So CNN won't call the New Hampshire race, but they are projecting the delegates--5 for Hillary, 6 for Obama. Since New Hampshire allocates delegates based on the statewide vote, this makes it seem as if they are slyly calling the state for Obama. What am I missing?
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Since New Hampshire allocates delegates based on the statewide vote, this makes it seem as if they are slyly calling the state for Obama. What am I missing?
First, there are more than 11 delegates, AFAIK. There are 22 being awarded from New Hampshire for the Democrats.
Second, New Hampshire doesn't do that exactly, as 14 of the delegates are awarded based on congressional districts, but only to candidates getting at least 15% of the vote.
I suspect that they're projecting that both will get at least 5 and 6, but it could change. Edwards is near 15%, so he can get delegates too, but he could also fall below.
See here.
The Democratic Party has a pretty complicated formula.
The 22 is pledged-- there are also 8 Superdelegates, something that the Republicans don't have but that the Democrats adopted to prevent more McGoverns. As people have remarked, if Hillary wins only because the Superdelegates function as originally intended, making the establishment candidate beat the insurgent, there could be a lot of anger. That's why I don't understand the Superdelegates.
So there's 7 and 7 in the two congressional districts, and 8 statewide. 15% minimum to get any from a district, Edwards is near 16 or 17% statewide.
Edwards will likely get 1, 1, and 2 from the districts, though if his strength is concentrated in one district, other possibilities like 1, 2, 2, and 0, 2, 2 are possible. He could actually get 2, 2, and 2 if everything breaks right, depending on the method used, thanks to mathematical features of apportionment systems. (The "proportional" is actually not sufficient explanation to say what happens with the fractions, and the most "obvious" mathematical solution has weird paradoxes, where someone can gain votes but lose delegates to someone who lost votes because a third person also gained votes.)
Honestly, though, I find it hard to believe that either at that point would have gotten under 7 pledged delegates with any likely occurence, though it's possible that CNN was awarding half the delegates by awarding one congressional district and half of the statewide delegates, or something like that, because one congressional district's votes were all in before the others'.
Unfortunately, the website I linked to has had their ISP pull most of their pages due to too much traffic.
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