Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Superdelegate number is now 718/794 719/795
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
There’s been a bit of churn in the superdelegates recently. Most of it doesn’t affect the overall number, but two events have changed the total:
- The sad death of Congressman Tom Lantos
- A change at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Joan Fitz-Gerald of Colorado left the DLCC in April, 2007 (although she is still on the published superdelegate lists as of January of this year), and was replaced by Mike Gronstal the former Vice-Chair. Mark Schauer of Michigan took over for Gronstal. Florida and Michigan superdelegates are not included in the current count.
So we’re now at 718 regular superdelegates, and 76 add-ons, for a total of 794 total superdelegates.
Update: Due to the changes listed above the number of delegates needed for the nomination is now 2024. Thanks to FlyOnTheWall for pointing this out.
Update 2: Well we messed up on that one. The DLCC informs us that Fitz-Gerald’s replacement as a DNC member is Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tem Mike Morgan, not Mark Schauer of Michigan. Since Morgan is not from Michigan, that puts us back at 719 regular superdelegates, and the total delegate count is 4048, so still need 2025 to win. We regret the error.
Posted by Matt at 8:41 AM 
Thanks, guys. But shouldn’t you also lower the total number of delegates needed to win to 2,024?
Joan Fitz-Gerald is from Colorado and was replaced by Senator Mike Gronstal of IA. Senator Schauer is in fact from Michigan, but is not a superdelegate. Please correct this.
Schauer took the Vice-Chair position from Gronstal which would make him a superdelegate.
Anonymous is correct – Fitz-Gerald was the Senate President in Colorado, not Ohio.
Your counter thingy at left says it’s Clinton 224, Obama 133, Undeclared 362 among the supers. But that adds up to 719, not 718. Am I correct in assuming that you haven’t yet decreased the Clinton figure by one due to the sad event of Rep. Lantos’s passing? And thus it’s really 223-133-362?
Minor discrepancy: In the first table at the left you give Obama 136 superdelegates; in the superdelegate comparison table below that you give him 135.
Democratic voters should consider a class action lawsuit to end the process of super-delegates. A case can be made that the super-delegates degrade, and are intended to dilute, the weight of our votes to allow the party elites to determine who gets the nomination of the party. It doesn’t matter whether Hillary or Obama gets the nomination, both will be great democratic leaders. However, the fact that super-delegates have the power to overrule the voters is against the concept of democracy, and harms the voters of this country. A single super-delegate vote has the weight in some cases of up to 50,000 votes.
Do not lose focus on this issue after the primaries are over. While it may turn out that this process does not override the American vote this year, the chances are there for the future.