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Posted: February 6, 2008 2:37 AM
Race for States Over, Campaigns Focus on Delegate Counts
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Even before the winners in the final states were declared, the campaigns of Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., knew that Feb. 5 would not secure a national front-runner for the Democratic primary race.

Both camps were quick to claim momentum, but it will be the slow reporting of the allocated delegates that will show where the race for the nomination stands now. And from most analysis early Wednesday morning, it appeared the campaigns would remain nearly tied in the race for the 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic primary nomination.

“They’re both going to get a chance to recover if they lose something and get a chance to consolidate if they keep winning,” political consultant Bill Carrick told the Associated Press. “The delegate count is going to be so close that this is going to go on for a while.”

Of the 22 states holding Democratic nominating contests on Super Tuesday, Obama was projected to have at least 12, while Clinton captured eight. Networks were split over the results in Missouri, where Obama led in most results, and in New Mexico, where the race remained close with less than half the precincts reporting.

Clinton’s victories came in such delegate rich states as New York, New Jersey and California. For his part, Obama scored wins in Georgia, Minnesota and his home state of Illinois.

But unlike the Republicans, the Democratic Party awards its delegates proportionally — meaning results in individual Congressional Districts dictate how many delegates each candidate receives — and not as much by the state-wide vote.

That meant the campaigns worked to find strategies that would maximize their delegate counts. Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss explained: “One thing we’ve even seen today in the last few weeks is that candidates are making their decisions not on the basis of the state, but a congressional district where they can have some chance of winning a number of delegates.”

Though Clinton won the Golden State, Obama focused on cutting down her strong lead there.

“California is the big prize. All along they’ve said that they want to keep Hillary Clinton’s delegate lead there as small as possible to help them make it up elsewhere,” said Don Gonyea, NPR correspondent. “They aren’t predicting victory there; they just want it to be close enough.”

In fact, tricky delegate rules in California mean that the significance of Clinton’s win is not so clear. As explained by the Online NewsHour, the number of delegates earned by a candidate is determined both by the percentage vote won and if a Congressional District has an even or odd number of delegates.

“There’s some real kinky math in it,” Carrick told the Los Angeles Times. “The end result is that even if you lose in a two-candidate race, you can get an even split in delegates. And the winner can pick up the extra delegate in the odd-numbered districts.”

Because Tuesday’s result will be inconclusive, the candidates are already looking ahead of Feb. 5 and onto big contests in Texas and Ohio on March 4 and Pennsylvania in April.

“I look forward to continuing our campaign and our debate about how to leave this country better off for the next generation,” Clinton told a crowd of supporters in New York on Tuesday night.

Obama was also optimistic for future races. “Our time has come. Our movement is real. And change is coming to America,” he said at a rally in Chicago.

Success on the Democratic side will likely come through a series of victories in states with both large and small delegate counts, but may come down to the votes of super delegates — the approximate 796 high-ranking Democratic party officials whose votes are not pledged during primary races, but can vote at the national convention in August.