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It’s been more than 24 hours since the Super Tuesday polls closed, but analysts are still sifting through the reams of data to come out of the 22 Democratic and 21 Republican primaries and caucuses. Here’s a quick rundown of the Feb. 5 numbers that matter, drawn from various news sources as well as our own calculators.
- Turnout
27 percent of eligible citizens voted.
Dems: At least 15,417,521
GOP: At least 9,181,297
Source: Time
- Delegate Count
After tearing our hair out over how media outlets can’t agree on the post-Super Tuesday delegate count, we’ll go with the Associated Press delegate tracker. It's super-detailed, updated frequently, and seems to get the most deference from news organizations. Here’s its most recent estimate:
Dems
Clinton: 832
Obama: 821
Delegates needed for the nomination: 2,025
GOP
McCain: 698
Romney: 278
Huckabee: 192
Delegates needed for the nomination: 1,191
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign predicts he will end up with 847 delegates to Clinton’s 834. Clinton’s team has not released a specific prediction.
- Superdelegate Count
Total superdelegates: 796
Supporting Clinton: 213
Supporting Obama: 139
Source: AP
Dems
Clinton: Ariz., Ark., Calif., Mass., N.J., N.M., N.Y., Okla., Tenn. (9 states)
Obama: Ala., Alaska, Colo., Conn., Del., Ga., Idaho, Ill., Kan., Minn., Mo., N.D., Utah (13 states)
GOP
McCain: Ariz., Calif., Conn., Del., Ill., Mo., N.J., N.Y., Okla. (9 states)
Romney: Alaska, Colo., Mass., Minn., Mont., N.D., Utah (7 states)
Huckabee: Ala., Ark., Ga., Tenn., W.Va. (5 states)
Source: CNN
Clinton: 1 (American Samoa)
Obama: 7 (Alaska, Colo., Idaho, Kan., Minn., Mont., N.D.)
Huckabee: 0
McCain: 0
Romney: 5 (Alaska, Col., Minn., Mont., N.D.)
Dems
Clinton 48.97 percent (6,967,302)
Obama 48.04 percent (6,835,447)
Difference in terms of actual votes: 131,855
Source: NBC
GOP
McCain: 43.2 percent (3,657,444)
Romney: 35.5 percent (3,001,607)
Huckabee: 21.4 percent (1,809,404)
Source: Calculated using data from NBC
In the 19 states holding both Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses, more than 14 million people voted for Obama or Clinton. More than 8 million people voted for McCain or Romney or Huckabee. Thus, you could say about 73 percent more Democrats turned out than Republicans.
Source: Time
In Missouri, Democratic turnout beat GOP turnout by 70 percent. In 2000, when the state also held two primaries, the opposite was true: Republican turnout trumped the Dems’ by 56 percent.
Source: HuffPo
Obama won 82 percent of the black vote; Clinton won 53 percent of whites and 64 percent of Hispanic voters. Clinton and Obama split white men, while Clinton won white women overwhelmingly.
McCain won the majority of self-identified Republican moderates; Romney won 38 percent of self-identified Republican conservatives. Huckabee won 38 percent of evangelical Christians; McCain came in second among these voters, with 30 percent to Romney’s 27 percent.
Among Republicans who rated the economy as their top concern, McCain won with 42 percent. Clinton beat Obama among voters who said the economy is in poor condition, while Obama won among those who rated the economy good or excellent.
Obama won the youth vote nationwide, with 59 percent of voters under 30, compared with Clinton’s 38 percent. But Clinton won that demographic in California and Massachusetts.
Source: AP
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By Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin
With Super Tuesday looming, the past week has been as frenzied as any period in the presidential race so far. No longer courting one state at a time, the candidates have burned carbon and cash in record quantities, sometimes touching down in as many as three states in one day.
So, where have they visited and why? Here’s a quick rundown of their travels, with links to maps of their paths, powered by Slate’s Map the Candidates. Click on a candidate’s name to see where he or she has visited nationwide; click on a state to see the candidate’s visits within that state.
Hillary Clinton: If Clinton loses delegate-saturated California, it’s her own fault. She made four full stops in the state (plus a debate appearance), compared with Obama’s one town hall event last week. Yet, the more California sees of Clinton (or hears about Obama), the worse she does in tracking polls. Clinton also tried to protect her rapidly narrowing leads in Massachusetts, Missouri, and Connecicut—making two stops in each state. She wasted valuable time in Georgia, where Obama has a South Carolina-size lead in the polls. It appears Clinton damaged her African-American support outside of the Palmetto State, as well. Still, Clinton is the favorite going into Feb. 5, although Obama is gaining ground in nearly every state. To fight back, Clinton’s ad buy covers almost all the Feb. 5 states.
