Monday, February 11, 2008

Potomac (or Chesapeake) Primary Delegate Predictions

UPDATED 2/11 (7:45pm)

After nothing for the first few days after Super Tuesday, we've now had several polls appear for the Maryland and Virginia primaries, and we've gotten our first poll of DC primary voters (compliments of Constituent Dynamics, which provides their own delegate estimates). Using the average of polls conducted in Virginia and Maryland over the past few days (5 in each state), I've produced an estimate of how the delegates should break down after Tuesday's voting. I am estimating how DC's delegates will be divided based on the single poll available for the district.
If these estimates are correct, Obama would pick up a nearly 40 delegate gain in the Potomac/Chesapeake Primary. This total would be similar to what he gained on Saturday night, and would give him a net gain of about 100 delegates in the last 4 days.

Speaking of Saturday night, I used a Survey USA poll to predict the delegate allocation in advance of Washington's caucuses despite my earlier failure in using polls to predict delegate allocations in Minnesota. Once again, the poll-based estimate was not a very good of the actual caucus outcome. The poll showed a 50%-45% lead for Obama (which would've meant about a 5 delegate pick-up), but he won 68% of the vote, which means he stands to take over a 30 delegate net advantage out of WA. The moral of the story is, once again, to be weary of polling on caucuses.

As for these predictions, refer to my first Super Tuesday estimate post for information on how I generate the estimates and all the appropriate warnings about potential sources of error. If new polls come available, particularly a DC survey, I will update these estimates accordingly.

NOTE: For Republicans, the winner of VA gets all of the state's 63 delegates. In MD, 13 delegates are given to the winner of the state, an additional 24 are given out by congressional district. McCain has a comfortable lead in the polls in both states, which means he may very well sweep all 87 delegates. Huckabee may be able to steal a congressional district or two in MD, but that would only get him 3 delegates per district.

UPDATE: In my original predictions, I inadvertently included unpledged superdelegates in my allocations. I have fixed that issue now.

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