West Virginia Up Next for Dems

George Wenschhof

Interestingly, out of the remaining six primaries in the democratic party schedule, Puerto Rico (55) has the most pledged delegates. The irony here is that their residents are unable to vote in the U.S. general election.

West Virginia tomorrow has 28 pledged delegates and 11 superdelegates. If you are wondering how many superdelegates Puerto Rico has, the answer is 8. It seems as though the number of superdelegates assigned to each state, or U.S. territory makes about as much sense as the rest of the convoluted method currently in use by the democratic party to determine their presidential nominee.

Regardless of how ridiculous the system is, all the democratic candidates knew what it was going in, or they should have. However, following this election, expect Howard Dean to be replaced as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Also sure to follow, will be the formation of a committee charged with revising the democratic party nomination process.

Tomorrow, all indications are that heavy democratic turnout will continue as already it has been reported that over 49,000 early votes have been cast. Senator Hillary Clinton is favored here with a huge lead according to recent polls. Suffolk University in a poll conducted from May 10 to May 12 has it Clinton 60, Obama 24, and undecided 8. A side note of no scientific basis is the few West Virginia residents I have run into lately all were young voters supporting Obama.

Today Obama has a 169 total delegate lead over Clinton 1867 to 1698 with 2025 needed to secure the nomination. Even if Clinton won W. Virginia with 60% of the vote, it is unlikely she will gain more than 6 delegates on Obama.

After tomorrow, there will only remain 189 pledged delegates up for grabs. Currently, there are approximately 247 uncommitted superdelegates. Next up, if Clinton stays in the race, is Kentucky (51 pledged delegates) and Oregon (52 pledged delegates) on May 20th.

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