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By The Numbers, Part 2

As some of you might be aware, a spreadsheet purported to be the Obama campaign's future projections "leaked" onto the web a couple of months ago.  I have a copy. 

As the primaries and caucuses have been decided, I've been filling in the actual numbers and tracking the accuracy of the estimates.  As of the results from Pennsylvania, the campaign expected to have 92 fewer delegates than the actual vote totals. 

In other words, they expected to have a pledged delegate lead of only 63, not the actual 155.  They expected to end up with a pledged delegate lead of only about 40 delegates and planned to pick up just slightly less than half the Super Delegates to gain the nomination. 

Here are the totals to date and the forward projections for the remaining 9 contests:

Vote Percentage			Delegates
Obama	Clinton	Edwards	Obama	Clinton	Edwards	Total	State
55%	44%	0%	2	2	0	4	Guam
53%	46%	0%	39	33	0	72	Indiana
53%	45%	0%	61	54	0	115	N. Carolina
43%	55%	0%	13	15	0	28	W. Virginia
42%	56%	0%	23	28	0	51	Kentucky
52%	47%	0%	28	24	0	52	Oregon
55%	44%	0%	9	7	0	16	Montana
57%	42%	0%	8	7	0	15	S. Dakota
45%	54%	0%	25	30	0	55	Puerto Rico
Totals:			208	200	0	408

If these projections hold, then Obama will end the primary season with 1,699 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,536.   As of today, using MSNBC numbers, Obama has 239 Super Delegates to 263 for Clinton.  That yields a total of 1,938 for Obama and 1,799 for Clinton.  Either candidate needs 2,024 delegates, so Obama needs 87 of the remaining 292 undeclared Supers, but Clinton needs a whopping 226 - more than 77%!

Another way to look at it is Obama needs only 136 of the remaining 408 pledged delegates to have won more than half - that's 33%.  Clinton would need 67% of the remaining delegates to catch him - she would need to win all the remaining contests with a winning percentage of 65%-70% or better.  The only state where she did that was her "home" state of Arkansas where she won 70%.  Her next best performance was Rhode Island with 58% of the vote.  Obama has won 18 contests with 60% or better.

I know, it's not over until its over, but I find it hard to figure out any way (short of theft) for Clinton to win the nomination.  The only reason that I believe Clinton is staying in is to destroy Obama so that he fails in the general election, thus giving her another shot in 2012.