Clinton’s Lucky Breaks in Alabama

clipped from blogs.wsj.com In Wisconsin’s Democratic primary yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama got 58.1% of the vote to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 40.7%, translating into an 38-27 edge in pledged delegates from the state, according to the Associated Press and CNN. Two weeks earlier, in Alabama, Sen. Obama won the popular vote by a near-identical margin: 55.8% to 41.7%. Yet he ended up with a much smaller victory margin of pledged delegates: 27 to Sen. Clinton’s 25. Had the delegates split according to his overall victory margin, Sen. Obama would have won the state’s pledged delegates, 30 to 22. The Alabama Democratic party’s Web site has posted voting totals, though not by congressional district; Mr. Spearman sent those to me. The Tuscaloosa News also points out the discrepancy between the overall margin and delegate margin, blaming “a Byzantine system of delegate selection.”