Super Algebra Tuesday

Jeffrey Feldman
The Huffington Post
February 5, 2008

Lord almighty, Super Tuesday is complicated for the media to cover this year. The problem is not just that the Democratic side of the race is so darn close. The real issue is that most political reporters are terrible at math.

The Republican race is a cake walk for reporters. The GOP bas has finally remembered why they liked McCain eight years ago, once again embracing McCain as a straight-shooting boy scout who can praise Bush's war in Iraq and invoke the name of Ronald Reagan 31.3 times per hour. Baring a deus ex machina on behalf of Mitt Romney, McCain will win today, and go on to get the 1,191 delegates he needs. Bingo, presto--the GOP has a candidate for president.

Meanwhile, to figure out what will happen on the Democratic side, your average political reporter must reach for a calculator, slide rule, and abacus--and not necessarily in that order.

The bottom line is that the Democrat who wins the nomination needs 2025 delegates to do so, but how that will happen is palm-sweatingly unclear. It almost seems like the Super Tuesday media coverage of the Democratic race has been taken over by a cruel 4th grade pre-algebra teacher. "If Obama is ahead by 2% on the West Coast when the polls open on East Coast, and 20% of the electorate has voted absentee in California, how much of a victory in the popular vote will it take for Clinton to overcome the 20% closing momentum of Obama in 97 tracking polls distributed across 24 states?"

Ready, set, begin! ... ( more )

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