Subject: delegate math
From: "Joshua Alcorn" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2016 13:58:49 -0500

Hunter - had a little time to kill this week - Brianna is in Nashville, so I’m living bachelor life. Did a little digging in to the delegate selection process. 

Take a look at the third tab in this spreadsheet, marked Post ST

This spreadsheet looks at all of the contests AFTER Super Tuesday and calculates the delegates each candidate would get. I think she and Bernie split everything through Super Tuesday along the same lines BHO and HRC did in 2008. They basically split the delegates 51/49. She probably has a better edge in this cycles Super Tuesday states, so call it at 55/45 split. So, she’ll end up with about 550 delegates after the Super Tuesday contests. Bernie with 468.

I looked at 4 scenarios for the post Super Tuesday states. In the first one, in YELLOW on the third tab in the document, Bernie gets the 15% minimum for accruing delegates, and the VP doesn’t get in.

In the second on, BLUE on the sheet, the VP decides after NH to get in. He can still get on the ballot in 14 states (noted in ORANGE on the spreadsheet. For this scenario, I calculated the delegates Bernie gets if he gets 15% of the vote, if Biden gets 20% in the states he can enter, and she gets 65%.

In the third one, shaded in GREEN, I went through the state public polling (most of which is from 2015, don’t ask me how I got it) and edited Bernie’s percentages to track with the percentages he’s getting in those polls. If there was no poll, I left him at 15%. I upped Biden to 35% of the vote in the contests he can enter and HRC gets the balance.

For the fourth scenario, shaded in PURPLE, I went through the public polling (most of which is from 2015) and edited Bernie’s percentages  to track with the percentages he’s getting in those polls. If there was no poll, I left him at 15%. I gave Biden 50% and HRC gets the balance.

There are 10 states I adjusted to track with the polling, three of which (CA, CT, NJ) Biden could potentially compete in. 

In the best case scenario, Biden 50%, she still gets 1842 PLEDGED delegates. (For the purposes of this hypothetical, I’m not factoring in UNPLEDGED delegates that come from the states. Nor am I considering SUPER DELEGATES.)

So, in this case, HRC gets 550 from the first four and the Super Tuesday states and then 1842 from the post Super Tuesday states equals 2392, which is 9 more than she needs. Without Supers or the UNPLEDGED.

Now, there’s a lot that can happen here and these numbers are, I think, a baseline. There are states where Bernie won’t get 15% when Biden is in: KS, ID, ND, SD, DE, WY, KS. There are states where Biden will eat in to her more: DE, CT, NJ. There are states where Bernie will do way better than she (OR, WA, ME) and drive her 1842 number down.

To say nothing of what could happen if she’s suddenly unacceptable. Although I think the only way she drops out is if she’s in jail or dead.

So is there a path? Sure. It’s a small one. She definitely gets enough delegates to win on the first ballot with the field as it is now, I don’t care what Tad Devine says. There’s a small path for the VP to get enough delegates to prevent her from getting the nomination on the first ballot. But then he’d be, well, preventing her from getting the nomination. Not good for the party. But it seems to me the only way he can be there if she stumbles is if he has some delegates of his own come Philly in July.

Anyway, just wanted to share with you.
/j