Obama actually had an excellent overnight.  He kept contact in several districts, won enough in CA-09 for a 4-2 split, and I don’t think CA-50 and CA-53 are worth calling yet until we see where the final votes are coming from; he’s basically in the same position he was in CA-01.  My approximations on delegates show that Clinton will win between 31 and 37 more delegates out of California.  At one point last night it looked like 50-60.  

(Those are slightly different than Caligirl’s numbers, based on late-breaking numbers for Obama.)

My initial analysis wasn’t all that off except for one key area: Clinton was able to get 3-1 splits in 8 key districts, almost all of them heavily Latino: CA-18, CA-21, CA-31 (hey, great job, Obama surrogate Xavier Becerra!), CA-32, CA-34, CA-38, CA-39 (awesome, Obama surrogate Linda Sanchez!), and CA-43.  If Obama got enough votes in those districts to keep it close, and I mean a scant 35%, he would have basically been even or down by 5-7 delegates.

Those are districts that are dominated by Spanish-language media, that are in Los Angeles and Riverside and San Bernardino and Orange counties.  They would be uniquely difficult to organize at the precinct level, and Clinton won based on paid media and name ID and connection to the Clinton policies of the past.  Clinton’s huge Asian vote probably helped as well, at least in CA-39.  I also overestimated the value of endorsers like Becerra and Linda Sanchez and Adam Schiff.  Congressmen don’t necessarily have a machine to get out votes.

I should also mention that Charlie Cook did very well.

Hillary Clinton was up by a whole lot in this race and she ended up winning by single digits (about 9.5%).  Given her early voting lead, depending on how many voted by mail she may have won by as little as 5% on Election Day.  But she took the districts where she had a natural advantage strongly.

On the Republican side, John McCain won around 49 districts, Mitt Romney 4.  Unbelievable.

UPDATE: Frank Russo notes something very important:

Of the 6.3 million ballots counted for Presidential candidates, 63% or over 4 million were cast in the Democratic primary and only 32% or 2.3 million and counting were cast in the Republican primary. Democrats and decline to state a party voters who participated in the Democratic primary far outperformed normal voting patterns in California. Democrats hold a 10 point margin in voter registration over Republicans in this state and decline to state voters account for 19% of registrations. There is a 31% spread between the Democratic primary vote here and the Republican primary vote.

That’s extremely impressive, and a good harbinger for November.  Russo also says there are as many as a million absentee votes that have yet to be counted, so these numbers could still move, which means delegates could shift as well.

…In addition, there are tens of thousands of votes caught up in the double bubble trouble, so the margin of victory could plausibly shrink to 8 or even 7.

This is a rout right now.

51.4% reporting

Clinton 53.6%

Obama 38.3%

Edwards 6.3%

That’s Angelides-like numbers for Barack.  Maybe you CAN’T run a ground campaign with precinct captains in California.  Maybe it is too big.

Now, there’s a long way to go, and I do expect it to tighten, but not a lot.  Clinton SMOKED Obama in the hard-to-reach areas of SoCal and the Central Valley.

In some key districts, however, we’re seeing interesting stuff.  CA-01 is 9 points, CA-04 is 6, and CA-05 is 4.  All are trending to Obama late, and all are 5-delelgate districts.  2 out of 3 up there would be big.  CA-30 and CA-36, the Westside of LA and the South Bay, essentially, are 13 point leads for Clinton right now but it’s very early and there are a lot of votes to go, and they too are trending Obama.  San Diego is starting to trend that way too but he’s further behind.

Obama might “get a break on change” and bring this within 15-20 delegates, yet.

Oh, and on the props, the gaming compacts will pass, community college funding will lose, and Prop.93 is getting close to being a loss.  It’s 47.3%-52.7% with over half the votes in.

…Edwards is playing the Nader role in four districts right now, where his total is more than the margin of victory: CA-01, CA-04, CA-05, and CA-14.  Now, this isn’t a perfect analogy, since Edwards voters don’t all go to Obama.  But it’s certainly interesting.

