Posted by D. Cupples (photo from Senate.gov ) | According to CNN's count, at this point, John McCain has 559 total delegates to Mitt Romney's 265, but the number of pledged delegates is McCain-542 to Romney-256.
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CNN puts Hillary Clinton at 783 total delegates and Barack Obama at 709, but the pledged-delegate count is, at this point, Clinton-590 to Obama-603.
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At 10:30 last night -- before all the nation's polls closed -- an Obama "surrogate" held a press conference, claiming that Obama led the delegate count 606-534. Two hours later, the surrogate estimated that Obama had 677 to Clinton's 634 pledged delegates. Today at 11:00 am, Obama's camp projected that it would take 847 delegates to Clinton's 834. Perhaps we'll learn later today whether Obama's surrogate was right.
One thing is clear: Clinton solidly won California -- proverbially flipping off a number of pollsters and pundits in the process.
Below are the actual California results, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times [as of 11:26 am (EST), with 96% of votes reported]:
% Votes # Votes
Clinton 51.8 2,064,590
Obama 42.3 1,686,517
Edwards 4.2 167,226
Others 1.5 --
Compare actual results to the results from a few recent pre-primary polls:
SurveyUSA Zogby Rasmussen Mason Dixon
Clinton 52% 36% 44% 45%
Obama 42% 49% 45% 36%
SurveyUSA was nearly dead-on; the others weren't. Zogby's and Rasmussen's polls didn't even peg the winners (a reminder of the New Hampshire primary embarrassment). Mason Dixon pegged the winner but got the percentages wrong.
Josh Marshall at TMP commentd:
"If you look at this from the vantage point of two weeks ago, it's a huge win for Obama, since he was trailing in states across the country by a very big margin. From the vantage point of the last couple days, however, it's much less clear. The hype of his [Obama's] momentum just got a bit out ahead of what he was able to pull off. And in that sense there's a very mild echo of New Hampshire, though the Clinton campaign is silly to claim some sort of comeback."
I agree re: polls from two weeks ago. But, over the last few days, many pollsters and pundits did hype a major shift and huge gains for Obama -- especially in California -- which simultaneously meant a major loss of ground for Clinton. That didn't quite happen.
Most surprising to me were California and Massachusetts. I suspected that Obama would take those states after major endorsements from California's First Lady Maria Shriver (billed as a surprise), Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, his son, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. That Clinton won those states at all does have a sort of comeback feel.
See other bloggers' reactions at Memeorandum: Balloon Juice, The Daily Dish, politburo diktat 2.0, The People's Republic …, Spin Cycle, Sister Toldjah, culturekitchen, Political Machine, A Blog For All, The Strata-Sphere, Redstate, Born at the Crest …, CNN and michellemalkin.com
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