Electoral College: Obama weakens in Colorado

More bad state by state poll news for Obama. Colorado slips from "Weak Obama" to "Lean Obama" putting it in that "could really go either way" category. This improves McCain's best case numbers.

Current Summary:

McCain Best Case - McCain 352, Obama 186
Obama Best Case - Obama 308, McCain 230

And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) - Obama 281, McCain 257

Notice how much better McCain's best case is than Obama's best case. Even though the "every body gets their leans" number is in Obama's favor at the moment, the range of possible outcomes here gives many more ways for McCain to win than Obama has.

If you were forced to pick a winner today based on current polls, it would almost certainly be McCain. Of course, we have many months to go, and a "bounce" is expected whenever the Democrats finally pick a nominee. But still...

	Abulsme - Thu, 17 Apr 2008, 16:47:39 UTC - ElecColl
	Permalink and Comments [0 comments]

CNN Catches up on Counts

CNN's intern has apparently been asleep at the switch in recent days/weeks, because all of a sudden they do a big update on their delegate counts, presumably just catching up with developments they missed when they actually happened because they figured people weren't paying attention or some such. The way they display their data makes it impossible to completely dissect the changes, but there were updates in the delegate counts in at least seven states, plus there were some new superdelegate revisions.

All together, Obama gets 4 new pledged delegates and 8 new superdelegates while Clinton gets 7 new pledged delegates and 2 more superdelegates. Net is Obama gains 12 while Clinton gains 9. Turns out this ratio is pretty close to the ratio of delegates they already had, so this has very little effect on the percent of delegates each candidate has.

Since I haven't mentioned the actual numbers in awhile, here they are.

Right now Obama has 52.0% of the delegates, Clinton has 47.4% and Edwards has 0.6%.

More importantly though, there are 888 delegates left that have not been allocated or who have not declared a preference.

To win Clinton needs 527 of them (59.3%).
To win Obama needs 381 of them (42.9%).
To win Edwards needs... well, Edwards can't win. :-)

	Abulsme - Thu, 17 Apr 2008, 15:47:43 UTC - News
	Permalink and Comments [0 comments]

90 Minutes Later

Caught up on my news feeds. Looks like almost all the Democratic leaning blogs agree with my comments on the questions being horrible, while some right leaning blogs really liked them. Most people all around though seem to think that Clinton did much better than Obama. When I was grading them question by question, I gave both Clinton and Obama six questions, and thought four were ties. So I really didn't see that. Although in my count Obama only caught up near the end, for most of the debate I had Clinton ahead. And I can certainly see looking back that Clinton was a bit more energized, and Obama was on the defensive a LOT. In the end though, I'll stick by my conclusion that this debate won't make much difference one way or another... well... at least I'll stick by that for now.

	Abulsme - Thu, 17 Apr 2008, 06:17:36 UTC - News
	Permalink and Comments [0 comments]

After the Debate

I remained spoiler and spin free, having not watched, listened to or read anything about the debate until I watched it straight through myself. Having just finished, my thoughts:

• I am glad someone told them during one of the breaks to stop looking up at the audience and start looking at the questioners and the cameras, they were both looking like idiots.
• I can't believe they spent the entire first 45 minutes of the debate on bullshit stuff like Bosnia, Flag Pins, Joint Tickets, the small town comments, etc. This is all the kind of stuff that pundits can spend time blabbing about, but none of them are actually worth time in a real debate. Talk about stuff that matters please.
• Otherwise, I counted who I thought did better question by question for the whole debate. I think as a whole it was a draw. Nobody threw any knockout punches, nobody made any big mistakes. I don't think this debate will end up effecting the dynamics of the race in either PA or in general much... if at all.

At least that is my thought unspoiled by other people's thoughts. Now it is time to watch a bunch of commentary on it, and read even more. I'll find out if my thoughts are in line with others, or if I'm completely out on my own. :-)

	Abulsme - Thu, 17 Apr 2008, 04:52:42 UTC - News
	Permalink and Comments [0 comments]