The finish line is not in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Scranton or Pittsburgh today. The increasingly bitter contest between Barack Obama and Clinton (and the ongoing battles among their surrogates) will roll on to May 6 when North Carolina and Indiana vote, which very likely could negate any gains in the delegate count Clinton makes.
If you’ve ever looked at just how Pennsylvania distributes its 158 pledged delegates, it’s a convoluted mess. Statewide, only 55 delegates are distributed between the candidates according to popular vote while the remaining 103 are won and lost in the 19 individual congressional districts. And because of the system’s idiosyncratic intricacies, Clinton may win the popular vote today but come out second in the number of delegates. Read that sentence again and let it sink in.
Take Lancaster for example, where there are four delegates listed on the ballot for Obama and four for Clinton. A voter first chooses whether to support either of the two candidates, and then they can choose any four delegates among the eight. Let’s say Clinton wins Lancaster 60 percent to Obama’s 40 percent. A landslide victory, right? Except she would only net the two most popular delegates on her side of the ballot while Obama would receive the two most popular delegates on his side. Clinton would need to secure 62.5 percent of the vote to make the margin 3 delegates to 1.
Spread that out among the state, and it becomes clear that Clinton would need a victory of epic proportions to cut into Obama’s 139-delegate lead nationally. That’s a reason why pundits, journalists and supporters were saying she needs to win BIG here; not just for the perception among superdelegates who could be swayed to Clinton with a massive triumph but for practical reasons as well. If Obama keeps it close, and it appears he has up until voting today, then his lead isn’t cut that substantially and he can regain any lost ground in North Carolina, where he’s ahead of her by a large margin, and a potential win in Indiana two weeks from now.
Now, if he closed the gap on Clinton to 5 or 6 percentage points in the Democratic voter polls and loses today by 10 points or more, there’s going to be some serious question among the electorate and superdelegates about his electability.
