Saturday, June 07, 2008
Superdelegates by Position
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
| Governors | Senators | Reps. | DPL | DNC | Add-Ons | Total | |
| Clinton | 10.5 | 14 | 52.5 | 7.5 | 145 | 17 | 246.5 |
| Obama | 20 | 34 | 157 | 9 | 229 | 29 | 478 |
| No Endorse | 1 | 1.5 | 22 | 3 | 39 | 32.5 | 99 |
| Total | 31.5 | 49.5 | 231.5 | 19.5 | 413 | 78.5 | 823.5 |
Last updated: 6/6/08.
DPL = Distinguished Party Leaders. We include Dodd and Byrd as Senators, the DNC lists them as DPL. We include Rendell as a Governor, the DNC lists him as a DPL.
Senate numbers include both DC “Shadow Senators”, Michael Brown and Paul Strauss. So 49 Democratic Senators (Leiberman and Sanders are not Democratic Senators, so they are not superdelegates), – 1.5 votes for the 3 FL/MI Senators (1/2 vote each), + 2 DC Senators = 49.5 shown in the table. Similar math for the Reps.
Democrats Abroad has 8 superdelegates, but 1/2 vote per person.
Posted by Matt at 2:00 PM 
I am suddenly confused about the number of total superdelegates. I have consistently heard 796 total superdelegate votes without FL and MI, but this table has brought to my attention that only 721 SD votes are accounted for here. What gives?
Also, thanks for making this table and congrats on being behind only wikipedia in the google search for “superdelegates”.
Ah, I found the answer. Quoting from your main superdelegate endorsement list post:
There are 796 (not including Michigan and Florida) total Democratic superdelegates that the nominees are trying to be endorsed by. This consists of 720 regular superdelegates and 76 unpledged add-ons. We will add the unpledged add-ons as soon as they are named by each state.
Odd that I forgot about them.
I’m sure that it might differ from state to state, but is it safe to assume that the (unpledged) “preference” of each state’s add-on delegates will generally be correlated with whoever won the popular vote in said state, assuming that state convention delegate pledges are roughly correlated with statewide popular vote?
I would not assume that, but it could be true. What I’ve read indicates that these add-ons can be used to reward state bigwigs who somehow didn’t get a delegate slot. Say a local major legislative leader was an Edwards supporter, but obviously didn’t get to be a delegate. He/She might get an add-on position. In some states the state chair probably gets to decide. In other states, the candidate in charge may be able to control the decision. It will be fascinating to watch the process if the race is close.
Question for you Dems –
I hear talk that a Super Delegate should vote with the state.. but why not by Congressional District? Or better yet, why not by the overall primary popular vote? It seems many of you are now supporting an electoral college approach now that it suits your ends (Hillary has received more popular votes that Obama).
Fact is that Super Delegates will find any number of justifications to vote however they end up voting.. but the real decider won’t be the press release justifications, but whose bagman is better at doling out money and favors… Boss Daley/Rezko for Obama or Terry McAwful for Hillary?
Per the convention call, it looks like the add-ons are selected in the same manner as either the pledged PLEOs or at-large delegates, but specifically before those are elected. So I supposed that the district-level delegates would elect them. Considering that there are generally many more spots reserved for mayors/legislators (albeit on a pledged basis) than there are add-on delegates, and given the contentious nature of this year’s delegate selection process, I have to imagine that the process would quickly become partisan between the two camps, with little sympathy for someone who tries to claim real neutrality.
Sorry, the Delegate Selection Rules, not the Call.
Thanks Matt. Great to see great blog owners who listen to their readers :).
(Hillary has received more popular votes that Obama)
Not necessarily so, in a caucus such as Iowa votes aren’t counted, delegates are chosen by groups of people in smaller districts, that send delegates to larger regional districts, and then to the final delegates. An estimate could be made but not the exact number of individual votes.
One other thing, if possible:
are you able to put this information in one of those nice tables you have for all other sets of tabular data? not a big fan of text-tables…
Well, the DNC seems to be heavily Clinton…
I am not sure that Clinton wins the super delegate fight. As we know, high information voters and those who have chosen more recently have broke for Obama. For about the past month – he has been making up ground in this area. The remaining SDs should be in his strong demographic.
Would that be the same DNC that elected Howard Dean DNC chair four years ago?
I think the guy who’s running the 50-state strategy this year might have a leg up on that crowd.
