Legal Commentary

The Democratic Delegate Count After Nevada

By Jeralyn

Bump and Update: A Democratic party official disputes Obama's claim he won more delegates. National delegates from Nevada won't be decided for months. The Washington Post has a similar report.

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The AP has the newest delegate count after the Nevada caucus results.

Clinton won 13 delegates in Nevada on Saturday, compared to 12 for Obama, an AP analysis of caucus results showed. All of Nevada's 25 Democratic delegates have been awarded.

Clinton leads the overall race for delegates with 237, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. She is followed by Obama with 135 and former Sen. John Edwards with 50. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Update: CNN just read a statement from Barack Obama saying he has more delegates than Hillary Clinton. Maybe he's not counting the Superdelegates? If so, that's a big mistake. They are there and they count. [More...] Update: Interesting stats on the at large casino caucuses. The Democratic Party provided these delegate counts for the casino caucuses today:

Staff members from the Nevada Democratic Party have counted the number of eligible caucus goers in the nine at-large precinct caucuses on the Las Vegas Strip. The number of delegates that will be elected at today’s at-large caucuses will be:

Wynn: 79 delegates
Bellagio: 62 delegates
Mirage: 69 delegates
Paris: 61 delegates
Luxor: 77 delegates
New York New York: 34 delegates
Rio: 28 delegates
Flamingo: 49 delegates
Caesars Palace: 33 delegates

Obama won the Luxor and Caesars' so he has 110. Hillary has the rest.

These delegates have been allotted based on attendance at each individual at-large precinct caucus. The at-large delegates will be awarded today in addition to the 10,446 delegates already allocated to Nevada’s 1,754 neighborhood precincts.

I think the point is that no delegate awards are final until after the county and state conventions meet and vote.

Also, the AP has revised its numbers to match those for CNN and NBC, saying 13 for Obama, 12 for Clinton, but again, the party says there will be no delegate awards until April and it's far too early to say what the final numbers will be.

Update: Via Hot Air, here's the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kirsten Searer
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Statement by Nevada Democratic Party Chair Jill Derby

Regarding the Nevada Caucus
(Las Vegas, NV)

“Today, two out of three Nevadans who caucused chose a Democrat instead of a Republican for president. That is an overwhelming majority vote for a new direction. Just like in Iowa what was awarded today were delegates to the County Convention. No national convention delegates were awarded. The calculations of national convention delegates being circulated are based upon an assumption that delegate preferences will remain the same between now and April 2008. We look forward to our county and state conventions where we will choose the delegates for the nominee that Nevadans support.”

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 19, 2008 (boomark / email).