Monday, April 28, 2008

Why Hillary Should Concede: Obama's Real Lead is an Insurmountable 15%

It has been a valiant, if not noble, effort from the Clinton Campaign, but the writing is now on the wall. As the Pennsylvania results come in, and Hillary gained a mere 10 pledged delegates (PDs), the writing is on the wall. Barak Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for president, barring an untimely death, major scandal, or group insanity on the part of the super delegates.

Here's the delegate math. Current pledged delegates:

Obama - 1489 1/2
Clinton - 1336 1/2

That 1/2 delegate is but one testimony to the absurdity of the Democratic party nomination process. Nonetheless, it is now Obama's nomination to lose. With only 566 PDs in the remaining primaries (Guam, Indiana, NC, WVa, KT, OR, PR, MT, and SD), Hillary would have to win 64% of them to catch Obama, which the media has talked about.

However, since Obama is heavily favored in NC and OR, that is really not a meaningful stat. Were the final states California and Arkansas, it might even be realistic for Hillary to catch him. For a more realistic analysis, I looked at the latest polls, and calculated how much Hillary would have to outperform the polls to catch Obama. The answer:

15%

That is, for Hillary to catch Obama she would have to get 15% more of the vote in every single remaining state than the polls currently predict. Now we all know polls occasionally miss the mark, but not in that many states to that extent all at once. She'd have to get figures like 85% in Kentucky and 60% in North Carolina. Not gonna happen.

So hang it up Hillary. All you are doing now is wasting time and money, and the only result is to damage your own party's candidate.
Even Mitt Romney knew when to call it quits.

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