Monday, April 11, 2016

If all delegates in the Democrat primaries were allotted on a winner take all basis, the outcome wouldn't be much different than it is

Based only on the 29 states so far where Democrats have held contests which collected a popular vote, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders with 1142 pledged and super delegates to his 371 based on the Bloomberg data here, which are not complete in instances. That's a 75% to 25% race.

Turn it into winner take all instead, and the result isn't significantly different. Hillary would have 1803 pledged and super delegates from the 16 states in which she was the popular vote winner, and Bernie would have 698 from the 13 states in which he won the popular vote. That's a 72% to 28% race.

This analysis leaves out the 301 delegates so far where no popular vote was taken. They come from Iowa, Nevada, Maine, Alaska, Washington, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana islands and something called "Democrats Abroad".

It also leaves out the delegates Bernie has "poached" from Hillary under the rules in the states she has won, as well as the delegates Hillary has poached from Bernie where he has won the popular vote. On net I calculate Bernie has had the advantage from poaching, with 334 extra delegates in his column as a result in the 29 popular vote contests (661 minus 327).

As the delegate race stands today including all contests, it's a 62% to 38% race, with Clinton holding 1756 pledged and super delegates to Sanders' 1068.

That's close to the popular vote result on a percentage basis, where Clinton leads with 57% of the popular vote so far to Sanders' 43%, keeping in mind that we don't have a popular vote from 8 states and territories so far to make the analysis complete.