Given that the delegates are allocated by congressional district, wouldn't it be nice if some of CNN's maps actually broke the results down on a district-by-district basis? Instead I've been watching analysis of an irrelevant county-by-county breakdown.
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Show Us The Districts!
05 Feb 2008 11:36 pm
Comments (36)
Wolf keeps telling viewers it is a "very complicated system" of allocating delegates. He's had 48 hours of non-stop stating "right now", without bothering to explain it.
The US generates interesting presidential candidates, but the lamest television commentators.
believe it or not, the NYT's website is the best thing out there for tonight.
The MSM has been impossible all night. Endless segments of time-filling Tom Brokaw-style blather, and uninformed "What does it all mean?? meta-analysis. Most of these characters seem not to have done their homework, and they all seem mathematically illiterate.
Ultimately, the interpretation of the results isn't a subjective, intuitive phenomenon - it's a mathematically objective electoral phenomenon. It's about delegates. The candidate who wins the most delegates wins the night.
Obama' campaign made a great move tonight by saving his speech till the end, rather than rushing to get on before bed time on the East Coast.
"Ultimately, the interpretation of the results isn't a subjective, intuitive phenomenon - it's a mathematically objective electoral phenomenon. It's about delegates. The candidate who wins the most delegates wins the night."
Since the number of superdelegates awarded tonight will surely be larger than the margin between the number of pledged delegate for each candidate tonight, you are not correct.
In a superdelegate decided race, the results are indeed a subjective, intuitive phenomenon.
What's up with calling Missouri for Clinton? Obama has pulled within 3,200 votes.
State election counts are usually organized by county for their own purposes. So it's not too surprising CNN would use that framework. But if they hired a mathematician (outside of the accounting department), they might be able to make some good estimates on the district counts. But it might cost them .00001% of their payroll, so they won't do that. Of course, the districts will announce the vote, but that's not publicly available yet. But we'll find out tomorrow.
Hah! Now Obama's got the lead with 98% reporting. Oops.
So which network will admit that they called Missouri for Clinton mistakenly? I was watching the county-by-county results, and for a while, the only remaining counties with substantial votes uncounted have been St Louis City, St Louis County, and Boone (home of U of Missouri), all with big Obama margins. He's got this thing.
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns/dcd/index.htm
Free of ads and Wolf Blitzer. Probably more accurate too (note how the Bay Area has just started reporting).
Fox called MO for Obama now.
"So which network will admit that they called Missouri for Clinton mistakenly?"
AP was the one with the incorrect call.
USAToday also has breakdowns by districts.
Here is Cali:
http://content.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/results.aspx?sp=ca&oi=p&rti=e&loc=interstitialskip
They can't do it if the state doesn't report it: the voting's often organised and reported by county, and districts cross county lines. So it'll come down to a precinct count.
The reporting's been atrocious, though.
As I tried to explain to Matthew two hours ago, according to Chuck Todd, Obama did indeed win the ex-California delegate race tonight.
Todd thinks the total delegate count tonight including California will be very close to even.
At this point, based on the data already out, Clinton is going to get 25-35 more delegates than Obama out of Super Tuesday, which is miniscule out of the ~1600 total delegates the two of them will split; it's a differential of 1.5-2% of the total delegates. That's super close. Obama will win the state count by 13-9 or 12-10.
Takeaways from the night:
1) Evangelicals really only want to vote and will only vote in numbers for another overt evangelical. If Huckabee as VP may very well be the difference in the general.
2) Hispanics and Asians and, to a lesser extent, Catholics (I'm basing that on Italian and Irish voters) don't like Obama at all.
Petey is back.
I'm still pissed at blah above for stealing my name the day I started using it here. Punk.
Correction: Hillary will win the delegate count vs. Obama by 10-30 on Super Tuesday.
I made too much money today on Intrade taking candy from fucking babies.
Sold Obama when the exit polls came in, understanding that the exits overrepresent the Obama demographic.
Covered as the results began to disprove them.
Bought Obama after California was called for Clinton, understanding that he'd fare well in the delegate count.
Selling now.
Too fucking easy. Obama has gyrated between 35 and 60 today based on stupid people. The only easier money I've made on the Democratic side this cycle was selling Obama to win Michigan to stupid people who didn't understand he wasn't on the ballot.
Fuck you. I have been using this name for over a year on this site.