Total states: 11. Total stops: 19.
Barack Obama: Obama has been a beast on the trail the last 10 days. After winning South Carolina, Obama has buzzed his way through 16 states but hasn’t stayed long. He’s held more than one stop in only two states (California and Missouri). Eight of the states he visited, Hillary Clinton never touched. (And five of which Bill Clinton never set foot in, either.) Usually favoring massive, 20,000-person rallies over intimate affairs, Obama’s strategy has been simple: get his face in front of as many people as possible. Huge crowds turned out in Idaho, Minnesota, and Colorado. But that strategy means he can’t linger long in any state, so he has supplemented his rallies with a massive advertising budget. Obama’s Super Bowl ad buy was more impressive for its audacity than its content. All of this seems to be helping: He has seen his poll numbers jump nationwide and hasn’t had a press day since South Carolina.
Total states: 16. Total stops: 18 (through Monday).
Mike Huckabee: Other than an extended, two-day stay in California, Mike Huckabee has barely left the South. He’s made at least two stops in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma (not to mention pre-Florida-primary stops in Missouri). Huckabee figures that if he can’t capture the evangelical vote in the South, he can’t capture any piece of the vote anywhere else. Plus, Huckabee’s regional focus helps him efficiently run on whatever fiscal fumes he has left in the tank. If Huckabee were competing in the Democratic race with proportional delegate assignments, he would have a much better chance of lasting beyond Feb. 5. But in winner-take-all states, not even a concentrated focus will rescue Huckabee—even in the Evangelical South.
Total states: 7 states. Total stops: 21 (through Monday; not including stops in Florida).
John McCain: Ever since winning Florida, McCain has racked up more endorsements than a NASCAR driver. Rudy Giuliani has backed him, as has Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Forbes, Ted Olson, the Los Angeles Times, and seemingly every other mainstream paper in the country. His support in national polls is nearly double Romney’s; he beats Hillary Clinton in head-to-head matchups. And with an influx of post-New Hampshire funds, McCain has the luxury of conducting a truly national campaign. His media team said it made a seven-figure ad buy, touting McCain as the “true conservative,” in all of the Super Tuesday states except Utah. States with lots of delegates—California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts (Romney’s home turf)—crowd his schedule. But he has also dropped in on winner-take-all states Delaware and New Jersey, plus Romney strongholds (a relative term, at this point) Georgia and Alabama. And whereas Romney has dispatched his family on the trail, McCain has real surrogates like Joe Lieberman and Forbes spreading the word.
Total states: 10. Total stops: 14.
Mitt Romney: Super Tuesday could well be Romney’s last stand. The GOP primaries are largely winner-take-all, so whoever dominates is likely to emerge with a strong lead in delegates. In the past week, Romney and his jet-setting brood have focused on states with significant religious conservative populations, where McCain’s lead isn’t decisive. On Sunday alone, Mitt blitzed Missouri and Illinois, wife Ann visited Minnesota, and his son Josh campaigned in Colorado. He has also tried to chip away at Mike Huckabee’s base in evangelical strongholds Tennessee and Georgia. The campaign’s media strategy shows similar selectivity: Instead of blanketing all 21 GOP states with ads (as McCain is doing), Romney is buying spots in big markets like California, where they’ll do the most damage. And of course he’s banking on wins in Utah, where he attended the funeral of Mormon leader Gordon Hinckley on Saturday, and Massachusetts. If he can’t count on those, he’s in trouble.
Total states: 9. Total stops: 13.
Ron Paul: Rep. Ron Paul doesn’t have Oprah or a Secret Service escort or two press buses tailing him. But after raising $20 million in the fourth quarter—more than any other GOP contender—he does have enough money to conduct a national campaign. Nevertheless, he has been selective. Over the past week, Paul has focused on states holding caucuses rather than primaries, since a relatively small number of caucus-goers can affect the outcome. He dropped by Maine, where he won 19 percent of the vote in the state’s nonbinding caucus poll; North Dakota, which is up in the air after its most devoted courtier, Rudy Giuliani, dropped out; Colorado, the biggest GOP caucus, with 46 delegates at stake; and Washington state, which doesn’t actually caucus until Feb. 9 but furnishes 40 delegates. It’s hard to say what happens if Paul’s Super Tuesday performance disappoints; his national numbers are still hovering in the single digits, but he’s not running out of money anytime soon.
