Hi, this is my first diary here, and I hope that people will find it interesting. While I’m a Canadian citizen, and thus have no truly vested interest in either the election or the primary, I am an ardent follower of American politics, if only because no one does a horse race like you Americans. To this end, I’ve done some work with the superdelegate numbers, mostly for my own amusement, and since I haven’t seen any data like this here, I figured I‘d throw mine up and see what people thought. My data is compiled from demconwatch and from the Superdelegate Transparency Project.
Basically, I’ve only looked at superdelegates from states that have already had primaries or caucuses. While this does leave out a good chunk of the delegates, it’ll make more sense in terms of the numbers I’m looking at. Also, many of the states far down the road have large numbers of uncommitted delegates that could easily end up not mattering at all. Note that I do support Barack Obama, but that I am trying here to look impartially at the numbers.
That being said, some numbers: Total number of super-delegates in states that have completed primary: 520 Uncommitted: 187 Total committed: 332 Total committed to Obama: 142 (42.77%) Total committed to Clinton: 190 (57.23%)
This is not particularly surprising, as Clinton still holds about a 60 superdelegate lead, though this has been steadily shrinking.
Number of superdelegates in jurisdictions won by Obama: 303 (58.27%) Number of superdelegates in jurisdictions won by Clinton: 217 (41.73%)
Pretty close to an exact reversal in terms of the number of delegates that each candidate "deserves", that is they won the congressional district for congress members, or the state for all other superdelegates. So if superdelegates were expected to follow ‘the will of the voters’, Obama would have a huge lead in the overall delegate count. There are of course caveats to this, since all non-federally elected superdelegates should not necessarily be expected to follow their state (i.e. some may have their own jurisdictions that I don’t know about, such as state senate districts).
Note that some data may not be totally correct here, I’m not sure if Obama won every congressional district in Colorado, but I assume he did.
Number of committed superdelegates that agree with ‘the will of the people’: 216 (65.06%) Number that do not: 116 (34.94%)
Around a third of superdelegates are going against the will of their constituents. Not a huge number, likely not enough to ‘steal’ the convention, but a significant number.
Obama delegates that agree with the ‘will of the people’: 105 (73.94% of Obama delegates) Obama delegates that do not: 37 (26.06% of Obama delegates)
Clinton delegates that agree with the ‘will of the people’: 111 (58.42% of Clinton delegates) Clinton delegates that do not: 79 (41.58% of Clinton delegates)
There is a clear difference here, but it’s not one that you couldn’t have guessed from the above results. Certainly, it’s not as egregious a difference as I had expected it to be.
This is all superdelegates, though. Let’s focus only on federally elected officials (FEOs), and assume others are free to do whatever they like (i.e. have no constituency).
Total number of FEOs in states that have completed primary: 221 Uncommitted: 68 Total committed: 153 Total committed to Obama: 76 (49.67%) Total committed to Clinton: 77 (50.33%)
Fascinating! Obama is nearly even in elected officials. I’m not sure what this means, but it really surprised me to see that all of Clinton’s superdelegate lead comes from non-FEOs. I guess it means that more were willing to wait it out and see what would happen, but who knows.
Number of FEOs in jurisdictions won by Obama: 121 (54.75%) Number of FEOs in jurisdictions won by Clinton: 100 (45.25%)
This is a much better comparison with the committed numbers, as shown below.
Number of committed FEOs that agree with ‘the will of the people’: 113 (73.68%) Number that do not: 40 (26.14%) I’m not sure if this is really a matter of FEOs listening to the people better, or just a reflection of their more even support reflecting a pretty even race in terms of overall delegates.
Obama FEOs that agree with the ‘will of the people’: 60 (78.95% of Obama FEOs) Obama FEOs that do not: 16 (21.05% of Obama FEOs)
Clinton FEOs that agree with the ‘will of the people’: 53 (68.83% of Clinton FEOs) Clinton FEOs that do not: 24 (31.17% of Clinton FEOs)
Obama’s percentage numbers are almost identical to the overall superdelegate numbers, while Clinton’s take a big jump towards the ‘will of the people’.
Finally, some more trivial, individual state analyses.
States with 100% agreement: Arkansas (10 Clinton, 1 undecided) Idaho (3 Obama, 1 undecided) Illinois (20 Obama, 6 undecided) North Dakota (5 Obama, 2 undecided) Nebraska (4 Obama, 2 undecided)
Yes, New York is not 100%, thanks to DNC member Marianne Spraggins, the only NY superdelegate for Obama.
States with 0% agreement Louisiana (1 Clinton, 8 undecided) Delaware (3 Clinton, 4 undecided)
C’mon Louisiana, choose already. Louisiana easily is the least decisive state. Is there some general agreement that they won’t endorse ‘till later, or is it just random?
Senators who picked differently than their state: John Kerry + Ted Kennedy, MA Patty Murray + Maria Cantwell, WA Barbara Mikulski, MD Daniel Inouye, HI
The first pair have been talked about just a little during this campaign. The Washington senators were going against their governor, plus the Obama ‘caucus advantage’. Mikulski and Inouye both committed well before Iowa, let alone before their states actually voted.
Governors who picked differently than their state: Janet Napolitano, AZ Ruth Ann Miner, DE Deval Patrick, MA Martin O’Malley, MD All these endorsements came at least a few weeks before voting, with a couple, O’Malley and Patrick, documented in mid-2007 on demconwatch.
Governors and senators whose states have voted, but not endorsed: Tom Harkin, IA John Lynch, NH Harry Reid, NV Barbara Boxer, CA Bill Ritter + Ken Salazar, CO Joe Biden + Tom Carper, DE Amy Klobuchar, MN Frank Lautenberg, NJ Bill Richardson + Jeff Bingaman, NM Brad Henry, OK Phil Bredesen, TN Mary Landrieu, LA Ben Cardin, MD Jim Webb, VA Herb Kohl, WI
For a lot of these people, an endorsement now wouldn’t be that big of news, so it’d be fairly unlikely. The obvious exceptions are the majority leader and the presidential candidates, Reid, Biden and Richardson.
There’s probably still some useful data to mine from this, but I’m tuckered out, so if anyone can come up with anything, I’d be happy to add it. This may not have been the most electrifying of reads, but I think it has some interesting information, and is a good idea of the state of the superdelegate race, so I hope you enjoyed it.