Josh Marshall, having been mocked for not bothering to do any homework on racial voting patterns in the Democratic presidential campaign, coincidentally discovered Brendan Nyhan’s analyses of the subject.  Indeed, Nyhan’s most recent analysis deconstructs recent nuttiness on the topic from David Sirota, concluding that “the claim that Obama does uniquely poorly with whites in states with moderate black populations is not well supported.” To save face, Marshall claims that

Syndicated columnist David Sirota (of In These Times and most other fringe-Left outlets) claims that Hillary Clinton’s “last-ditch efforts to win the Democratic nomination could rely on the ‘Race Chasm’ and the trampling of democracy.” Promoting his column at OpenLeft, Sirota writes: In my newspaper column on Friday, I touched on a little-explored phenomenon in the 2008 presidential race. Amid all the punditry and intricate television graphics showing delegate counts

At RCP, Jay Cost notes that the current media estimates of Hillary Clinton’s odds of winning the Democratic nomination are as imprecise as predicting who will win the World Series: First, there are many reasonable ways to count the popular vote. None is obviously superior to the rest. Of course, it does not matter which we think is most appropriate. What matters is what the superdelegates think, as they will

Having already juxtaposed the analysis by RCP’s Jay Cost with the district-by-district estimates from former Abbie Hoffman protege and political reporter Al Giordano, I add estimates from OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers, which I somehow managed to miss previously.  Bowers thinks Giordano’s estimates are far too friendly to Hillary Clinton and suggests “the most likely pledged delegate projection from Pennsylvania is 84-74 in favor of Clinton (plus three add-on delegates), not the 92-66

At RCP, Jay Cost brings the statistics and the scatterplot to show — as suspected — that Pennsylvania is indeed much like Ohio, and builds a model for both states based on the number of African Americans, how “upscale” white voters are, and the percentage of residents are aged 20-24 in a given county.  The model accounts for 70% of all variation in countywide vote returns in Ohio.   That is pretty darn

Although I have written about the problems created by the Michigan and Florida primaries even before either took place, I have not posted much on items like the trial balloon floated past TIME’s Mark Halperin yesterday as a possible solution. The reason is is relatively simple, but best explained by two recent pieces from Real Clear Politics. Jay Cost has a new post up, explaining why neither candidate has a rational

At RCP, Thomas Edsall surveys a range of experts (though mostly left of center) as to whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is more electable (along with related questions).  Most offer variations on some of the themes I have blogged here the past few weeks, e.g., which demographics might switch to John McCain, Obama’s strength in Mountain and Western states, Obama as a higher-risk, higher-reward candidate, etc.  It is nevertheless

In this campaign cycle, people have become increasingly aware of the odd and varied ways in which the Democrats and Republicans award delegates to the candidates seeking their respective party nominations.   The other day, RCP’s Jay Cost posted an analysis of the systemic biases in the method by which the Democrats award delegates to states: In my opinion, the Democrats’ nominating system stinks. It doesn’t stink as much as the

The Atlantic’s Democratic primary blogging was all over the non-electoral map.  Matt Yglesias revealed himself to be a bitter loser, blaming Hillary Clinton’s Ohio victory on “the racist vote.”  The exit poll has almost identical numbers for gender, so he could throw in reverse-sexist, too.  Welcome to your party.  Excitable Andy was almost moderate by comparison, noting that black Democrats voted 91 to 9 for Obama.  Megan McArdle kept nodding off.  Marc Ambinder wisely

At OpenLeft, Chris Bowers again projects delegate counts for the remainder of the Democratic campaign, which has Hillary Clinton behind Barack Obama by roughly 180 delegates (not counting Puerto Rico, which should be a net gain for Clinton, though nowhere near enough). A RCP, Jay Cost outlines how Clinton could stake a “moral claim” to the nomination outside the delegate count: The most persuasive method is to count the votes. This is why