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texans voted for clinton. obama won texas.

this is a good chart from the houston chronicle. it shows delegate counts. the relationship between counties, districts, votes, and delegates.
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clinton wins some -
district 26 is san antonio, and it doesn't matter that clinton won, because the delegate count comes out as a tie (2 - 2).
district 27, east rio grande valley, clinton won by a landslide. but in the delegate count, she gets only a small advantage (2 - 1).
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obama wins some -
district 13 is downtown houston, obama won in a landslide and gets a huge delegate advantage (5 - 2).
district 14 is austin, obama also gets a good advantage (5 - 3).
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district 26 has about the same population as district 14. but in Austin, more people voted for a democrat two years ago. so they got a delegate bonus. the pattern extends throughout texas, and most of the districts turned out as close as district 26 or 27. this is a strange system, but it adds up to one thing.
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clinton won a majority of the votes in about 90% of texas counties. very impressive. but with 254 counties, most of clinton's wins here are worth only a fraction of a delegate. and clinton lost most of the cities, which have delegate bonuses because they voted for democrats two years ago. what does this all mean? in the primary, texas is practically a tie:
clinton 63 delegates
obama 62 delegates
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(there are supposedly 126 primary delegates. that means 1 primary delegate is left to assign from el paso or greater dallas, i think, and houston chronicle doesn't know who gets it yet, though other sources are guessing clinton.)
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ok, on to the caucus.
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obama is up comfortably in the caucus counts so far -
obama 23,009 (56%)
clinton 18,117 (44%)
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40% of precints reporting by 3:00est march 6. what's taking them so long? the Super Tuesday caucuses reported within 2 hours, right? i asked this question to Karen Brooks, Dallas Morning News reporter:

"Kip - good question.
I can tell you that Texas caucuses have never, ever mattered until this time. So while Iowa, for example, are old hands at it and can zip right through the process, many of the 8,000 precinct chairs and organizers of the caucuses were first-timers. Practice makes perfect, you know?
Not to mention, most of the caucus-goers were first-timers, too - meaning they didn't know what to expect, and it took longer dealing with that.
Also, some of these caucuses last time had 10 people show up and this time, nearly 1,000 - so it took a lot longer than usual. Many of them didn't even wind up until after midnight.
We expect to have the numbers today.
Hope this helps!! -
Brooks"
[ http://trailblazers.beloblog.com/archives/2008/03/caucus-results-part-ii.html

ok, back to the votes. there are 67 total caucus delegates, and about 103,000 total caucus votes. so figure in plus/minus 3,100 votes (at 40% of total, based on a 3% margin of error - expecting differential delay in urban and far west precincts).
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so here's my projected best-case-scenario for clinton -
obama 54,590 (53%)
clinton 48,410 (47%)
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and my projected best-case-scenario for obama -
obama 60,770 (59%)
clinton 42,230 (41%)
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texas caucus delegates are not awarded by district, they are all added together, then distributed proportionally to each candidate. so sticking with the most likely result of obama with 56%, here are the caucus delegates -
obama 37 delegates
clinton 30 delegates
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so adding the delegates of the primary to those of the caucus, the texas totals (based on the Chronicle's math backed up by my own math) -
obama 100 delegates
clinton 92 delegates
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the texas democratic party is using the same caucus estimate. but they disagree with the Chronicle about the primary, where they project clinton winning 65 delegates (but looking at the district map, i can't figure out a way to count this many delegates for her). the democratic party projects different delegate totals -
obama 98 delegates
clinton 95 delegates
[ http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5596700.html ]
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the point of all this accounting is that headlines reported clinton won texas. and by popular vote, she did. by almost 100,000 votes!
as the great loser al gore taught us, winning the popular vote ain't everything. obama won texas. combine obama's delegate advantage in texas with his 3 delegate advantage in vermont. it's obvious clinton didn't really make a dent, no matter her impressive 12 delegate advantage from ohio. obama additionally got 5 superdelegate commitments wednesday (according to the texas democratic party). total pledged and superdelegates:
obama 1,567
clinton 1,462
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it is still mathematically possible for clinton to catch up and win. but to do this, she would need more than 75% of the votes in most pennsylvania districts. and before that, she must win in north carolina and mississippi (where almost half the democrats are black), oregon (where half the democrats are members of obama's facebook group), kentucky, west virginia. and puerto rico.
she'll get el puerto rico, no problem, que dios les bendiga.
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but no matter what ads she runs, she can't win all of those states. and as long as the vote stays somewhere around 50/50 (even clinton's ohio win, at 54%, is fairly close), obama will probably enter the convention with a one hundred delegate lead. at that point, only the superdelegates could give it to clinton, and only by explicitly overriding the delegate total and the popular vote -- obama leads popular vote by a huge margin right now, 600,000. [http://www.newsweek.com/id/119010/page/1]
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if clinton is going to reach 2,025, she must start her landslides immediately. there are 12 delegates in wyoming on saturday, and 33 in mississippi tuesday. if these two are blowouts, i will tip my hat to her.
but i'll still vote for someone else. no offense.

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