Heading into Super Tuesday, Heading into Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton had a decisive lead among announced superdelegates—those declaring themselves for one candidate or the other. Depending on the source, she was “winning” (if that’s the right word) about 60 percent of them. What’s happened in the 10 days since February 4? The 77 (net) changes in superdelegate commitments since then, by my count using the Demconwatch site, breaks about even: Barack Obama, net +42; Clinton, net +35.* (I say “net” because a few of the superdelegates, most notably Rep. John Lewis, announced a change in a previous commitment.) That total of 77 persons may not sound big enough to draw conclusions about, and perhaps they are an outlier subset. But it’s no small subset; it’s about a tenth of all superdelegates. That’s right: In the past 10 days, almost one in every 10 superdelegates has made (or changed) commitments. The argument being made on recent media calls by the Clinton camp is that if they do well enough among pledged delegates in states like OH, TX and PA, those gains will again put her within reach of using her advantage among superdelegates to get over the top. But since Obama’s pledged regular delegate lead presently exceeds her verbally committed superdelegate lead, unless she continues to get more than 50 percent of the remaining superdelegates not as-yet committed, her overall net margin among superdelegates will either stay the same or shrink. If the first 10, post-Super Tuesday results are any indication, the “superdelegate scenario” math is not getting any better and may in fact be getting a bit worse for her. We can’t know yet what will happen in the remaining states, but suffice to say that if Obama merely breaks even among the remaining, as-yet uncommitted superdelegates, it further corners Clinton; if he captures a slight majority of them, as he has in the past 10 days at least, that corner gets even smaller. --Tom Schaller *Here are my calculations, for chronological announcements of superdelegates Tim Walz through Lewis, as copied from the Demconwatch site at 8 a.m. this morning: Obama: 40 newly-declared + 3 picked up by Clinton defections (Roz Samuels of NJ; David Scott and Lewis of GA) – 1 determined not to be a superdelegate (Shirley Franklin, GA) = 42. Clinton: 39 newly-declared – 1 determined not to be a superdelegate (Mark Schauer, MI) – 4 defections (three above plus MI’s Debbie Dingell, who went from Clinton to uncommitted) = 35. (Interestingly, defections alone account exactly for the 42-35 difference, with Clinton losing four and Obama gaining three of those four; we'll have to wait to see if that is a harbinger of things to come.)
