I've declared repeatedly since the PA primary that this race is over soon after May 6th. Despite the high anxiety of Obama supporters and all the talk of Clinton momentum, I stand by this projection. My reason for saying so is very simple. There will not be enough remaining votes after May 6th to make a difference. Not to the delegate count. Not to the popular vote. After May 6th, you won't need any fancy delegate calculators to see that. It will be obvious to all. Once it's obvious, the media announces the inevitable, Clinton's money dries up, and the undeclared superdelegates move in greater numbers to Obama.

May 6th Projections

Let no one accuse me of May optimism. For my May 6th projections, I've selected the most Clinton-friendly polls to be had:

Indiana
4/30-5/1 ARG Clinton +9 (Avg. Clinton +5.5)

North Carolina
5/1 InsiderAdvantage Obama +5 (Avg. Obama +10.6)

Now let's see what these numbers would mean...

The Delegate Count

According to those Clinton-friendly polls, here are the delegate results after May 6:

Obama
Has: 1,837*
Needs: 188 (37% of remaining pledged + supers)

Clinton
Has: 1,699
Needs: 326 (63% of remaining pledged + supers)

Now, let's say Clinton wins the remaining primaries by an average spread of 10 points, which is extremely optimistic, especially since the largest state to vote after May 6th is Obama-friendly Oregon:

Obama
Has: 1935
Needs: 90 (30% of remaining supers)

Clinton
Has: 1818
Needs: 207 (70% of remaining supers)

So even under optimistic conditions for Clinton, Obama only has to convince 30% of the remaining 274 superdelegates and 19 Edwards delegates to vote for him. Clinton, by contrast, would have to convince 70% of them to vote for her. I do not imagine that she'll be able to do that without a solid popular vote win. By solid, I mean counting the caucus states and not counting MI. She may be able to convince some superdelegates to buy the twisted logic of including MI while excluding the caucus states but surely not 70% of them.

* For purposes of calculation, I've assumed that the delegates will be split roughly according to the projected popular votes, though in reality, it's more complicated than that. In addition, the Obama campaign claims more delegates than attributed to him at realpolitics.com. I've used the more conservative number.

The Popular Vote

Including the caucus states and Florida, Clinton is behind by about 317,000 votes. According to the Clinton-friendly polls, after May 6th, she'll be behind by 313,000 votes. How big would she have to win in the remaining primaries just to tie Obama in the popular vote? 59%. That's an 18 point spread. Raise your hand if you think Clinton will win the remaining states by an average of 59%. In this entire primary, Clinton has won only a single state by more than 59%. Arkansas.

(Note: I did not include Puerto Rico in the popular vote projections because I don't have voter numbers there and because it's not clear how they should count towards the total, since Puerto Ricans can't vote in the general election. If you were to include PR, the percentage would be slightly lower.)

How It Will Play Out

After the vote, the major news outlets will have their math geeks run the numbers, and they will say that Clinton has to win between 60% to 70% of the remaining votes (depending on the May 6th results) in order to win the popular vote. Then the news outlets will roll out their political analysts who will say that Clinton has as much chance of winning 60% (or more) as Obama has of bowling a 300. Then any superdelegates who were waiting to endorse Obama will cry "Yahoo!", and hop off the fence. Then the news sources will start counting down the number of delegates for an Obama win. Then Clinton's money sources, ashen faced, will put their wallets in their pockets. Then Richardson and various Obama supporters will call for Clinton to concede. Clinton will protest of course. She'll say she's a fighter. She'll say she's going all the way to the convention. But it won't matter anymore because the pundits will start their postmortems, the superdelegates will make their pronouncements, and everyone else will watch the clock tick down.

Homework Assignment

Count the number of journalists who employ the cliche, "writing on the wall," in the next three weeks.

Announcements

If you live in the NYC area, come watch the IN/NC results on May 6th at Revival, 129 E. 15th St., New York, NY.

Please join our group, TPM-aholics, at my.barackobama.com to help organize for Obama. We're planning a fundraiser in June. Please friend and contact me at TPM-aholics if you'd like to participate.

These events are not supported or endorsed by Talking Points Memo.

Calculations

You can see the spreadsheet I used for the calculations here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pGeAYzG6mYCJZkbsfDIvJEA

There are some minor discrepancies due to rounding errors.

Data Sources

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/23/935854.aspx
http://www.pollster.com/08-NC-Dem-Pres-Primary.php
http://www.pollster.com/08-IN-Dem-Pres-Primary.php