CA-30 and CA-36 continue to tighten.  CA-30 will be a wash (3-3), but it’s something of a bellweather.

UPDATE: 63.9% reporting:

Clinton 53.2%

Obama 39.6%

Edwards 5.6%

Still 73% of CA-09 precincts in Alameda county outstanding.  This will tighten further.  I think Obama will come up just short in CA-01 and CA-04, however.

UPDATE FINAL: I’m friggin’ tired.

69.4% reporting

Clinton 53.0%

Obama 40.1%

Edwards 5.3%

A couple developments: Obama just took the lead in CA-14.  And he’s made it extremely close in CA-53, a 5-delegate district.  Also, the numbers are closing just enough in a few of those big spreads to mask the drubbing and maybe get to a 2-2 split.  Only 4 of those are lost causes right now.

We’ll see where this leads, but people might wake up tomorrow morning and see how big a victory this was for Hillary Clinton, and the narrative might change.

Prop. 93 lost.  Tomorrow is a whole new ballgame for the California Legislature, but that’s for another time.

UPDATE: OK, this is REALLY it this time.  Hillary Clinton will score between a 30-50 delegate victory depending on outlying districts, and it’ll probably move closer to Obama’s end because he’s gaining in all the late results.

CA-01 is really fun; about 100 votes separate the two.  CA-05, CA-50 and CA-53 are the other keys; Obama needs to win those.  CA-09, in Alameda County, has barely come in at all – that could have an effect on the overall numbers, and if Obama starts running up the score there he could get a 4-2 split.  In a bunch of other races, he needs to stay close enough to keep it 2-2 (CA-16, CA-18, CA-41, CA-43, CA-45).

The polls close in a half-hour.  Best results at the Secretary of State’s website here.  For you delegate junkies out there (and I know you’re out there), you can find the returns by Congressional district here.

I don’t know if the early returns tell us a lot.  I think it’s going to be a toss-up between Obama and Clinton, and the same with McCain and Romney.  If Romney loses here I expect him to drop out tomorrow.  For Obama, a win would be very significant for spin, but the delegate counts are where the action is on the Democratic side.  This race is going on, for a while, at least.

[UPDATE by Julia] 8:27 PM Bowers has the exit poll numbers at Clinton 50.7–44.4 Obama.  If that holds up with her absentee edge it could be a good night for her.  Then again it was only a few weeks ago that she was up here by 20 points.  She was expected to win handily all along.

[UPDATE by Julia] 8:45 PM MSNBC exit polling demographics: Obama won the white vote 49-43, Black vote 89-11, Clinton winning Latino vote 2-1 and the Asian vote about 3-1.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:12 PM CNN has more votes in than the SoS. 14.2% to 5.8% in.  CNN has it at 55% to 32%.  The SoS has it at 53.9 to 32.6%% .  looking at the counties LA, SF and Sacto don’t have any numbers in.  I see some in Marin, Fresno and a decent chunk from SD.  This is going to be a long night folks.  Absentees come in first.  LA typically comes in late, but they don’t have the same problems as other counties with counting the paper ballots.  They did not have to switch their machines.  Sacto has been warning for a while that they will be slow.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:16 No sooner do I update, but MSNBC calls it for California.  This feels premature based on the numbers coming from the registrar.  They do have experienced number crunchers on the TeeVee.

[UPDATE by Julia] 9:30 14.8% in from the SoS: 54.8% to 31.8% Clinton over Obama.  Some LA numbers in.

[UPDATE by Lucas] 9:41 46 out of 53 congressional districts reporting, McCain with significant leads in every district (woah, wrong number: 15.2% of precincts total reporting).

(I wonder what we’ll be dealing with the rest of the week. bump. – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

So I went to my polling place at an off-hour to see if turnout was decent (it was pretty average, in my view).  It was a new location for me, in a little art gallery featuring an exhibit called “Patriot Acts” (yes, a politically themed art installation in a polling place.  Ah, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica).  I had no problem getting my ballot and heading to the booth.  The guy behind me was a DTS voter who had no idea that Republicans didn’t allow them to vote in the primary.  “I wouldn’t vote for the Republicans anyway,” he yelled as he took a Democratic ballot.  But nobody told him to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval to re-assert that he, as a nonpartisan voter, requested a Democratic ballot (as if taking the ballot in the first place wasn’t enough of a clue).  So I told him.