Total states: 6. Total stops: 15.
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If you live in a state that votes on Super Tuesday, I’ve got some bad news for you: There’s a good chance your district won’t count. California’s 34th congressional district, part of Los Angeles County and the state’s most heavily Hispanic district: worthless. Same goes for the 48th district in Orange County, home to Laguna Beach and Irvine. The state’s 6th district, which overlaps with the uber-wealthy Marin County, could turn out to be equally powerless. What do these districts have in common? They all have an even number of delegates.
Let’s back up for a second. On Feb. 5, as in all Democratic primaries, delegates will be allocated proportionally. In California, 241 of the state’s 441 delegates go to the winners of each of the state’s 51 districts. (The state also gives 81 “at-large” delegates based on statewide totals, plus many more PLEOs and “superdelegates.”) So it helps to look at any given primary not as one big statewide battle, but as a flurry of minibattles for each district’s delegates.
In California, each district has between three and seven delegates at stake. So say a district has four delegates. Unless there’s a landslide victory there, then each candidate--Clinton and Obama--will get two of those delegates. In a two-way race, a candidate has to get at least 62.5 percent of the vote—halfway between ½ and ¾, for you math buffs—to win a third delegate. Or say there are six delegates at stake. Then you’d have to win a little more than 58 percent to get more delegates than your opponent. As a result, it’s almost always a tie. It’s only in the districts with an odd number of delegates that one candidate is guaranteed to win more delegates than the other.
So, in a tight race like Clinton vs. Obama, most if not all even-numbered districts are likely to result in a draw—and therefore effectively not count. Click here to see a chart of how many delegates each district gets. As you can see, 32 of the state’s 53 districts have an even number of delegates. In the other 21 districts, the winner will only win one more delegate than the loser. (Again, unless it’s a landslide.)
To give you a visual sense of how this works, we created this color-coded map. Blue districts have an odd number of delegates; yellow districts have an even number.
Extrapolate this example to every other Super Tuesday state, and you see why neither Clinton nor Obama is likely to emerge with a huge delegate lead.
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By Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin
Feb. 5, 2008, aka Super Tuesday, will be utter electoral chaos. On the Democratic side, 22 states hold their primaries, awarding a total of 1,681 pledged delegates, or 52 percent of all those awarded. (“Pledged” delegates don’t include the 796 “superdelegates”—members of Congress and other party leaders—who attend the national convention.) Republicans have 975 pledged delegates at stake—41 percent of the total number—in 21 states. So, with a little more than a week to go before the polls open, the candidates will have to allocate their resources carefully. Here’s a quick primer on what obstacles each candidate faces and how they should spend their time.
Note: Delegate counts below include both pledged delegates and superdelegates.
The Democrats
Unlike the Republicans, the Democratic National Committee awards all delegates on a proportional basis. That means Hillary and Obama are likely to pick up delegates in each of the 22 states. Edwards, meanwhile, is a wild card. He’ll only receive delegates in a state if he clears the 15 percent viability threshold. If that happens, look for the tight race between Hillary and Obama to get even tighter, since they’ll have trouble winning by huge margins. In which case, the contest is likely to extend well beyond Feb. 5.
Hillary Clinton: The proportional-delegate system doesn’t help the national front-runner because she can’t rack up a commanding delegate lead. So, for Clinton, Feb. 5 is about maximizing her advantage in states that already favor her. She owns the tristate delegate behemoth of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (468 delegates total). Plus, Arkansas (47) still remembers her as their First Lady before she became the country’s. She polls favorably—and Obama polls poorly—among Latinos, which means that Arizona and New Mexico (105 delegates total) are friendly states thanks to their 25 percent-plus Hispanic population, but Obama won’t cede those votes. The Latino-factor also helps her in California (441) where she already polls well, but she’ll need to spend considerable time there to fight back against Obama’s made-for-Hollywood life story.
States to tackle: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Massachusetts
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York
Barack Obama: Nationwide, Obama hopes to combat Hillary’s name-recognition with his own star power. Besides blitzing the national media, he’ll probably start with his home base, Illinois (185 delegates), and focus on states with caucuses like Kansas (41) and Minnesota (88), where he might repeat his Iowa victory, and open primaries in which Independents and Republicans can vote as well. Obama should also tackle purple states in which Democrats normally fare poorly, such as Colorado (71) and Missouri (88), to draw out Hillary-hating indies. Independents can also vote in the day’s biggest prize, California (441), although Hillary has an edge in Golden State polls. The other grand prize, New York (281), is also Clinton country, but Obama will likely try to foment an uprising in the Big Apple—a victory there would make for giddy headlines—and leave the boonies to Hillary.
