What Percentage of the American people have already voted.

[Lemon law]

I see somewhat conflicting delegate numbers coming out of Super Tuesday. But the figures I saw begged McCain as now having 604 and thus a hair over 50% of the 1191 GOP delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. And second place Romney badly trailing at 244.

On the dem side, its more confused but I saw Hillary at 900 and Obama at 824. With first place Hillary still 5.5% under 50% of the 2025 delegates needed for either to win.

So even in a two person race, neither candidate is on a pace to win. The figure I don't have is the percentage of the electorate that has already had a chance to vote in a primary or caucus.
But well over 50% of the States have already voted including the most populous ones of California and New York.

On both sides, a favorite must break ahead or we will have deadlocked convention(s) is the contention of this thread.

[ProfJohn]

The Democrats are in far worse shape because of their proportional system.

McCain needs 494 delegates to win outright. VA and DC are both winner take all, so let?s say he wins those two states that brings the total he needs to 412. And there are still about 866 delegates left after those two states. So all he needs is to get 50% of those and he is over the top.

This also explains why Huckabee is sticking around. All he needs to do is win enough delegates, along with Romeny, to keep McCain under 50% and then Huckabee will have some power at the convention.

On the Democrats side all bets are off. It is very likely that neither of them gets the 2,025 delegates needed to win without counting the ?super delegates.? So their race may go down to the last state, at perhaps May 20 when Oregon and Kentucky vote since after that only 50 delegates will be left.

[ProfJohn]

Oops? forgot the math part?

Hillary and Obama are virtually tied so you can?t make any projections from that.

On the R side, based on Realclearpolitics delegate count:
1142 delegates are accounted for and McCain has 61% of those.
There are 948 delegates left so if McCain wins 60% of those he wins another 568 delegates.

Making his total 1265, more than enough to win the whole thing.

I doubt it works like this as both Huckabee and Romney will most likely get out of the race once it is certain that McCain is going to win. I say after March 4 when Texas and Ohio both vote.

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Oops? forgot the math part?

Hillary and Obama are virtually tied so you can?t make any projections from that.

On the R side, based on Realclearpolitics delegate count:
1142 delegates are accounted for and McCain has 61% of those.
There are 948 delegates left so if McCain wins 60% of those he wins another 568 delegates.

Making his total 1265, more than enough to win the whole thing.

I doubt it works like this as both Huckabee and Romney will most likely get out of the race once it is certain that McCain is going to win. I say after March 4 when Texas and Ohio both vote.

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Opps--forgot the math part is the joker in the deck. So lets look at the repubs--if 50% of the delegates plus one =1191, total delegates equals 2381. And if only 1142 delegates are now accounted for and McCain has 61% of those, then McCain must have 697 delegates or 93 more delegates than the source I cited. And if only 1142 republican delegates are now accounted for, its not yet quite half over. And if 1142 are now accounted for and 948 remain, total delegates =2090 and not 2381 and its more than half over.

Please don't misunderstand me PJ, I am not arguing with your numbers, its just hard to make sense out of anything here given all the conflicting reports.