- RT @Oatmeal: This is the web right now http://t.co/ajCPFXUk #
- Reading – Amazon releases “Send to Kindle” desktop software for the Mac (Jacqui Cheng) http://t.co/hFSqMIfV #
- Reading – A Few Notes on the RNC Meeting and the 2016 Rules (Josh Putnam) http://t.co/AbrFQZv0 #
- RT @ZekeJMiller: RT @indecision: Tonight might be the last night Newt Gingrich is relevant. Just kidding. He’s never been relevant. #
- RT @SonofConway: I think they should bring back the Whig Party #
- RT @FHQ: Ha! NE is correct. Last contest in July. RT @DavidMDrucker: @LarrySabato It ain’t over till Indiana, or Nebraska… #
- RT @jimantle: Delaware is so far the only state where Gingrich is beating Ron Paul. #
- MT @FHQ: Romney set to pick up all 17 delegates in #deprimary & all 25 in #ctprimary Paul will qualify for delegates in #riprimary #
- MT @FHQ: Romney on pace to trigger WTA in #nyprimary That 34 delegates & is ahead in 23 districts (46 more delegates). 6 dist yet 2 report. #
- MT @FHQ: Paul going to qualify for delegates in #riprimary Looks like 12 delegates for Romney & 4 for Paul. Romney also has 3 automatics. #
- Reading – King County GOP leader boots caucus outside after Ron Paul backers take over (Jim Brunner) http://t.co/1OSEFtsi #
- Reading – A teacher, a student and a 39-year-long lesson in forgiveness (Tom Hallman Jr.) http://t.co/Pb8kwkNw #
- RT @FHQ: Rough, ROUGH #paprimary delegate count: Uncommitted/unconfirmed 16 or 17, Romney 7, Paul 5, Gingrich 4 and Santorum 3 or 4. [1/2] #
- RT @FHQ: Remaining 23 #paprimary delegates are elected officials, county-endorsed people & previous delegates/alternates. [2/2] #
- RT @FHQ: RT @charliepolitico: Protest vote alert: Mitt Romney carried every single county in all 5 states #
- MT @TheGreenPapers: CT, DE, NY, PA, RI Pres Primary Recap. PA statewide Primary Recap. http://t.co/aSxMWO9Q #
- Reading – Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party (Ernesto, TorrentFreak) http://t.co/qV8BcvS7 #
- RT @blakehounshell: RT @AP Gingrich to suspend presidential bid Tuesday, exit GOP race to pave way for Romney. #
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You may have heard some reports that this already happened back at the beginning of April (CNN reported it for instance), but I can’t figure out any math to back that up other than someone mistakenly thinking that since more than 50% of the Republican delegates had been allocated, the same must have been true for the Democrats. Not true. Different calendars. Anyway, while the fun has been on the Republican Side I have been diligently tracking the Green Papers numbers for the Democrats too. Their soft count does not include Democratic Superdelegates, but I think it is a pretty safe bet that 100% of the Democratic Superdelegates will vote for Obama at the convention, so I have been including those in my own counts for the Democrats. Given that assumption, plus Green Papers’ tally of the results from primaries and estimated results from caucuses, as of yesterday’s contests we have this delegate count:
Sorry Randall and Jim. I don’t think this year is going to be your year. Anyway, 2776 delegates are needed to win the nomination on the Democratic side, and as of today, Obama exceeds that number. This is of course no surprise to anybody. If anything, it is surprising 10 delegates went to someone else. The chart’s of Obama’s walk to victory follow, but they aren’t as interesting as the equivalents on the Republican side this year.
And two bonus charts I include for the Republicans on the 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page but not on my blog updates…
Of course, nothing is actually official until the convention. But I think we have a Democratic nominee. :-) Note added 16:28 UTC: To be absolutely strict, if you look at Green Paper’s “Hard Count” which only includes delegates officially bound to Obama, and not estimates from caucuses, and not officially uncommitted delegates who unofficially are identified Obama delegates, and not any of the super delegates, Obama only has 1940 delegates, so still has some ways to go. But I think including the superdelegates, estimates from caucuses, and officially uncommitted delegates known to support Obama is completely reasonable. So I’m willing to call this clinched. :-)
Not much to say here. The small gap between Romney’s rate of accumulating delegates compared to McCain’s in 2008 has completely closed. It is absolutely clear that any differences in perception on how fast Romney was “closing the deal” vs McCain were 100% due to the elongated calendar. When you look at things by % of delegates accumulated vs % of delegates allocated, the two years track each other very closely. In the early days of the campaign (before about 20% of the delegates) Romney was actually a bit ahead of McCain’s pace. From there though 50% or so, Romney was slightly behind McCain’s pace. The key word being slightly. And now they once again very closely match. So that whole narrative about Romney not matching McCain’s performance in 2008… just completely not true in terms of the delegate races. It just seemed that way because everything happened in a comparatively compressed timeframe in 2008.
Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur. First big primary day in awhile, and of course Romney dominates.
