Today's big meaningless contests

Submitted by R. Neal on Tue, 2008/05/06 - 7:58am.

RCP North Carolina average: Obama +8. No recent poll has shown an advantage for Clinton. Obama has overcome a Clinton lead of 24 points in November.

RCP Indiana average: Clinton +5. Only one recent poll shows an advantage for Obama. Obama crept up to a slight 3 point advantage in late April, but Clinton has since erased it.

There are 72 delegates at stake in Indiana, and 115 in North Carolina. Obama currently has 1737 delegates, and Clinton has 1607 (Green Papers estimate). Neither candidate can get to the 2025 needed to nominate today, even if one were to win 100% of the vote in both primaries.

And so it continues.

(The encouraging news is that nearly 32 million people have voted for a Democratic nominee so far, v. 18.5 million for a Republican.)


Big Meaningless Contests

I do hope the 'good news' that you are referring to is that over 50 million have voted (32 + 18) and not the party that they are voting for. After all, aren't more folks likely to vote when it's a close race?

Be careful, statistics can say just about whatever you want them to.

WhitesCreek's picture
Actually, they don't

Be careful, statistics can say just about whatever you want them to.

People who selectively quote statistics can give false impressions but statistics are just a batch of facts, which, when critically analyzed, say exactly what they say.

Both sets of statistics are correct. I think you simply want to discuss which is more important, and that's fine and relevant.

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