Bill Clinton: "If we were under the Republican system, which is more like the Electoral College, she'd have a 300-delegate lead here."
First of all, as Kate noted, the Republican system is actually a great deal more complex, but just for the sake of argument, let's assume that Bill was talking about a winner-take-all system for all 50 states (and territories). Using the data at CNN's election web site, I recompiled all of the states that have voted, generating a winner-take-all system based on the winner of the popular vote. This excludes Florida and Michigan, which still wouldn't have delegates regardless of what system was being used.
The verdict? Clinton holds a 112 delegate lead over Obama, 1576-1464. Now obviously there are different ways of compiling this data (namely whether to include superdelegates) and the order in which these states vote matters a great deal, but the take-home point from this rough analysis is that the race would still be quite close even if it didn't use a proportional allocation system. I suppose Bill Clinton is assuming that Florida and Michigan count, and that Hillary Clinton's highly likely win today in Pennsylvania would give her a much more commanding lead under a winner-take-all system. But as fun as this exercise is, the fact is we don't have that system, and thus Pennsylvania will decide nothing.
--Mori Dinauer