My neighbor was headed to the polls; she’s also a DTS voter.  I told her to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval.  She said she kind of heard something about that but wasn’t sure.

I’ve received more than a couple emails from DTS voters thanking me for telling them about the issue, or saying that they didn’t fill out the bubble, asking me whether or not their votes will be counted.

This is a NIGHTMARE.  An absolute nightmare.  This has been in place since 2002, and somehow the evidence from 2004, when so few DTS voters participated in the Democratic primary in LA County, wasn’t enough to dummy-proof the system.  Thousands upon thousands of voters are going to be disenfranchised today.  I can’t reach them all; neither can the CDP.  The Secretary of State must demand that all those DTS ballots are impounded, the machines recalibrated to eliminate this problem, and all votes reread through the feeder.  In a race so close, we cannot have this crisis of confidence.

UPDATE: I’m on a conference call with the Obama campaign right now and they’re talking about this very issue.  “There is great concern” in Los Angeles County, and “the pollworkers are confused” about this as well, according to the lawyer on the phone now (I would use the word “ignorant” and not confused).  “We’re hoping the Secretary of State and the County Registrar will rectify this situation” but they don’t sound particularly hopeful.

DTS voters are also being denied ballots in selected counties, according to the campaign.

Carla Marinucci is wondering why this wasn’t challenged previously.  This has been in place in LA County in multiple election cycles, and knowing that DTS voters would show up in record numbers, I agree that it should have been caught earlier.  My point is that the Secretary of State’s office or the county registrar should have been the ones to catch it.  The lawyer just said “We hope that they will adopt procedures to make sure these ballots are counted,” and if they aren’t adopted, he raised the option of legal challenges.

These ballots almost certainly won’t be counted tonight, and keep that in mind when you start seeing the results roll in.

They’re hoping that the media gets this out.  I’m trying.

UPDATE II: From Ezra Klein:

From the inbox: This is really weird. From the Clinton campaign:

4:25 PM EST HILLARY WIRE UPDATE…

* False reports about voting problems in LA are being drudged up

– Everything is going smoothly in LA.

What a revolting statement (if true).

Update (Lucas): LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has a statement out now.

“I urge the Secretary of State and County Registrar to do everything within their power to ensure that every vote is counted, and to carefully weigh voter intent against this confusing Los Angeles County ballot design.

As for election news in California, the final two polls have been wildly divergent.  SurveyUSA shows a 10-point Clinton lead, while Reuters/Zogby has a 13-point Obama lead.  The final Field Poll (the gold standard, as everyone knows) went with a one-point lead to Obama two-point lead to Clinton, almost exactly in the middle.

Of course, this only tells part of the story, as Marc Ambinder picked up on my caveat that the district-level delegate system will skew the results, particularly in those even-numbered districts, where a high bar is needed to be scaled to get anything beyond an even split of delegates.  And if you expect an early answer about them, think again:

So much for having a hard delegate count on Super Tuesday, we’re hearing that CA Dems won’t have final delegate tally ready until Friday.

Debra Bowen’s mantra has been that she’d rather get the count right than get it fast, so everyone’s going to have to wait.  I think it’s a small price to pay for voting with a paper ballot.  By the way, DTS voters, fill that bubble!

The Cook Political Report did the same district-level analysis that I did yesterday, and found a considerably larger amount of variance.  Cook thinks that Clinton can get over the 63% bar in those heavily-Latino districts (I’m not so sure).  I understand that the 6-delegate seats require 58.3% of the vote to get a 4-2 split, which seems to me to be possible in Barbara Lee’s CA-09 and Nancy Pelosi’s CA-08, so Obama could be in an even stronger position than I thought.  And as Councilman Garcetti said last night, they are paying attention to this stuff, on both sides I would imagine.

