Who Won Super Tuesday

There will be debates for days over who won Super Tuesday.  Clinton won a few big states by small margins, Obama won many small states by big margins.  Their cumulative vote total was very similar.  They picked up nearly the same number of delegates.  Clinton won slightly more, but most of her lead is due to (unelected) superdelegates she had before. So the cumulative total of elected delegates,  according to CNN on 2/6 at 10 AM, is Obama 707, Clinton 706.

 

But one thing is not in doubt: Democrats won yesterday.  Let's assume that John McCain will be the Republican nominee.  Well, in each state that voted, whether the order on the Democratic side was Obama-Clinton, or Clinton-Obama, they each had more votes than John McCain in that state, except in his home state of Arizona.

Here is a list of states and the order of results, with O for Obama, C for Clinton, and M for McCain.  Sometimes direct comparisons were not possible because totals were in state delegates instead of voters, or there was a primary only for one side or the other.  

AK (state delegates; OC | M 4th)

AL OCM

AZ MCO

AS COM

CA COM

CO (state delegates; OC | M 2nd)

CT OCM

DE OCM

GA OCM

ID (state delegates; OC; no Repubs)

IL OCM

KS (state delegates; OC; no Repubs)

NM OC; no Repubs

MA COM

MN (state delegates; OC | M 2nd)

MO OCM

NJ COM

NY COM

OK COM

TN COM

UT OCM

Now to be fair, there were three competitive contenders on the Republican side dividing the vote, and only two on the Democratic side.  But consider, for example the deep red state of Alabama, where you would expect Republicans to be way ahead (300K means 300,000; all numbers from CNN):

Obama 300K

Huckabee 226K

Clinton 223K

McCain 207K

Romney 100K

Paul 15K

Edwards 7K

Giuliani 2K

other Democrats 3K

other Republicans 1K

 

Total Democrats= 533K

Total Republicans - Paul=536K

 

(I leave Ron Paul in a separate category, because I think in an Obama-McCain race, a good fraction of the Paul supporters will vote for Obama.)