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Can the Superdelegates Save Us?
Slate minds seem to be thinking alike today. I hadn't read Mickey's crack of dawn post when I thought I had an inspiration for the deadlocked Democratic race: What if the superdelegates all lined up behind whoever won their state? Maybe that could deliver us a clear winner. I truly had no idea whether Obama or Clinton would fare better, so it struck me as the perfect disinterested proposition. Since over at Trailhead they're much closer to the numbers than I am (no, I'm not saying we're math-challenged here at XX, just that we're not doing number-crunching duty, and they are), I asked for their help. And the winner is ... well, so much for a simple clarifier. Clinton and Obama are almost dead even in superdelegates when they're apportioned this way: 289 for Clinton, 286 for Obama. Add that to their regular delegate totals, and you get: Obama at 1,737 and Clinton at 1,654. Now I'm hoping Trailhead will keep up the calculating and figure out what Clinton would have to do to win in this alternate reality—what states she'd have to win and by what margins.
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