Finally, we have somewhat neglected the Republican race.  The chic pick is that Romney has come all the way back and will take California.  John McCain is apparently worried about it, since it would mean that Romney has an argument to stay in the race.  Both candidates scurried back here today for extra bits of campaigning.

And yet McCain’s people fear he may lose the popular vote in California to Romney — even if they haul in the same number of CA delegates — and that the Super Tuesday story will therefore NOT be the crowning of McCain but rather his failure to put away the game, a failure born of his fractious and sometimes unloving relationship with conservatives, especially those millions of conservatives who listen to and abide by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, not to mention Limbaugh and Hannity themselves, and a failure that in turn will be viewed as both a symptom and a cause of the historic crack-up of the conservative coalition that has sustained and nourished the Republican Party for a couple generations.

Which would be fantastic, since it would be desirable for their race to be as screwed up as ours.  Could the relentless Rush Limbaugh attacks be having an impact?  We’ll soon find out.

UPDATE: Harold Meyerson has further thoughts, and they’re good.

• According to Dan Walters, all his serious economist friends are telling him there’s no recession yet, theoreticaly speaking.  He might want to read his own paper, about how the Employment Development Department can’t keep up with the demand for unemployment benefits and everyone calling in is getting a busy signal.  Tip to those who apparently aren’t feeling a recession: use the EDD website.

• In a reversal to the Bush Administration, a judge has ruled that George Bush cannot exempt the Navy from environmental laws regarding the use of sonar within 12 miles of the California coast.  Not that Bush followed the ruling of the judiciary the first time, but…

• There are still high hopes for an end to the WGA strike, and meetings in Los Angeles and New York have been scheduled for the weekend (ostensibly to present the contract), but caution lies ahead, as more foreign imports and reality television are likely to wind up on schedules, and less pilots are likely to be shot.  Of course, this was my point all along, and why I underscored the need to grow the union for the benefit of everyone involved and give everything on television the opportunity to unionize.  But jurisdiction for reality and animation was dropped in the most recent round of talks, and there will be consequences to that.

• Our friends at the SEIU are going to start a $75 million dollar, year-long, national campaign in support of universal health care.  I have to think that this is a positive by-product of the coalition built in California around the ultimately unsuccessful effort on health care reform.  If so, then there was nothing unsuccessful about it.  It’s very exciting to see a full media and ground effort to draw the policy distinctions on health care between the parties, and to advocate for a system that makes sense for working families.

Use this as a repository for everything but the election.

(Ugh. Bump. – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

In Barack Obama’s final email to supporters, this little reminder kind of jumped out at me:

If you declined to select a political party when you registered to vote, you can still vote for Barack Obama if you request a Democratic ballot from the poll worker. Make sure you mark “Democratic” in the appropriate space or the vote might not be counted.

Vote might not be counted, ay?  What’s this all about?

Turns out that in Los Angeles County, if a DTS voter requests their Democratic ballot and casts their vote, but does NOT mark “Democratic” in the appropriate space, the vote will indeed not be counted.  The ballot will go through the scan-tron machine, not register as a counted vote, AND will not spit back out for the voter to fix.  In LA County, they feed the ballot through the tabulator right in front of the voter, presumably to prevent errors just like this.  But this one doesn’t get caught in all the tests.

This seems to me significant just as a voting rights issue.  There are 776,000 DTS voters in LA County alone, which is ¾ of everyone who has voted in the first four Democratic primaries thus far.  Setting up an additional hurdle for these voters if they want to participate in the Democratic primary, and then NOT INFORMING THEM if they fail to clear that hurdle, seems to me to be just completely unacceptable.

Here’s the ballot, and you can see that there’s virtually no reason to give people something else to screw up.  There’s only one bubble to fill out, and it’s already been implicitly “filled out” when they asked for the ballot in the first place.

