The excellent political site, MyDD has created a handy-dandy Presidential delegate counter widget. I’ve plugged it into the left sidebar (the formatting is a bit off — it will probably drive crazy my poor web designer wife, but it’s good enough for my aesthetically challenged sensibilities.) If you are interested, the widget code is available here.
As of right now, the Democratic delegates are as follows:
Obama 16
Clinton 15
Edwards 14
(Out of 4,372 possible)
The Republican candidates are:
Romney 17
Huckabee 13
Thompson 8
McCain 5
Paul 4
Hunter 1
Giuliani 1
(Out of 2,516 possible)
The media generated “momentum” from Iowa can’t be discounted, but in terms of actual delegates, it bears repeating that Iowa is not terribly significant. I’m wondering why very little is being made of Romney’s victory in Wyoming. Is it just because political reporters have decided arbitrarily that Iowa and New Hampshire are important or is there something less artificial going on?
I assume it is one of those statistical things that has no meaning, other than it has always been that way. Something like no Republican has won without Ohio or whatever it is.
Or maybe is it something like no one has gone to the Super Bowl if they beat an AFC South team on an odd numbered day. Meaningless, other than it has held true so far. (Please, don’t tell me that is actually true…)
Iowa is probably considered more “representative” of the population at large. Iowa and New Hampshire have seen much more of the candidates, so their results are considered more important. Or something like that.
Wyoming didn’t get any coverage because it was too hard for the candidates and the media to get to Wyoming in between the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Everyone boarded planes for NH right after Iowa.
Also, only a few of the GOP candidates visited Wyoming, according to CBS News. Romney, Hunter, Thompson and Paul made stops at various times to campaign, with Hunter being the last candidate to visit on Dec. 4.
Isn’t the Republican caucus in Wyoming only interesting in the case where the candidate with the most money isn’t also the candidate with the tightest links to the oil business?
And how often does that happen?