Sanders won Maine 16 delegates to 9 for Clinton.
In addition, further updates to Louisiana since yesterday gave Sanders 2 more delegates and Clinton 2 less.
So effectively, as 25 new delegates were added, Sanders increased his total by 18. So 72%. Way more than the 60.26% I said he needed to be on track to catch up and win. So how does that look on the big chart?
Yeah, see that little tiny change in direction at the ends of the green and red lines? That’s it.
Sanders did indeed improve his position in the race by winning Maine by a nice large margin. Yesterday he needed 60.26% of the remaining delegates to win. Today he needs… 60.17% of the remaining delegates.
Clinton of course also had a little setback. Instead of needing 39.80% of the remaining delegates, she now needs 39.90%.
Yeah, not much of a change, is it.
After the slight speed bump in Maine, Clinton’s march to the nomination continues…
Update 2016-03-09 03:19 UTC – Full superdelegate scan in preparation for adding new delegate results. Net Clinton +4, Sanders +3. Also 1 additional delegate added to the total number of delegates. This of course does not change the analysis above significantly.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
Wait. How did Clinton get 9 delegates out of Maine? She won 2 out of about 70 districts, and got pretty crushed in all of the others. Were the two she won the most populous or something? Or is this another case of delegate allocations not making any sense?
Well, a few things at play. First of all, it is a caucus so Sunday was actually the first stage of a multi-stage process that won’t be done until May. The numbers today are estimates of how the process will play out based on this weekend’s results. The actual numbers in May might be a bit different.
Second, the Maine Democrats don’t report the actual original vote at all, just the “Qualified State Convention Delegates”. These are the delegates that are elected from the first stage of the process to go to the state convention in May when the real delegates are actually selected. Of these Sanders won 2226 and Clinton won 1231 statewide. A 64% to 36% or so split (rounding). Who won specific districts not important, it was about the number of state delegates won.
And are those 2226 and 1231 delegates beholden to the caucus votes, or free to vote however?
Finally, the actual number of delegates to the Democratic convention will depend on those state delegates voting in a few different ways. First by congressional district, then at large for the whole state. On the congressional district level, In Maine CD1 if you assume all the state delegates remain faithful to who they supported in the first round you end up with 6 Sanders delegates and 4 for Clinton. In CD2 you get 5 Sanders and 2 Clinton. In the at-large division you end up with 5 Sanders and 3 Clinton. Add them all ip and you end up with the 16 to 9 split.
Then of course you have Maine’s superdelegates. So far 3 for Clinton, 1 for Sanders, 1 who hasn’t expressed a preference. Makes the actual total for the state right now 17 Sanders, 12 Clinton, 1 TBD.
Uh, probably more info than you wanted, but if you want more, my prime source for these things is The Green Papers: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/ME-D
Given the results we just saw in the voting, any idea how likely those supers are to flip to Sanders now?
Vernon Harmon From what I can tell, today was actually electing specific individuals to be state delegates at the next level. Specifically, of the people who show up to caucus, you actually pick some of those people to go to the next level. Those people may have expressed a preference prior to you voting for them, but I believe once elected as a state delegate, they are free agents and can follow their conscience at the next level, they are not “bound” to the original results. You are voting for your neighbor Vern to be a delegate, not actually for the candidate themselves.
So how in the world can anyone predict anything from that, or say anybody won or lost anything?? What a joke.
Vernon Harmon It is highly unlikely that Supers will flip given the results of the caucuses. Of Clinton’s three superdelegates, two are on Clinton’s “Campaign Leadership Council” for Maine, so essentially on her staff. The other probably has no reason to even think about it unless Clinton was losing the pledged delegate nationally, which of course she isn’t. Maybe the currently undecided one might go Sanders as a result of the election, but that is by no means automatic. Each superdelegate is an individual who decides based on what they think is important, which may or may not include the caucus results. Oh, and by the way, this is the undecided Maine superdelegate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Bartlett
Vernon Harmon You can predict the later stages from the first (sorta) because at the first level people who put themselves up as candidates for the second level identify who they are supporting. It looks like there are actually 12 state delegates going to the state conventions who listed themselves as officially “uncommitted”, but almost all those who were elected stated a preference. So for the most part, you just assume that MOST of these state delegates will not change their mind before the state convention in May. Some might, and that might jitter a delegate or two back and forth, but most will probably stay constant, so the 16 to 9 will probably be roughly right. (Having said that, if candidates drop out between the two events, you often get those candidate’s supporters redistributing themselves to the remaining candidates rather than continuing to support the person who dropped out.)