Our friends in the Courage Campaign (who are urging DTS voters to vote in the Democratic primary) sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, noting that the law is pretty clear on the issue:

The statute is clear: voters who have already affirmatively requested a Democratic ballot and cast a vote for a Democratic candidate, but who inadvertently fail to mark line number 6, must have their vote counted.  To do otherwise is contrary to the statute.  We can find no statutory basis for requiring voters to mark additional boxes to indicate that they are DTS voters requesting a partisan ballot.

I’m trying to get a PDF of the letter up as well, but I’m all thumbs with this pesky technology, so bear with me.  The point is that a lot of people tomorrow may not realize that their vote is in risk of not being counted.  Which is terrible for democracy, regardless of preference in the primary race.

[UPDATE by Julia] The full letter from our (Courage Campaign) lawyer is now on the flip.  It was faxed this morning and Steven has had several discussions with the LA County ROV about this already.

Dear Mr. Logan:

I write on behalf of our client, Courage Campaign.  Courage Campaign has recently embarked upon a campaign to educate Decline to State  (DTS) voters about their right to request and vote a Democratic ballot in the February 5, 2008 Presidential Primary Election.

As you know, as of January 8, 2008, 19.66% of the nearly 3.9 million registered voters in Los Angeles County — over 776,774 voters — have declined to state their party affiliation and are thus eligible to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate.  Barriers to voting for DTS voters are already high, since many do not know that they are allowed to vote in the Democratic Primary for president.  In addition to those barriers, we are gravely concerned that on February 5, 2008, a great many of the ballots cast by these DTS voters will be invalidated.

We have reviewed sample Democratic and American Independent ballots that DTS voters will receive once they affirmatively request them.  (See attached).  DTS voters requesting partisan ballots and registered Democratic and American Independent voters will receive the exact same Ink-a-Vote ballot. However, contrary to statutory provisions set forth in the Election Code, Los Angeles County requires DTS voters to complete an additional hurdle by marking either box number 5 (for American Independent ballots) or box number 6 (for Democratic party ballots) or their vote for President of the United States will not be counted.  Invalidating a ballot based solely upon the failure to mark a box, (box 5 or 6) even though the voter has cast his/her ballot for a candidate for president,  constitutes an improper basis for rejection and a policy that violates the rights of DTS voters. (See Cal. Elec. Code § 15154(c).)

Furthermore, the Precinct Ballot Reader (PBR) equipment in place at every polling place will not notify DTS voters that they have failed to mark box numbers 5 or 6 when they have requested a Democratic or American Independent ballot. The PBRs will only notify voters if they have overvoted or left the ballot completely blank meaning that DTS voters will not know if their choice for President will count.

The statute is clear: voters who have already affirmatively requested a Democratic ballot and cast a vote for a Democratic candidate, but who inadvertently fail to mark line number 6, must have their vote counted. To do otherwise is contrary to the statute. We can find no statutory basis for requiring voters to mark additional boxes to indicate that they are DTS voters requesting a partisan ballot.

Section 13102(b) of the Elections Code, which authorizes persons who have declined to state their party affiliation to vote in the partisan primaries of those parties which have made the required authorization, does not indicate that the voter need do anything more than request a partisan primary ballot to do so. Section 13102(b) states in part:

At partisan primary elections, each voter not registered as intending to affiliate with any one of the political parties participating in the election shall be furnished only a nonpartisan ballot, unless he or she requests a ballot of a political party and that political party, by party rule duly noticed to the Secretary of State, authorizes a person who has declined to state a party affiliation to vote the ballot of that political party.

(Emphasis added.)[1] Indeed this is consistent with the Secretary of State’s posted instructions for DTS voters on its website and the information provided from virtually every other California county elections official. (See California Secretary of State website, available at http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/v…

Under Section 13102(d), county elections officials must maintain records of which  political party’s ballot was requested pursuant to subdivision (b) or whether a nonpartisan ballot was requested, by each person who declined to state a party affiliation. These record-keeping requirements, as specified in Section 13102(d), do not require a DTS voter to mark any additional spaces to have their vote counted. Accordingly, record keeping obligations should not intrude upon the rights of DTS voters and we believe there are many other ways that the Registrar can properly maintain its records and still satisfy its statutory responsibilities. If the additional requirement is a function of the limitations of the Inka-Vote system, solutions must be immediately implemented to eliminate these extra hurdles.