Chuck Todd estimated the delagate count, using Clinton's numbers for California, as follows:
841 Obama
837 Clinton
It's going to be very very close.
I don't think the reporting's that bad. They're giving us delegate counts as they have them. ABC just showed Obama at +15 with about 2/3 in; that's closing the gap substantially.
Until there are more people out there like Petey, political prediction markets are really only useful for lining his pockets.
If you're interested in the raw CA district numbers, they're here:
http://vote.ss.ca.gov/Returns/dcd/all.htm
Pretty boffo showing for Clinton thus far, though I expect Obama to close a little bit. Edwards may pick up a delegate or two.
Looking at the Missouri county map, doesn't this look good for Hillary? Obama's only won five counties.
Chuck Todd estimated the delagate count, using Clinton's numbers for California, as follows:
841 Obama
837 Clinton
I can't vouch for Chuck Todd's numbers. Obama's guy says he has the lead among pledged delegates, 606-534.
Petey,
your story about easy money on Intrade re: Michigan and Obama, reminded me of the story I heard earlier today that I thought was a real hoot: that hundreds of voters in Virginia called the Election Commission complaining that they found polling places were closed today.
In a superdelegate decided race, the results are indeed a subjective, intuitive phenomenon.
OK, fair enough Petey. But assuming Clinton wins New Mexico, that's 13 states for Obama tonight and 9 for Clinton. The delegate count predictions look roughly even, with perhaps a narrow margin for Obama. Obama has surged to win states like Missouri where he was recently trailing, and Clinton has done no more than hold serve in states where she was always ahead. She hasn't picked off any surprises that I count. So by my own subjective, intuitive take this is an Obama night, and he's still the candidate with the bullet.
In post-primary analysis of the California results, I'll be interested in seeing the breakdown between voters who cast ballots early by mail and those who voted on primary day.
Looking at the Missouri county map, doesn't this look good for Hillary? Obama's only won five counties.
Unfortunately for Clinton, Obama won where most of the actual people live.
"So by my own subjective, intuitive take this is an Obama night"
If you are a superdelegate, Dan Kervick, your take would be of some value.
If the delegate count is as close as it appears it may be (less than 50-delegate overall win, either way), I don't see how either side "winning" makes a real difference. Neither Obama nor Hillary are going to win the nomination because they got ~50 more delegates on Super Tuesday. It would be more accurate to simply say the two candidates tied.
"It would be more accurate to simply say the two candidates tied."
That's going to be the headline out of this.
It'll be amazing if this Super Duper Tuesday turns out to be a wash - the whole day would be basically meaningless on the Dem side. I'm glad I watched Pau's Laker debut (pretty good!) instead of the political coverage.
Obama does really well in caucus states. He famously won Iowa, and today he took 6 of the 7 caucus states, almost all by 2-1 margins and some by 3-1, and just took the lead in NM with 37% reporting. Caucuses may lend themselves to wider margins of victory, but neither CO or MN are tiny states, and they're both swing states, and Obama cruised to 2-1 victories in both.
I think it's notable that he's dominating in caucus states.
"I'm glad I watched Pau's Laker debut (pretty good!) instead of the political coverage."
I took a break from the coverage 7pm to 9:30pm to finally get around to watching Monday's Nuggets nice overtime win in Portland sans Camby. All Bubbachuck down the stretch, including the game winner. He may be running on borrowed time, but he's still running.
The returns are submitted by county registrars, that 's why the media does it that way... presumably the state secretaries of state have to disaggregate and then reaggregate by CD.
... sorry if this is repetitive... I haven't read the other comments...
Results are reported by counties or by county however the congressional districts never perfectly follow county lines. Thus, there is probably no way to figure out district by district without having precinct level results data combined with the congressional boundaries in GIS formats.
It could be done, but the hangup is that precinct level data is probably not reported quickly enough (or at that level of detail) to do it on election night.
So if that level of detail is missing, news organizations would need to extrapolate from a more general level of data and scale it down and estimate it statistically. They could do this in this case, but they would have to caveat it heavily.
County results are not "irrelevant." They provide suggestions of the demographic nature of the candidates' support, are more easy to calculate than congressional distrit results, and are more easily comparable accross time.
Comments closed February 19, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Chuck Todd'll be doing it on MSNBC in an hour or two.
Posted by Petey | February 5, 2008 11:40 PM