and 50% of the sheep now have social diseases.

The Democrats

The Polls

The following numbers and graphs are from Pollster.

State	Date	Polls	Obama	Clinton	P. Delegates
Ohio	Mar 04	7	43.1%	47.9%	141
Rhode Island	Mar 04	3	39.3%	51.3%	21
Texas	Mar 04	10	47.2%	45.8%	193
Vermont	Mar 04	3	56.7%	35.3%	15

Ohio

Texas

I’ve had considerable experience in opinion research, and I’ve never seen anything like those graphs!

The Delegates

	Pledged	Super	Total	Pledged	Super	Total
Clinton	1031	236	1267	46.5%	56.1%	48.1%
Obama	1184	185	1369	53.5%	43.9%	51.9%
Total	2215	421	2636

Overall, the Democrats will have 4049 delegates at their convention. Of those 3,253 will be pledged delegates and 796 will be super delegates. I oppose the inclusion of the super delegates, because they give roughly 20% of the power to nominate to party insiders. They include Senators, Representatives, Governors, DNC members, and other party hacks, and they are not bound to represent the will of the voters.

The Republicans

The Delegates

	Pledged	Uncom	Total	Pledged	Uncom	Total
Huckabee	244	3	247	19.8%	4.3%	19.0%
McCain	967	66	1033	78.5%	95.7%	79.4%
Paul	21	0	21	1.7%	0.0%	1.6%
Total	1232	69	1301

Overall, Republicans will have 2,380 delegates at their convention. Of those 1,913 are pledged delegates and 463 are unpledged delegates. But of the 463 unpledged delegates, 340 of them are unpledged by stare rules. The remaining 123 delegates are RNC members.

Looking Forward

I’m not going to make any predictions until after the results, except that if Obama wins both Ohio and Texas, this may well be over.

Cross-posted from Politics Plus