Clinton, Romney Extend Delegate Leads

Source: ap



Clinton, Romney Extend Delegate Leads

By The Associated Press – 2 hours ago

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton edged Sen. Barack Obama in the race for Nevada's delegates to the Democratic national convention this summer, extending her overall lead. Mitt Romney won over half the Republican delegates in Nevada, also extending his national lead.

Clinton won 13 delegates in Nevada on Saturday, compared to 12 for Obama, an AP analysis of caucus results showed. All of Nevada's 25 Democratic delegates have been awarded.

Clinton leads the overall race for delegates with 237, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. She is followed by Obama with 135 and former Sen. John Edwards with 50.

A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hUPSXLSf9BMjfyPSCc2sdK8RtV8QD8U97GC82

washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog

Delegate Math: Who Won Nevada?
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UPDATE: AP and NBC have now changed their delegate counts to 13 for Obama and 12 for Clinton.
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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) won today's raw vote in Nevada but senior aides to Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) believe they have narrowly won the fight for delegates in the Silver State.

In a just completed conference call with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and director of delegate selection Jeff Berman argued that the Illinois Senator will leave Nevada today with 13 pledged delegates to 12 for Clinton thanks the weighting of northern and rural areas in the state.

An Associated Press official on the call suggested that Obama's campaign may well be right and the organization was looking seriously at its own math.

While the process of delegate apportionment is extremely complicated, it boils down to this: in the places that Clinton won, there were an even number of delegates that were split between she and Obama. In the places Obama won, there were an odd number of delegates, meaning that he often took two delegates to one for Clinton.

snip

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/01/clinton_won_or_did_she.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4122996&mesg_id=4122996

yet.

So nobody extended their delegate leads.

Published: January 21, 2008 6:00 a.m.
Loser Obama wins more delegates

Nevada rules weighted away from Vegas
By David WillmanLos Angeles TimesAdvertisement

WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton won and Barack Obama lost the West’s first presidential plebiscite.

Or was it the other way around?

As the candidates’ focus shifts to larger electoral prizes, the campaigns squabbled over the winner of Saturday’s caucuses in Nevada, a state with fewer than 2 percent of the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

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Nevada’s rules allocate delegates – the people who will ultimately vote for a nominee at the national party convention – based on a formula that is not bound strictly by the statewide vote in the caucuses. The rules are weighted to preserve the voice of voters in rural precincts, voices that might otherwise be dimmed by the influx of new voters in metropolitan Las Vegas.

snip

Clinton won decisively in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, but statewide, Obama won more votes in 11 of Nevada’s 17 counties. When the state’s arcane rules were taken into account, Obama could claim 13 delegates to Clinton’s 12.

snip

“We carried Reno by double digits, we carried the north. And that’s why we ended up with more delegates than you,” Axelrod said Sunday during an exchange on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

snip

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080121/NEWS03/801210338

So Hillary's 'super delegates' put her ahead? Big deal; she was ahead before the primaries even began. What's more important is who the voters select...and right now, Obama has more voter selected delegates.