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Clinton wins Pennsylvania
Senator Hilary Clinton defeated rival Senator Barack Obama in the April 22, 2008 Pennsylvania Presidential Primary. While Obama maintains a commanding lead in the delegate count, we can't help but take a closer look at the states he's won and lost.
Clinton has won several larger states: California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Florida and Michigan don't count, but Clinton won both of those too. (Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan and opposes a new election in both states - but we'll get back to that. Oh yes.) So, you'd figure that winning all these larger states would count for more than winning say, Vermont? Not really. Vermont is a 'winner take all' state, meaning that whoever wins gets all of their delegates. Larger states, like Pennsylvania, proportionately apply their delegates based on popular vote. So when Obama lost Pennsylvania, he still picked up delegates. When Clinton lost Vermont, she picked up nothing.
So here we are. We're not great at math, but we figure Clinton has to about sweep the remaining contests to win the delegate count (not counting the SUPER delegate mess - oh, did you know members of congress are also super delegates?) come convention time. And more prognosticators are giving North Carolina to Barack Obama.
Back to Florida and Michigan. As we know, both of these states moved up their primaries before Super Tuesday (a lot of 'supers' in these elections...) in opposition with the Democratic Party's wishes, so they spanked them by revoking their delegates. Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan, as did John Edwards. To us, this was them cosing up to the party and leaving the democratic voters of Michigan out in the proverbial cold. Clinton left her name on and obviously won. No one took their name off the ballot in Florida, but only Clinton campaigned there. Clinton won. Two more states that Clinton won and has nothing to show for... the party needs to do something about this. New elections would cost a pretty penny, but are they really going to ignore the voters in all the big Florida cities (a crucial swing state come November) and Michigan? So far, it looks like they will.
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