In Texas and Ohio, where the latest polls suggest close races between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton today, 334 pledged delegates are at stake. But by the reckoning of some political analysts, voters selecting 142 of these delegates are rendered irrelevant by the Democrats’ primary rules, because they’re likely to be split down the middle among the two candidates.
That’s because these delegates will come from the 19 districts in Texas and the 12 in Ohio that have an even number of delegates up for grabs. In a two-candidate race, districts with an odd number of delegates always help the winner. But it takes a big victory margin for a candidate to break a delegate tie in even-delegate districts. A tie, in a close race, is essentially a wash, the logic goes.
Slate’s Christopher Beam, with deliberate hyperbole, wrote to California Democrats before their primary that “there’s a good chance your district won’t count.” Referring to the Tennessee primary, a blogger at MyDD wrote, “It is absurd to think that tonight’s winner could be determined by such minor factors as to which districts have 3 or 5 delegates, and which have 4 or 6.” The Kansas City Star’s Dave Helling declared, “Districts with odd-numbered delegates are much more important than those with even-numbered delegate slates.” Adds Michael Barone, in U.S. News & World Report, “Nobody seems to have thought through the consequences of having allocated so many districts an even number of delegates: In a close race, voters in those districts have almost no chance of casting a decisive vote.”
But a closer look at the numbers suggests the reality isn’t that simple. In nearly half of even-delegate districts so far, either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama has emerged with an edge. And each of those pickups is substantial: at least two delegates, except where John Edwards nabbed a delegate.
I’ve counted 131 districts with an even number of delegates in primaries that have been contested so far. In 125 of these, the state Democratic parties or the Associated Press have allocated all the delegates. Of these, 66, or just over half, were ties. But in the rest, there were some significant pickups for the candidates. Sen. Clinton gained a delegate edge in 21 of these districts — including the 34th in California, a district dubbed “worthless” by Mr. Beam — for a total gain of 44 delegates. Sen. Obama, meanwhile, won 38 of these districts, several of them in routs, for a pickup of 99 delegates. (Caveat: Many of these numbers I used are unofficial, and subject to change, though the various delegate counters have moved closer to each other at least when it comes to pledged delegates from primary states.)
Compared with the thin margin between these candidates nationally, these are significant gains. And in many of the tied districts, one candidate was close to the margin needed to pick up a two-delegate edge, making votes on the margin important. Nor is it easy to predict which districts will be a wash; after all, even state-wide polling has been error-prone this election season. Meanwhile, few voters are likely to shape their votes around the tie-delegate scenario so long as it remains obscure. And in the late stages of a close race, a tie is a win for the front-runner, who’s eliminated another opportunity for the trailing candidate to gain.
The numbers highlight the importance of timing and local politics. Before John Edwards dropped out of the race, he picked up a delegate in each of four South Carolina even-delegate districts where, if Sen. Clinton had gained the delegate instead, she would have tied Sen. Obama. In Illinois, where Sen. Obama got about twice the number of votes as Sen. Clinton, only five of 13 even-delegate districts were ties. Even in closer states, political variations between districts mattered. Sen. Clinton beat Sen. Obama by 16 points in Massachusetts, and in five of seven even-delegate districts she won, 4-2; in a sixth, Sen. Obama won, 4-2.
Not all even-delegate districts are created equal. In a two-candidate race, it takes 75% of the vote to gain a delegate edge in two-delegate districts; 62.5%, when there are four delegates; 58.3% when there are six, and 56.3% when there are eight. In several of the Massachusetts six-delegate districts that Sen. Clinton won, 4-2, her margin wasn’t big enough to break a tie in a four-delegate district. New Jersey, which has 10 four-delegate districts, saw ties in 9 of them, though Sen. Clinton won the state by 10 points.
How to break the ties? U.S. News & World Report’s Michael Barone suggested last week that the Democratic party should ensure each district has an odd number of delegates. That’s problematic, because by shoehorning districts with differing populations and Democratic voters — the criteria for allocating delegates — into odd-numbered slots, the party will give some districts a disproportionate delegate total. State parties could also roll up small districts into bigger ones, though this would lessen the local nature of the race.
The simplest solution is for the national party to double the total number of delegates, thereby lessening the margin a winning candidate needs to emerge from each district with a tangible gain. That would also eliminate the fractional delegate totals arising from half-delegates from the Democrats Abroad voting.
Further reading: I wrote recently that delegate math and some lucky breaks garnered Sen. Clinton several delegates in Alabama.