2025: The Wrong Number
QUESTION: What do the following numbers have in common: 3, 7, 8, and 2025?
ANSWER: They’re “magic numbers.”
RESPONSE: Well, okay. 3 and 7 and 8 are magic numbers — and maybe even 6. But 2025? C’mon.
REPLY: Yes, of course it is, 2025 is the number of delegates required to win the Democratic presidential nomination. For Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, 2025 is the magic number.
To which George Sterzinger, a regular reader of “The Monkey Cage,” retorts, “Oh, yeah?”
I just did a Google search on “2025 delegates” and came up with 263,000 hits. It’s the number that’s out there. Unless something changes, it’s the wrong number.
Here’s George’s recalculation:
UPDATE: I’ve revised George’s calculations, as per Phil Young’s comment (see below).
Common wisdom has it that to win the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton must win 2025 delegates. At this moment, the bean counters at RealClearPolitics put Obama at 1573 delegates and Clinton at 1434. (These numbers include declared Super Delegates.) Looking out at the remaining states, the conventional wisdom again says it is unlikely that either candidate will get to the 2025 total because Obama, with more delegates currently, would have to win 60% of the remaining 729 delegates to get there — and that wouild be difficult.
Let’s take a closer look at the magic number of 2025 delegates, which turns out not be be magic at all. It follows from the proposition that winning the nomination requires a simple majority of the total available delegates. Because 4049 total delegates were originally available, any candidate who got 2025 of them would have a simple majority and therefore would become the nominee. BUT with the Michigan and Florida delegates removed, the picture changes … and so does the math.
Michigan had a total of 128 delegates and Florida had 185, for a combined total of 313. These have been zeroed out and under the current rules are not available for anyone to win. Without them, the total number of delegates drops from 4049 to 3736. A simple majority of the total delegates actually available is 1869 … not 2025 — unless Michigan and Florida somehow contrive to have their delegates restored.
What does this change? The remaining states have 729 delegates up for grabs. Obama needs to win 296 additional delegates or 41% of them to get to the simple majority. Clinton has 1434 pledged delegates, so for her to get to 1869 she needs an additional 435 delegates, or 60% of the total.
For Obama supporters, the Michigan- and Florida-less mathematics are friendly because they make it even easier to pick up the remaining delegates we would need to put him over the top.
Comments
Lee,
I wondered where Gap had gone to.
Gap—I think your math is a litte off.
How can Obama need 296 and Clinton only 405 of the 707 votes? If that were correct, they could both win, since the 296 + 405 = 701. To put it differently, Obama could get 296, Clinton could get 406, and then who wins?
I believe the problem resides with your original math. There are 729 delegates remaining (once Michigan and Florida are excluded)—not 707. 729=4049-128-185-1573-1434.
Obama needs 296 to win; Clinton needs 435 to win. Obama would then need just under 41% of the remaining delegates, whereas Clinton would need just under 60%.
p.s. For some reason CNN reports that only 2024 delegates are needed to win the nomination. Are they wrong?
p.p.s. Don’t you just love bean counters?
Posted by: Phil | March 7, 2008 12:35 PM
Doesn’t the 4,049 figure already exclude Florida and Michigan’s delegates. According to The Green Papers, the “alternative soft total” of delegates, which would be the total if all the currently prohibited delegates were seated, is 4,414. Take away Florida’s 210 and Michigan’s 156, and you’re down to 4,047. (Not sure where 4,049 comes from.)
Posted by: Seth Masket | March 7, 2008 01:03 PM
In all the discussions about including FLorida and Michigan back in the race the 2025 has never been raised as far as I know.
Posted by: george sterzinger | March 7, 2008 01:50 PM
Fun. I love messing around with elections.
Posted by: Matt Jarvis | March 7, 2008 02:21 PM
This USA Today article from a couple of weeks ago mentions the 2208 figure that Seth alluded to above. One caveat to that is that if Florida and Michigan hold do-over contests, does that qualify the both states for the bonus delegates that the Democratic party allocates to states opting for later delegate selection events? My suspicion, given the DNC’s stance on this situation so far is no. However, it does call into question what the actual winning number is.
Andrew Busch (in his chapter in William Mayer’s In Pursuit of the White House 2000), discusses the origins of the bonus system the RNC instituted to curb frontloading ahead of the 2000 cycle.
The decision making calculus of the Florida/Michigan situation is a talking point over at Frontloading HQ if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Josh Putnam | March 7, 2008 04:20 PM
Seth is correct that the “2025” number excludes MI and FL.
Remember, though, that the number of superdelegates isn’t fixed — supers are automatic within several broad categories, and the numbers within those categories can shift. For example, all Democratic Members of the House are supers, and so if that number goes down through resignations or deaths, or up through special elections, the number of supers will change, and so will the number needed to win. For that matter, there’s no guarantee that every super will even show up, and there are no alternates to replace Members of Congress or past DNC chairs. So the magic number is only an as-of-now thing. The current number is 2024 (see the folks at 2008 Democratic Convention Watch, plus I heard Dean give that number this week), excluding FL and MI.
Posted by: Jonathan Bernstein | March 7, 2008 11:13 PM