Democratic Delegate Estimates for North Carolina and Indiana

With the May 6th primaries fast approaching, there have been a slew of new polls conducted in Indiana and North Carolina. But how do these polls translate into predictions of how many delegates each candidate might receive in the May 6th primaries? As usual, I'm using the Pollster.com poll averages from each state to estimate how many delegates Obama and Clinton will receive in each state. These estimates are presented here:

Based on these estimates, Clinton would take a net gain of 8 pledged delegates from Indiana while Obama would take a net advantage of 17 delegates from North Carolina. Overall, this would give Obama a net gain of 9 pledged delegates from the May 6th primaries.

My final estimate for the Pennsylvania primary was an 84-74 delegate split in favor of Clinton. Right now, MSNBC is showing an 83-73 split from Pennsylvania with two delegates still to be allocated. This means that, at most, Clinton will have taken a 12 delegate edge from her victory in Pennsylvania and, if the current estimates are correct, Obama will make most of that up on May 6th. As if the point needs to be belabored any further, barring something extraordinary, it is impossible for Clinton to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates at this point.

What else do these estimates mean? Well, I'm correct, Obama will have about 1,590 pledged delegates in his column by Wednesday morning. If you do not include Florida or Michigan, a candidate needs 1,627 to clinch a majority of the total pledged delegates. He will be about 30 delegates away from that mark. If you add in superdelegates, Obama presently stands at 1,739 (according to MSNBC) with 2,024 needed to capture a majority. By Wednesday morning, he should be less than 200 delegates away from that magic number.