Here are my predictions for what will happen on Super Tuesday…
For the Republicans, its all about California. It has more electoral votes than anywhere else in the country, and is winner-take-all. This means that, as in the general election, the candidate with the most popular votes in the state wins all the delegates from the state. Romney has made enough of a late push to make this one a toss-up. The polls are tied heading into election day, and the “undecided voters” in those polls that make up their minds and vote today will determine the winner. Romney absolutely needs this win. If he doesn’t get California, the Republican primary is for all intensive purposes over, as McCain will have almost enough (if not enough) delegates to secure the nomination. If you want my prediction, I’ll say Romney by a nose in CA, and McCain with a large majority of the rest of the delegates. This will be enough to keep Romney alive. What will be interesting is if it keeps him alive long enough for Mike Huckabee to drop out of the race. If it does, the right-wing of the Republican party will likely rally around Romney and the fight for the nomination could get interesting.
If you want predictions for what will happen to the Democracts today, its a little more complicated. Every state assigns delegates proportionally to the vote tally. This means that a Democrat that gets 51% of the popular vote will only get ~51% of the delegates from that state. It gets even more complicated, because there are different rules for every state, as some do it proportionally by state vote, some proportionally by county or congressional district vote, and some by a mixture of them. Throw in the occasional caucus system and the votes that go to Party Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEOs), and its a mess to predict. Nonetheless, some have tried. A fairly detailed prediction can be found at this Daily Kos diary. (Conservatives, this is a link to a liberal blog, so just hold your noses and check it out if you’re interested. Its a good read.) Interestingly, it appears that again it all comes down to the golden state. Why? Well… CA still has the most delegates. But just as important is the uncertainty in California polling over the last week. Its been all over the place. Just today, there were two polls released there, one with Obama up 12 points and the other with Clinton up 12 points. If I had to predict things, I’d say we’d see a repeat of Nevada, with Clinton getting a narrow victory in the popular vote, and Obama winning a slight majority of the state’s delegates based on a more strategic volunteer deployment. The net result of this is both would claim victory in CA and on Super Tuesday, and the two candidates would end up nearly tied in elected delegates. Let’s say things are a little closer than they are in Poblano’s projection (based on the closer CA results) and the final delegate tally is Obama 853, Clinton 835. Either way, things will be close on the Democrats’ side after today. It will stay that way for a while, and the big focus will be on Texas and Ohio over the next month, whose primaries will be followed by 6 weeks of campaigning in Pennsylvania. This likely won’t end before then, so those of you that live here in State College with me should get a chance to see both Democratic candidates.
