Why Hillary Clinton Cannot Win the Nomination

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Clinton supporters are tired of hearing, "Do the math." It doesn’t help that Clinton seems to keep coming back from the brink, even scoring victories like the recent Pennsylvania primary. But unfortunately for them, once the political spin clouds are cleared and the reality of electoral numbers is presented clearly, they will soon need to face the fact that there is no way their candidate can win the nomination.

As it stands, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton in delegates by a margin of about 130 (plus or minus a few, depending on which poll you read). This will change shortly, after the results of the upcoming primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.

But political experts have said that any real chance Clinton had of overcoming Obama was crushed after the Pennsylvania primary on April 22nd. While Clinton won the state handily, by a margin of 9.2 % (not the initial 10-point spread widely published in the media), she would have needed a margin of victory of about 28 points in order to have any hopes of catching up.

Based upon the way the delegates are currently divided, and how many are yet to be awarded in upcoming primaries, going into Pennsylvania Clinton would have needed to best her opponent by a margin of 64-36%, and also to beat him by those numbers at all remaining primaries. Since she fell short, the margin needed to come out ahead now would be closer to 68-32%, something nobody is predicting will happen.

According to several sources, there is just no way that Clinton can win, even when postulating about a number of improbable "ifs."

After Pennsylvania, there are 408 elected delegates at stake. To draw even with Obama, Clinton would need to win 277 of them to Obama’s 131. There’s that 68-32% margin.

North Carolina with its 115 delegates is now the state with the highest number of delegates remaining, and Obama is heavily favored there, with some polls predicting a 20-point win for him. Even if that was cut in half, and Obama won by a 10-point margin, a reasonable assumption, he’d receive 63 delegates to Clinton’s 50. At that point, she’d have to win all the other primaries by a margin of 77%-23%. While we’re at it, let’s say Clinton won North Carolina by 10 points, a highly improbable scenario. She would then still need to win every remaining primary by 73-27%.

Unless she wins each and every remaining primary by that unlikely margin, her necessary margin of victory rises even higher with each vote.

But, but what about the superdelegates, say Clinton supporters? True, if every currently undeclared superdelegate pledged to support Clinton, despite her almost inevitable loss to Obama in elected delegates, and a 500,000 popular vote deficit, then she’d be in good shape, true.

So, okay, it isn’t impossible. But I’d have to see that Roger Waters’ flying pig swoop down and swallow Obama whole to believe it.

Back to reality for a moment. Superdelegates taking it upon themselves to choose a presidential candidate against the will of the people would be party suicide, something that not one of them is willing to do.

In addition, superdelegate pledges have been steadily increasing for Obama and decreasing for Clinton since January. Once significantly ahead in the superdelegate count, Clinton has seen her lead dwindle to less than 20.

Obama loyalists hope to let the clock of inevitability wind down, crossing their fingers that more damage will not be done to his campaign by the time it’s all over.

The truth is that unless Clinton wins very significant victories in upcoming primaries, she will begin to receive more pressure from the DNC to withdraw. The fact that she has not gotten more of that may be due to the party’s reluctance to alienate her supporters come November.

It will need to become clear to them that a Clinton victory is not in the cards, at least not for this election.