So, for the day… Romney +157, Paul +9, Gingrich +4, Santorum +3. Romney gets 90.8% of the delegates today. Way more than the 40.2% he needed to stay on track to get to 1144. And with this, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are both mathematically eliminated. More specifically, if they were now to get 100% of the remaining delegates they would still not get to 1144. In order to get to 1144, they would actually need to take delegates away from the other candidates, either through final results in caucus states being better for them than earlier estimates, or through actual defections. Both are possible. However, neither will happen in large enough numbers to change anything, absent something catastrophic that causes Romney to actually drop out. Uh, which is highly unlikely. For the remaining two candidates, in terms of “% of remaining delegates needed to win”:
So, theoretically Santorum could still catch up and win by getting 95% of the remaining delegates. Needless to say that won’t happen. His already long odds were made worse by suspending his campaign. Meanwhile, neither Gingrich or Paul have suspended their campaigns. There are indications Gingrich might do so soon despite previous vows to stay in until Tampa. Paul has shown no signs of stopping. The 31% of the remaining delegates Romney needs to wrap this up should be very easy for him to get. But we still have to wait for the calendar. So the march goes on… Update 2012 Apr 27 12:34 UTC: I was incorrect about the Pennsylvania count above and had misread Green Paper’s statement. In fact the new total in Pennsylvania was indeed Romney 11, not Romney 12. There were 10 new Romey delegates added to the count, not 11. They did not forget the one superdelegate. I just got twisted around thinking the 11 was a delta from the election instead of a new total, which would have left one delegate out. But it was indeed the new new total. This makes the total for this day Romney +156, Paul +9, Gingrich +4, Santorum +3. That gives Romney 90.7% of the delegates for the day instead of 90.8%. This also changes Romney’s “% needed to win” to 31.0% instead of 30.9%. Santorum’s becomes 94.4% instead of 94.5%. These changes are too small to be visible on the graph above, but will be reflected on future updates.
Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate. Both show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Today Arizona moves from “Weak Romney” to “Lean Romney”, which makes it a swing state in our model. Starting with this update, when a state changes status, I’ll also show the polling history for that state, so the trend is visible.
Looking at the above you can see that the last five polls goes back more than three months. You can see the spread within those five polls. Seeing this information visually can help interpret the movement being discussed. In this case, Arizona goes back into the swing state category after a relatively short period as a “Weak Romney” state (since March 16th). There are a couple data points that look like they might be outliers but which still affect the average. And of course you can see that the 5 poll average is just barely in the less than 5% swing state zone. The next poll could easily change the category again. This change improves Obama’s “best case” where we give him all of the swing states.
I’ll also note that movement in the national level polls toward Romney we talked about in previous updates seems to have been short lived. Looking at the RCP Poll Average Obama dropped from a lead of 5.3% on April 11th to a lead of only 1.7% on April 18th, but as of April 24th has rebounded to a lead of 3.7%. If the move toward Romney had been sustained, I would have expected to see a lot of state polls moving in Romney’s direction over the next few weeks. With the current trend that is no longer a safe assumption. As things ebb and flow we will probably see movement toward Romney, but it won’t be the state polls catching up to the Romney spike of last week. It would be new changes based on new events. But my general philosophy is that while the national polls are a leading indicator for the state polls and there is a strong correlation between the national popular vote and the electoral college, the real race is still the 50 separate state elections. That is how presidential elections work. So one gets a better picture of the dynamics by looking at the state numbers… although you need to be cognizant of the slower pace of state polling and interpret things accordingly. So we shall not speak of national level polls again. Uh, unless there is something really interesting there to talk about. :-) Edit 2012 May 2 13:08 UTC – Adjusted horizontal scale on Arizona graph
Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur. As I mentioned Sunday, Minnesota finished up Congressional District Conventions over the weekend. These determine 24 of the 40 delegates for Minnesota. (13 more will be determined at the state convention in a few weeks and the last three are superdelegates.) Of those 24 delegates, 20 went to Ron Paul, 2 went to Santorum, and the other 2 were filled by delegates with unknown preferences. The Green Papers estimate for Minnesota’s 40 delegates prior to these results was Santorum 17, Paul 10, Romney 6, Gingrich 5 and 2 yet to be determined. Obviously given the CD Convention results, this estimate needed to be revised. The way Green Papers did this was to use the CD results then allocate the 13 delegates which will be determined at the state convention according to the February caucus results. (Then add in the one super with a known preference.) I would have allocated by analogy to the CD results instead, but this works. With that, the new estimate is Paul 24, Santorum 8, 2 Romney, 2 Gingrich, with 4 yet to be determined. This makes Minnesota the first state where Paul has “won” the state… meaning he has more delegates than anyone else according to current estimates. (He is also currently tied in the estimates for Iowa, but may pull ahead by the time that process finishes.) In any case, these new estimates give us a net change for the day of Paul +14, Gingrich -3, Romney -4, Santorum -9. This is a big enough victory for the day that Paul actually improves his position in the race… which is a pretty tall order for any non-Romney at this stage. For today anyway, Paul is on a pace to catch up and win the nomination! Of course, most days won’t be like today. Structurally they can’t be. But hey… Good day for Ron Paul! Just a bit too little and too late to actually do much other than embarrass Romney a little. So, in terms of “% of Remaining Needed to Win”:
Next up… actual new primaries! New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware should all have results in my next update. It will be interesting to see how big the non-Romney delegate haul is. At this point, votes for non-Romneys are essentially anti-Romney protest votes and Paul die-hards. Romney needs 40.2% of the delegates to be on pace to win. With Santorum out and Gingrich’s campaign in sleeper mode, this should be a fairly easy target. If he doesn’t manage that… he’ll still be the nominee… but people would call out his continued failure to wrap this up. He will almost certainly get the 40% he needs though. Who are we kidding, this is over.
So, the letter officially and publicly announcing my mom’s retirement came out last month, and I meant to post this then, but well, I got busy. Oops. The full pdf of the letter is here. The most relevant parts for those of us in the family are these:
This was of course not a surprise to us. We’d been talking about the upcoming plans for quite awhile before they were official. I am very much looking forward to having my mom nearby for the next “3-year adventure”. If all goes as planned, that means she will be here as Amy finishes high school and moves on to college, and as Alex continues to grow and moves from day care to pre-school to kindergarden to elementary school. Those are important years. As much as Alex enjoys video chatting with Grandma on the computer and on my iPhone, I’m sure he will enjoy having her around in person even more. And so will I.
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