Hillary hasn’t won the popular vote count. She did narrowly edge Obama out in the pop. vote on Super Tuesday, but if you add in the 4 earlier contests — NH, SC etc. –Obama beats her in popular vote overall so far. Also, some of the caucus states that he won don’t show actual voter #s, so if there was a way to add those #s in, he’d be up that much more in pop. vote.
Anonymous said…
Question for you Dems –
I hear talk that a Super Delegate should vote with the state.. but why not by Congressional District? Or better yet, why not by the overall primary popular vote? It seems many of you are now supporting an electoral college approach now that it suits your ends (Hillary has received more popular votes that Obama).
February 08, 2008 11:49 PM
As others have said, you can’t use most caucus states for a national popular vote. It’s important to note that all pledged delegates are allocated proportionally in every state, unlike the winner take all electoral college (NB and ME being the only two exceptions). I don’t think anyone has suggested that the superdelegates vote for the winner of their state’s pledged delegate count. Voting with a state’s popular vote wouldn’t work, and voting by congressional district seems ludicrous. The best option and only formal resolution I see fit is to have all superdelegates support the majority winner of the national pledged delegates, essentially rendering their vote nothing more than a confirmation of the pledged delegates’ decision.
I seem to only have 9 Governors for Obama, and 30 overall.
Chet Culver (IA)
Rod Blagojevich (IL)
Deval Patrick (MA)
Janet Napolitano (AZ)
Kathleen Sebelius (KS)
Chris Gregorie (WA)
Tim Kaine (VA)
Jim Doyle (WI)
John DeJongh Jr. (VI)
Who am I missing?
Adrian Fenty, Mayor of DC, and the DNC puts him in the Governor’s category.
The DPL assignment for Byrd, Dodd, and Rendell indicates the permanent nature of their status.
When they leave their elected positions, they’ll still have a spot by virtue of the DPL status, so it makes sense to classify them in that category.
Should SD’s vote based on overall popular vote? Comment earlier said this would be best to move away from “electoral college” approach. Great idea — BUT ONLY if the SD total is agreed to split per the split of overall popular vote. Otherwise, if the idea is that the SD bloc goes on a winner-take-all basis, the Insider state (aka SD’s) happens to have about 10,000 times the weight of any other single state! (At this point the ratio of total votes to elected delegates is around 10,000 to 1).
For the social scientists in the house: the correlation between candidate and DNC/non-DNC superdelegates is phi = .136 – not very high. Which means that only 1.8% of the variability in DNC/non-DNC delegates is explained by the candidate. (Explained variability = phi squared.)
The death of Tom Lantos reduced the total number of delegates from 4049 to 4048 but that did not affect the number of delegates needed to win the nomination which is still 2025 (50%+1). Kindly change back.
I am so grateful for this website. I feel crazy when it comes to the delegate process.
A few questions for now as I’m sure I will have many more.
1. Are the delegates from the Caucases binding?
2. Because Obama and Edwards chose not to put their names on the ballot in Michigan wouldn’t it be fair to give Hillary the alloted delegates from Florida and Michigan and the remaining delegates from Michigan can give their pledges to whichever candidate at the convention in Denver?
3. Because of Hillarys’ win in New Hampshire shouldn’t the Kennedy and Kerry delegates be awarded to Hillary?
This is a learning experience for me so please be gentle.
I meant Mass. regarding Kerry and Kennedy.
Bourne40 – No pledged delegates are bound. Any delegate can vote for any person at any time. Given that, pledged delegates are approved by the campaigns so are unlikely to stray. As for caucuses, many of them are multi-step processes, and the delegate counts are estimates for them.
2. As for Michigan and Florida, people are debating what’s “fair” all over the blogosphere.
3. Kerry and Kennedy are superdelegates, and are therefore free to give their endorsement and vote to any candidate for any reason. What those reasons should be is also being debated across the blogosphere.
Welcome aboard, hope that was gentle enough!
Congressman John Lewis (GA) changes from Clinton to Obama.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/politics/15clinton.html?ref=us
So what’s the deal with Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX)? Is he a rep or a DNC member?
The DNC has Johnson as a DNC member, since he is an at-large member of the DNC, and would in theory keep that position even if he was no longer a Rep. However, we track everybody by their elected positions, as that’s what most people would expect. Johnson, however, is still classified as a DNC member in the table above. We’ll fix that this evening.
