Debunking the Clinton Claim that “she’d already be the nominee” by Republican Rules

HRC has claimed that “she’d already be the nominee if we had Republican rules”.

Clinton called her base of support “broader and deeper” than Obama’s, and said, “At the end of the day, that’s what it should be about for Democrats. You know, it is who can better win. And I’ve won the big states. I’ve won the states that we have to anchor. If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee.”

Is that so? I claim that the answer is “no”. Remember that, of the states that have been contested, only Vermont, Virginia, D. C., New York, Missouri, Arizona, New Jersey, Utah and Delaware are winner take all.

So, I crunched the numbers and gave the winner of the “winner take all” states all of the delegates. Note that the Republicans in Louisiana have a weird rule about someone having to get 50% of the vote to get delegates and that the Democrats have a part caucus, part election system in Texas.

I went ahead and kept proportionality in the non-winner take all states.

The result came out 1409 Clinton, 1405 Obama. That is hardly having the nomination wrapped up.

About the table: the middle column has a “y” for the winner take all states, and the left two columns redistribute the delegates according to a “winner take all” basis in these states.

Note: the Republicans distribute the delegates in some of the “non-winner take all” states by “winner take all” in each district but I didn’t go district by district; I felt that the Democratic distribution was a good enough approximation. Note that this may well have added to Obama as Clinton failed to win many districts, say, in Illinois.

	clinton	obama	Rep-wta	clinton-r	Obama-r
alabama	25	27		25	27
alaska	4	9		4	9
arizona	31	25	y	56	0
arkansas	27	8		27	8
california	204	166		204	166
colorado	20	35	y	20	35
connecticut	22	26	y	22	26
deleware	6	9	y	0	15
dc	3	12	y	0	15
florida				0	0
georgia	27	60		27	60
hawaii	6	14		6	14
Idaho	3	15		3	15
Illinois	49	104	y	49	104
Iowa	14	25		14	25
Kansas	9	23	y	9	23
Louisiana	22	34	y	22	34
Maine	9	15	y	9	15
Maryland	28	42	y	28	42
Massachusetts	55	38		55	38
Michigan				0	0
Minnesota	24	48	y	24	48
Mississippi	13	20	y	13	20
Missouri	36	36	y	0	72
Nebraska	8	16	y	8	16
Nevada	12	13		12	13
New Hampshire	9	9		9	9
New Jersey	59	48	y	107	0
New Mexico	14	12		14	12
New York	139	93	y	232	0
North Dakota	5	8		5	8
Ohio	74	67		74	67
Oklahoma	24	14		24	14
Pennsylvania	85	73		85	73
Rhode Island	13	8		13	8
South Carolina	12	25		12	25
Tennesse	40	28		40	28
Texas	94	99		94	99
Utah	9	14	y	0	23
Vermont	6	9	y	0	15
Virginia	29	54	y	0	83
Washington	26	52		26	52
Wisconsin	32	42		32	42
Wyoming	5	7		5	7
	1332	1482		1409	1405