When DTS voters affirmatively request a Democratic ballot and mark a choice for president they have satisfied their obligations under the Elections Code. Their ballot should accordingly be counted.  We therefore urgently request that you immediately amend your policies in a manner consistent with state law so that the votes of DTS voters requesting partisan ballots will count.  Anything less threatens to disenfranchise a significant segment of the electorate in LA County. We seek to resolve this issue as soon as possible before tomorrow’s election and before the canvass commences and so that we may, if necessary, pursue any legal options.

In this historic Democratic primary election, all voters who have answered the call to exercise their right to vote should be confident that the ballot they cast will be counted.

Please contact me to discuss this issue further.

Sincerely,

Steven J. Reyes

Associate Attorney

Kaufman Downing LLP

UPDATE: The AP has a story up.  The acting registrar (Conny McCormack left in the middle of last year because Debra Bowen asking her to actually verify votes was just too taxing) had this to say:

“It would almost be counterintuitive for someone to miss,” said Dean Logan, the acting county registrar. “We have put this information in voter education materials, and we’ve provided real clear instructions.”

So, they’ve done all they could… except reminding people when it goes through the ballot feeder, which would take approximately five seconds.

(Brian touched on the quirks of the primary process here; I ran the numbers.)

We hear a lot about the back and forth of the Democratic primary in California.  We hear about various campaign rallies, some of it useful and interesting.  Heck, I’ve written about them myself.  What I see less about is the actual nuts and bolts of the California election, and what its quirks will mean for the delegate counts for Obama or Clinton.  The AP came close the other day.

The Democratic rules provide for delegates to be awarded proportionately on the basis of the popular vote. It wasn’t always that way, but a change designed to weaken the control of party bosses was ushered in after the riotous Vietnam War-era 1968 convention […]

In a race with two equally matched rivals – Obama and Clinton are both running well-funded national campaigns – that tends to leave the winner of the popular vote with only a narrow delegate advantage over a loser who runs a strong race.

Multiply that across dozens of congressional districts – 53 in California – and predicting the winner of the delegate struggle is a virtual impossibility.

Then it gets harder.

For the Democrats, in a congressional district with three delegates, two go to the popular vote winner, and the loser gets the third as long as they win 15 percent of the popular vote.

But in a congressional district with four delegates, the winner and loser in a two-way race are likely to divide the spoils evenly. The winner must receive nearly 63 percent of the vote to get a 3-1 split in delegates, and 85 percent of the vote to win all four.

This is generally very true.  But the author neglects to mention that there are only two Congressional districts in California which offer 3 delegates.  The real prizes are the five-delegate districts, because the majority of the districts offer even-numbered delegates which almost guarantee an equal distribution.  And because of the particular breakdown of delegate allocation, Barack Obama actually has a built-in advantage in winning a majority of the delegates, regardless of the popular vote.

Here’s the list of delegate allocation in California.  As you can see, there are 370 pledged delegates up for grabs, and 241 of them will be pledged at the district level.  The other 129 will be allocated to candidates based on their share of the statewide vote.  Given what we know about the closeness of the race in California, I simply can’t see much more than a 10-point spread in that allocation.  So the other 241 from the district races will end up being a significant factor.

There are 26 districts which allocate four delegates, all of which are almost certain to split evenly among Clinton and Obama. Significantly, these include some of the most heavily Latino districts in the state, including CA-21 (Nunes), CA-31 (Becerra), CA-32 (Solis), CA-34 (Roybal-Allard), CA-38 (Napolitano), CA-39 (Linda Sanchez) and CA-43 (Baca).  Clinton’s perceived advantage among Latinos is neutralized by the high bar needed to cross to gather extra delegates in these districts.  The likely scenario is an even 52-52 split.