We outside the united states are watching seriously this election.We are used to repressive regimes here in Africa which put their wild cards on winning any voting be it in parliament or any other forum where the incumbent goverments have a stake on a a few unelected candidates fingerpointed by the establishments of Governments.Being a world democracy as america claims,should not rely on super delegates to overturn the decision of a sea of voters afterall i have heard americans say that all men are equal in eyes of God and so is democratic america slogan.How can few individual whose self intrests we dont know overturn decision of majority,i wonder if thats democracy
Mawanda Richard
www.jacofoods.blogspot.com
Eddie Bernice Johnson is a woman. Apparently 11 Democratic members of congress are being classed as DNC members, as is apparently one senator, since there’s 231 Democratic congressmen and 49 Democratic senators.
John- This list does not include FL and MI, so that explains the Congresspeople. Also, the list of Reps. does include virtual Reps from DC and the territories. See the post for the explanation of the Senator numbers.
Please correct your math in the no endorse column….it makes all the totals incorrect, and makes the grand total add to 813.5 delegates.
THANK YOU!
Interesting that the AP article on Dorgan’s endorsement has Clinton with 13 Senators, Obama with 10 and 24 undecided. Interesting that the total count of 241-182 is the same, while the Senate component is so different. Also, why is your count of Dem Senators 48 and theirs 47? Are they counting Dodd as a DPL?
Fuzzy
It’s hard to say. They might not be counting the DC Shadow Senators. They might be counting the 3 Dem Senators from MI & FL. They might not be counting Dodd and Byrd. Just don’t know.
DocJess – the numbers seem OK. Can you be more specific as to where you see a math error?
I understand you cannot get a real popular vote count from Caucuses.
DNC rules say
1. Super delegates can vote their conscience like any other voter.
2. Pledged delegates and Super delegates are NOT BOUND up until the Convention.
Therefore, in a very close primary like this year, no body knows the final result till the Convention is over.
Interesting to see that Clinton is leading by 23 delegates, including FL, MI and Supers, as of today.
Matt —
And I only bring the numbers thing up because I’m a fan…I really am.
Last column –> 239 + 179 + 395.5 = 813.5 NOT 795 (as it should)
The error is the 395 number since in the No Endorse column 10 +23+81+5+183+75 SHOULD be equal to 377 and not 395.5.
My reason for pointing out the error is NOT to give you a hard time — but rather because there should be ONE PLACE where all the numbers are correct, to the extent that they can be.
I spend A LOT of time in GOTV efforts, and actually often site this blog so people can see that their individual vote (or both their potential votes in Texas) REALLY can count this year.
Thanks Matt!
DocJess – fixed, thanks!
It is interesting that the two candidates are fairly even in superdelegates that hold elective office. Yet the DNC delegates overwhelmingly favor Clinton. This is a problem.
It would be a great disappointment not to see FL and MI counted, as much as it would be for the Democratic Party to presume that an Obama Presidency would have the same effect on African American women as a Hillary Presidency in which they would be included by virtue of the fact that they are women.
If anyone deserves empowerment in America, it is women by virtue of the fact that so many are single-mother parents trying to raise families without the aid of Dads.
To ignore that huge problem in America invites disaster, and avoids the possibility that women will have the recognized status they need to do such a job.
Women win with Hillary, and the Democratic Party wins with Hillary.
It is a simple equation that matters. That’s why she took large states with many delegates, and probably why she took OHIO.
It’s wrong to refuse FL and MI; ain’ they voters? How can political parties make rules that interfere with voting rights if no candidate and no state could do so?
It doesn’t make sense, and must be considered unconstitutional regardless of the Democratic Party’s presumed claimed right to penalize those states. The Democratic Party is after all only an organization bound to the same laws as states and individuals. Doesn’t the Constitution mean anything anymore to anyone?
Well isn’t a conflict of interest that Hilliary’s votes from the DNC are on her side? I mean common look at literally, her husband was president and needless to say who was a Democrat as well. Aren’t those votes “leaned” in her direction? Why aren’t OUR basic laws instilled in OUR voting system. It’s a complete conflict of interest. WE need to call for a change. Why WE didn’t do it after the last presidential elections is beyond me. Even so, with Michigan and Florida in the news its more evident that its sitting in our face. WE need a better system developed, by THE PEOPLE.
Even with that said, I still have complete faith in OUR nation. WE will select the best candidate for “CHANGE”, which we all know is Barack Obama.