States to tackle: Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, California, New York
States to ignore: Arkansas, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Delaware
John Edwards: Assuming John Edwards stays in the race through Feb. 5, he’ll have to find a way to play kingmaker with his delegates. That means concentrating on states where he can pull in at least 15 percent of the vote, which is the Democrats’ threshold to receive delegates. He should concentrate on the South to capture the white vote that Obama doesn’t grab and Clinton doesn’t compete for. He already has roots in Georgia and could do well in Alabama and Tennessee (248 delegates total). From there, he can look to his strong second-place finishes in 2004 for inspiration. Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah (164 delegates total) all leaned toward Edwards in 2004, and could do so again. There probably won’t be room for him in California or New York (722 delegates total), but squeezing any delegates out of those two would add a few jewels to the crown.
States to tackle: Alabama, California, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah
States to ignore: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, New York, New Jersey
The Republicans
For the GOP, Tsunami Tuesday’s influence depends on how many people are still in the race. If Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee stick around after Florida, both could run regional campaigns in the Northeast and South, respectively, that could keep the race muddled. But if it becomes a two-way race, the Republicans’ winner-take-all delegate rules mean that John McCain or Mitt Romney could hold a commanding, but not invincible, lead moving forward.
Rudy Giuliani: For Rudy, Feb. 5 is everything. He took a gamble by ignoring the earliest primaries and focusing on Florida. If he wins there, media coverage will carry through the Super Tuesday states and he’ll look like a genius. If he loses—which is likely—he enters the Big 2-5 without a single victory to his name and he’ll look like a fool. Either way, he should focus on big coastal primaries like California and New York (274 delegates total), where John McCain is putting up a fight. Nearby winner-take-all states like New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware (100 total) are also must-wins. He’ll likely pick up a few delegates in states that award them proportionally (Massachusetts, Illinois) and the caucuses (Colorado, Maine), but those contests are unpredictable. Keep in mind: An ailing economy hurts Rudy. As recession looms/hits, Romney’s perceived business acumen translates to electoral strength, while Giuliani’s national security chops lose relevance, especially against an energized McCain.
States to tackle: Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York
States to ignore: Arizona, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee
John McCain: McCain’s success on Feb. 5 relies heavily on his ability to get Republicans to trust him—which is what went wrong against George Bush in 2000. Polls show him competing with Giuliani in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey (183 delegates total), and Giuliani’s likely third-place finish in Florida on Tuesday should allow McCain to command the national security vote nationwide, including the Northeast. All three of those states have closed primaries, which means McCain won’t be allowed to rely on his usual trump card—Independents. There aren’t many open primary states, and many are down South (Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee—175 delegates total), which means McCain may have to tussle with a regional-minded Huckabee. Out West, McCain’s home state of Arizona (53) will back him, but he’ll have to contest Romney’s Reagan rhetoric in California (173). If he really wants to stick it to Romney, he can campaign in Massachusetts (43), where a Romney defeat would be embarrassing, if not devastating.
States to tackle: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York
States to ignore: Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, Utah
Mitt Romney: First thing first—Romney shouldn’t have to set foot in Utah (36 delegates), where the majority of the population is Mormon and he’s a local hero for saving the Olympics. If he runs on his fiscal record, he should compete well in industry-heavy Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and West Virginia (217 delegates total). His nobody-noticed win in the Wyoming caucuses implies he may have some success in other Great Plains states like Montana and North Dakota (51 total). Also, his Reagan-coalition message (and Reagan looks) could help him grab the biggest delegate prize, California (173 delegates), which would be a coup over McCain, who currently leads in the polls.
States to tackle: California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee
States to ignore: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Utah
Mike Huckabee: Huck hasn’t won a contest since Iowa, but he’s far from toast. Of the 21 states holding GOP elections on Super Tuesday, about half are Southern and Midwestern states with lots of religious conservatives—in other words, electoral goldmines for Huckabee. Oklahoma’s winner-take-all primary will likely furnish Huck with its 41 delegates, and Arkansas (34 delegates) belongs to him. But it’s the Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee (127 total), which award most or all of their delegates proportionally, that will constitute the bulk of his winnings. Whereas Giuliani needs a handful of big wins, Huckabee should shoot for a barrage of small victories. Problem is, he’s running low on money, which makes national retail campaigning difficult. Look for more cheeky Web videos and other free media gimmes.
States to tackle: Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia
States to ignore: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, New York