Assessing Clinton's chances, with delegate calculations and the latest polls

Zogby is back to releasing tracking polls -- something they had not done since the run-up to Super Tuesday. And they bring mixed news for Hillary Clinton who now leads in neither Ohio nor Texas:

• In Ohio, Clinton and Obama are now tied at 45%. Among the GOP, despite an 8% in Huckabee's favor, McCain is still ahead by... 33%!


• In Texas, Clinton has cut Obama's lead by 4% and now "only" trails by 2%, 45% to 43%. Zogby adds that Clinton led Obama by double-digits in the Friday numbers alone, and we will know in the coming days if that is an outlier or the beginning of a trend.


• The BELO tracking poll out this morning confirms that there might be the slightest of trends in Clinton' s favor who takes back the lead, albeit by a small 46% to 45%.


• Finally, we got a rare poll from Rhode Island showing Clinton up 49% to 40%, thanks to a massive 32% lead among women -- for a 50% gender gap!

I have been reminding you for a few days now that the important metric has never been whether Clinton can win Ohio and Texas but whether she can win them big and get the kind of delegate lead she need to cut into Obama's advantage. When the question becomes whether she is going to win Ohio and Texas at all, it becomes hard to imagine how she will storm back to significant victories.

To illustrate this point and how crucial big wins are for Clinton, let's turn to some delegate calculations. Forbes has a very useful delegate calculator online that allows you to project the delegate attributions of the upcoming states by predicting the percentages of both candidates. Marc Ambinder conducted the same exercise yesterday and discovered just how dire Clinton's situation is, definitely take a look at his calculations as well, but here is my take on this:

The Campaign Diaries pledged delegate count right now stands at 1195.5 versus 1048, approximately a 150 delegate gap. Now, let's leave out all the upcoming states that Obama is very strongly favored to win: Vermont, Wyoming, South Dakota, Oregon, Montana and Mississippi. I am not even including North Carolina, Kentucky (which holds caucuses) and Indiana (where a recent poll had Obama way ahead) for the sake of making an argument (I grant that there is an argument to be made for Oregon staying competitive, since Obama only won the Washington primaries by 3%).

That leaves us with Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky. It would take Clinton winning every single one of these contests with 58% to get a 150 pledged delegate lead out of them and barely catch up with Obama. If we take don't count North Carolina and Kentucky, that percentage rises to 62%.

And then we would still have to throw in Obama's victories in places like Mississippi and Vermont in the calculation and the fact that Texas also holds caucuses. Clinton's one hope is Puerto Rico, where there is a possibility of delegates being attributed winner take all which would give her a huge 55 delegate lead out of that contest, which could definitely help her make up some of the difference.

Now if Clinton managed to gather enough momentum to start winning these states with 55%, she would not close the delegate gap entirely but she would get very close and she would suddenly have momentum and all the buzz, which could push some superdelegates in her corner. Also, if Clinton managed to get fairly close she would then make a renewed argument for sitting Florida and Michigan. And while she would not necessarily succeed (after all, if she doesn't have the votes to become the nominee it is unlikely she can control the committee that will decide on sitting FL and MI), it could provide cover to superdelegates who want to vote for Hillary.

But these numbers point to how difficult it will be for her to either get a pledged delegate back or even get that close to Obama, whose February sweep really did wonders.