Another Question:
Do you know anyone that is for Hilliary? I haven’t met not yet a single person who is……that is for now….
stupid question time been away from comp for few days so
*recap(someone check my math please)*
wiki super page is BO +2 ; HC +2
who are they? for the next 72 hrs i dont have the time to check (sorry) if my math is correct then :
What is the best guess wiki uses a source (includes something dcw does not include)
How is the DCW list in comparison to the NYT list of several weeks->4 weeks ago (i will find the link later somehow i hope)
when the moderators of this wonderful resource have some of my randon rant answered please remove this post. till then *great journalism both you and the GP*
see you in 24+ hrs {old study trick no computer or tv on till all HW caught up except 1 relaxation hr so i should check back roughly april 16 noon(ish)}
math 101 On differences with WIKI
Here are the differences at this date. I have a DCW spreadsheet and when new entries come onto DCW thru the notes at the bottom of the endorsement list of DCW, I crosscheck on WIKI list Here are the differences:
Listed Uncommitted on DCW:
Herman Farrell…Clinton
Ronald Malone….Clinton
Patricia Moss….Clinton
Vernon Watkins…Obama
Paul Kirk……..Obama (On WIKI)
Also these diferences
Al Edwards Obama(DCW) UNC(WIKI)
Taling Taitano Clinton(DCW) UNC(WIKI)
Most of the recent DCW changes are not switched from 04-16 to 04-19
Carson-Price-Watt-Huguenin…….Achelphol-Ryan are not switched.
Only Janice Griffin is correct on Wiki.
wondering how you arrive at Obama with 18 senators (as of today’s announcement by Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico).
by every site i can find, it’s Obama 14, Clinton 13. including shadow senators, as you do, it’s still just Obama 16, Clinton 13.
who are the other two senators you’re counting?
Jeff,
If you take a look at this page:
Superdelegate Endorsement List and count the Superdelegates Sen. that endorsed Sen. Obama, you will find that the total is correct – 18.
HTH
Yousri:
I think I see the problem. One, you’re counting Obama, which is reasonable. That makes 17. But I can’t find any documentation anywhere that says Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has endorsed.
Also, Patty Murray of Washington is pledged to vote for the leader in pledged delegates. So in my estimation, she should be either added to both, or removed from both.
And lastly, if we’re counting Clinton’s vote for herself, without Murray, it’s 14. The number I arrive at for Obama, above, taking out Feingold and never considering Murray, is 17. 17-14. Or 18-15. Your choice.
PS I, like you, am including Nelson of Florida and Stebenow of Michigan, despite the fact that, as of now, their votes won’t be counted. They are, after all, still senators.
Jeff,
If you go to that page that I mentioned in the previous post, and click on the super delegate’s name, it will take to our source for endorsement.
If you think it is an error, please post your comments in that page. And give us the new information. We will be happy to update the page and the numbers.
And yes, we count Sen. Clinton for herself and Sen. Obama for himself.
HTH
Jeff – If you have a source for Patty Murray committing to vote for the leader in pledged delegates, please provide it.
matt,
sorry, i “mistyped” 😉
i meant to say washington state’s other senator, maria cantwell. i was tipped off to cantwell’s stance (a waffly one if there ever was one) by this very blog, who lists her in green on its page of individual endorsements.
as late as march 24, cantwell has echoed the idea that the leader in pledged delegates when all primaries are through should be the nominee. therefore, her status is questionable.
also, it’s true that feingold told the press that he voted for obama in his state’s primary, as a citizen, but a) i don’t think he should be counted in the superdelegate list, and b) as much as i love russ, i’m frustrated with him (and other SDs) who are waiting to endorse.
Jeff – Yes, Cantwell is in our Pelosi Club, but we’ve decided to keep those superdelegates who have clearly endorsed a candidate and have not changed their endorsement, but who say they will vote for their pledged delegate leader, in the candidate’s numbers at this time.
Feingold has said he will vote for Obama at the convention.
As a Connecticut Democrat, I would appreciate it if you would change the statement “Lieberman and Sanders are not supers” to “Lieberman and Sanders are not Democrats”. If they were Democrats they would be supers.
I have great respect for Bernie Sanders who is proud to declare himself a Democratic Socialist. I have no respect for Joe Lieberman, who had no respect for the Democratic voters of our state.
Dink – I changed the wording. thanks.
Final updates made, through 6/6 endorsements.