There are 6 districts which allocate 6 delegates, where it is still likely to be an even scenario, but where a strong showing could give a 4-2 split (I think a candidate would need close to 60% of the vote for that to happen).  These districts, the most Democratic in the state (the allocation is based on Democratic turnout in primaries), are CA-06 (Woolsey), CA-08 (Pelosi), CA-09 (Lee), CA-12 (Lantos), CA-14 (Eshoo) and CA-30 (Waxman).  As these are districts populated with liberals, and given that some of them are high-income (06, 08, 12, 30), they seem to trend toward Obama.  I think CA-09, Barbara Lee’s district serving heavily African-American Oakland as well as some other East Bay cities, offers the best chance for a 4-2 split.  Let’s say that Obama gets one of these.  The number is now 71-69 Obama.

As I said, there are two districts with 3 delegates: CA-20 (Costa) in the Central Valley, and CA-47 (Loretta Sanchez) in Orange County. (As an aside, this means that these two districts turn Democrats out to primaries at the lowest rates.  And they both have Democratic Congressmen.  Way to go, Bush Dogs!)  I project that CA-47 will go to Clinton, and think that CA-20 is up for grabs.  There are a decent amount of campesinos in that area, but rural districts in Nevada went strongly for Obama.  So let’s hold off on that for now.  The number is now 72-71 Obama, with 3 delegates outstanding.

Now we come to the real electoral prize: the 19 districts which offer 5 delegates.  There are quite a few advantages for Obama in these districts.  First, all three heavily African-American districts in Southern California are in this group: CA-33 (Watson), CA-35 (Waters) and CA-37 (Richardson).  Obama should be able to attract a majority here.  Then there are two districts in the far north of the state: CA-01 (Thompson) and CA-04 (Doolittle).  Based on how their Nevada neighbors voted, I project them to Obama.  Third, there are three districts in the Bay Area that fall into this category, and in the most recent Field Poll, Obama was stronger in the Bay Area than Southern California.  I expect him to take CA-07 (George Miller) and CA-13 (Stark), but lose CA-10 (Tauscher) because that’s a more suburban district.  That’s so far a 7-1 split for Obama.

Clinton’s strength is in the suburbs and in Southern California, as well as among Latinos.  But very few of those districts fall into this grouping.  There are three in the San Fernando Valley: CA-27 (Sherman), CA-28 (Berman) and CA-29 (Schiff).  But Adam Schiff has strongly endorsed Obama, and his Pasadena district is more liberal and upscale.  I see a 2-1 split for Clinton here.  NONE of the Orange County districts offer 5 delegates.

Going into the wild cards, we have 8 districts for Obama and 3 for Clinton.  The rest include CA-05 (Matsui) in the Sacramento area, CA-15 (Honda) in the San Jose area, CA-17 (Farr) in Monterey, CA-23 (Capps) in Santa Barbara, CA-36 (Harman) in the South Bay of Los Angeles, CA-50 (Bilbray) in the San Diego suburbs, and CA-53 (Davis) in San Diego.  If I were to guess, I’d say that CA-23 and CA-36 have some built-in advantages for Obama (upscale, highly educated, “wine track” liberal), making it an 11 to 3 split, with 5 outstanding.

So, before the polls close, we can reasonably project a 111-102 split for Obama, with 28 delegates up for grabs, as well as the 129 that will go proportionally to the winner.  If you split the rest of the district-level delegates evenly, I think you end up with anywhere from a 7 to 12 delegate advantage that Clinton would have to make up in the popular vote.  At the lowest level she would need 53% of the vote or a 6 percentage-point victory to make this up; at the highest level, 55-56% of the vote or a 10 to 12-point victory.  Given the polling recently, and the fact that there has been an unusually slow rate of return of absentee ballots until after the South Carolina primary, I think the final result is likely to be narrower.  And so, despite the possibility of Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote in the Golden State, I’m not sure she’s favored to win the majority of delegates, given the reality of the allocation.

Now, the question becomes, how will this be spun?  Will the media only report on the popular vote, or will they look at the delegate counts?  Probably the former; it’s simply easier for the format of broadcast news.  But they’d be missing out on an important story, that this is a race for delegates, and the candidate who takes advantage of the system is the most likely to reap the benefits.