Obama has a total of 1315 delegates (1154 pledged)
Clinton has a total of 1245 delegates (1011 pledged)
Technically, to win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs 2025 delegates. The 16 states and territories that have yet to hold their contests contribute a total of 1191 delegates, and 210 of those are superdelegates. That math has the following consequences:
1. For Barack Obama to win the nomination straight out, without additional Superdelegates, he would have to win 72% of the remaining available pledged delegates.
2. For Hillary Clinton to win the nomination straight out, without additional Superdelegates, she would have to win 80% of the remaining available pledged delegates.
So, neither Obama nor Clinton can reasonably expect to simply win a majority of the delegates by capturing enough pledged delegates. But let's put aside reality for a moment and imagine if there were no Superdelegates at all...if the nomination were decided purely by delegates awarded through the nominating contests. In that case, in order to win the Democratic nomination, a candidate would have to capture only 1627 delegates (because there are 3253 pledged delegates total).
Why bother even looking at this imaginary situation since in the real world sueprdelegates do exist? Well, most Superdelegates have not committed to either candidate and even then ones who have are free to change their minds at any time. My guess is that if one of the two candidates has a clear lead in the pledged delegate count, most superdelegates will side with the popular victor. It is hard to imagine a situation in which Candidate A, behind by a couple of hundred pledged delegates, could convince enough supers to swing the nomination away from Candidate B. That would seriously damage the eventual nominee, not to mention the Democratic Party. That's why I think it is likely that the winner of the pledged delegates will be the winner overall.
That being the case, right now Barack Obama has the inside track. Obama requires only 473 more pledged delegates to claim a majority of all pledged delegates. Clinton requires 616 more. The remaining contests will award 981 pledged delegates, so Obama needs 48% of these to win a clear majority of the pledged delegates (Clinton needs 63%). There are also about 100 pledged delegates from previous contests that have not yet been officially awarded. For simplicity's sake, lets assume that they get split evenly between the two candidates. That being the case, Obama would have 1204 delegates and Clinton 1061.
Based on his victories so far, Vermont (15 pledged), Wyoming (12), Mississippi (33), North Carolina (115), Oregon (52), Montana (16), and South Dakota (15) look like easy wins for Senator Obama. Of course, all delegates are awarded proportionally, so lets give him 60% of these delegates. That would give him 155 delegates to Clinton's 103, and bring his total up to 1359 (magic number - 268). I would guess that Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia might all be good for Obama as well (a total of 151 pledged). If he wins 55% of those delegates, Obama will be up to 1442 (magic number - 185). Clinton is favored in Rhode Island, so let's award Obama only 8 of those 21 delegates. Guam will likely split its four delegates, and Puerto Rico, who knows (let's just split them evenly for arguments sake). All together, that would bring the total to 1480 for Obama to Clinton's 1274.
That leaves only the big three: Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. If Obama splits Texas with Clinton (and that looks like it might be a conservative estimate of his vote total), that brings him up to 1577 pledged delegates, only 50 away from the promised land. That's only 35% of the Ohio delegates. Under the scenario we've described above, even if Obama wins only 40% of the delegates in each of these big three, he would still end up with 1676 delegates to Clinton's 1570.
What's the bottom line on all this? If Senator Obama wins in Texas, that's the ballgame (in terms of pledged delegates, mind you). If Senator Obama loses Texas, but comes close there and also in Ohio, that's also probably the ballgame.
I don't see a way for Clinton to win among pledged delegates. Say she wins big on March 4 and she pulls out a 60-40 win in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. She'll have closed the delegate gap in half (from about 140 to about 70), but the next two contests are Wyoming and Mississippi, two likely losses for Clinton regardless of the Texas/Ohio outcome. Then comes Pennsylvania. Even a 60-40 win here would still leave her 50 delegates behind Obama with essentially only Obama-favorable states left. She would need 60-40 victories in basically all of the remaining states. The only scenario under which this happens is an Obama meltdown, a massive swing of momentum, or some other miracle. It could happen. But I doubt it.
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