Reply #9: redoing the math on Ohio

[JeffWasHere]

Crazy me, I actually read the Ohio Dem. Party Delegate Selection Plan, and figured out what she won on Tuesday. The delegates are divided into 7 categories for supposedly a total of 162, but Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones qualifies in two of the categories, but she only gets one vote, so our delegate count is only 161. The 20 "superdelegates" (which are not really called that at all) are the governor (who is 100% for Hillary), our 8 Democratic members of Congress and Senate--minus Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, OH-11th, who is in the next group), 11 people picked from the Democratic National Committee--I'll give their names in a moment), and 2 extras picked by the Ohio Democratic Party Chairman). There are 141 delegates tied to the March 4th primary, divided into 3 groups. The first group contains 92 delegates, divided up among our 18 Congressional districts, with between 4 and 8 delegates per district. I did the math based on the latest figures from the Ohio Sec. of State's office, and came up with 48 delegates for Hillary and 44 for Barack. Then, there are two more groups of pledged delegates. The first group has 18, and you divide them up proportionately to the statewide vote. It looks like from the rules that you only include the votes for Hillary and Barack (not Edwards or other peripherals) to come up with the statewide percentage. I calculate the results as 55.238% for Hillary and 44.761% for Barack. Of the group of 18, Hillary gets 10 and Barack gets 8. Then there is another group of 31, divided up the same way, so Hillary gets 17 and Barack gets 14. I added them up, and get 75 for Hillary and 66 for Barack. Dailykos has it 76 for Hillary and 65 for Barack, but I checked my numbers again and I think I'm right.

Ok, so much for the pledged votes. As for the "superdelegates," it looks like Hillary has most of them locked up pretty well. I already mentioned the governor and the Democratic Congresspersons, who are: Charlie Wilson-6th, Marcia Kaptur-9th, Dennis-Kucinich-10th, Betty Sutton-13th, Tim Ryan-17th, Zack Space-18th, plus Senator Sherrod Brown. The delegates provided by the DNC are: Chris Redfern (Ohio Dem. Party Chair), Rhine McLin (ODP Vice Chair and Dayton Mayor, who officially endorsed Barack), Ron Malone (union leader), Bill Burga (union leader), Sonny Nardi (Teamsters, officially endorse Barack Obama), Mark Mallory (Mayor of Cincinnati, officially endorsed Barack), Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, OH-11, (Congresswoman and DNC delegate at the same time), Patricia Moss (union leader), Enid Goubeaux (Darke County Democratic Party Chair), Joyce Beatty (Ohio House Minority Leader). Plus there are 2 more delegates hand-picked by Chris Redfern, ODP Chair. One of these, I think, is David Wilhelm (former Chair of the DNC, former head of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, and who has publicly endorsed...Barack Obama). I can't find the name of the other one. Of these 20 people, very few who aren't already committed are likely to go for Barack now, especially given Hillary's big win in the primary. Strangely, though, I think only 6 can be clearly put in Hillary's camp: Gov. Strickland, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Ron Malone, Bill Burga, Pat Moss, and Enid Goubeaux. Kucinich will probably vote for Barack, and this also goes for the mayors of Cincinnati and Dayton, and clearly Mr. Wilhelm and Mr. Nardi. That leaves 9 toss-ups. I have a hard time believing too many other uncommitted delegates will go for Barack now that Hillary actually won, and by a pretty good margin. I'll give Barack 1 toss-up delegate, just to be fair. So, I would put Hillary at +8 here (6 clearly for Hillary, plus 8 of the 9 toss-ups, which is 14 for her versus 6 for Barack).

So, upon further reflection, I'd say that Hillary picked up a net gain of 9 + 8 = +17. If I use Dailykos calculations, it would be 11 + 8 = +19. Anyway, I think I was pretty close in my original estimate, but this now includes the "superdelegates" as well. So, Hillary actually did worse than I originally thought, because I wasn't factoring in the superdelegates in my first guess.

For one last piece of math, I'm going to figure how much Hillary would have gotten had the delegates simply been apportioned by the popular vote. I'm going to weed out votes for Edwards and Kucinich and such, and just do head to head, Hillary vs. Barack numbers. According to the Secretary of State website, Hillary received 1,212,077 votes and Barack got 982,172. This is a total of 2,194,249. So, Hillary got 55.238% and Barack got 44.761%. Using the total of 161 delegates (well, it should be 162, except for that pesky thing with Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, but I'll use the lower number). 161 x 55.238% = 88.93 (round it to 89 for Hillary), leaving 72 for Barack. This is a net difference in favor of Hillary of +17. Oh. My. God. That is exactly what I am calculating as the net gain Hillary will actually get using the bizzare formulas of the Ohio Democratic Party. I did not rig these numbers ahead of time. It just worked out this way. Maybe our primary system is not so bad after all.