Clinton in New Hampshire on October 11, 2007:

"It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything," Clinton said Thursday during an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio's call-in program, "The Exchange." "But I just personally did not want to set up a situation where the Republicans are going to be campaigning between now and whenever, and then after the nomination, we have to go in and repair the damage to be ready to win Michigan in 2008."

Obama's campaign in a press release from January 15, 2008:

Our position and the position of the DNC is clear - neither the Florida nor Michigan primaries are playing any role in deciding the Democratic nominee and we are not campaigning in either state.

So both campaigns were clear at one point that Michigan wasn't going to count.

Voters seemed to be clear on that fact as well. While some people are running around saying, "600,000 votes are being disenfranchised in Michigan!" they fail to realize -- turnout wasn't all that high in the state.

Sure, it was much more than the 160,000 votes cast in the 2004 primaries, but it was not in line with other Democratic primaries.

At FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate, or the analyst formerly known as Poblano, explains:

Harold Ickes keeps shouting about 600,000 votes in Michigan being thrown out. But as I've pointed out before, the turnout situation in Michigan wasn't remotely normal. According to Jay Cost's spreadsheet, turnout in Michigan was equal to 24 percent of John Kerry's vote in 2004. However, the average in other states with open primaries was 79 percent. In other words, turnout was only about one-third as much as it should have been. The judgment of two-thirds of the voters in Michigan was essentially that the primary didn't matter and wasn't worth their time.

If you look at the chart on the right, click on it to enlarge, you'll see that Michigan was not only below the average, it was well, well second-lowest as well.  Remarkably below.  As in less than half of the next-closest (Utah).

What's that?  You want another cool little graph?

Here's one from Talking Points Memo.  The more astute readers may have surmised the chart on the left is the one from Paul Kleefeld at TPMElectionCentral.

It compares each state's percentage of the vote for Kerry in 2004 (the X-axis) with each state's Dem primary turnout vs. GOP turnout this time around (the Y-axis)
[...]
So what does the chart tell us?

As it turns out, two particular states were behind the Kerry baseline by a serious margin: Florida, where relative Democratic turnout was a few points behind Kerry's vote percentage -- and Michigan, where relative Dem turnout lagged behind Kerry's vote by a whopping 11 points.

Nate, or the AFKAP, had Florida much closer in his chart on the right.

Either way, it's clear Michigan's primary election was a huge change from other states, and there is really only one reasonable variable to blame: it didn't count at the time and voters were told that. So let's not pretend that Michigan accurately reflected the will of the voters. Many voters, we'll never know how many, decided not to vote because they were told by all sides it would not count. Though, now that I think about it, I think Mike Gravel attempted to get voters to believe it counted.

Neither campaigned and one went so far to honor the pledge as to take his name off the ballot.  Clinton chose not to, which was her right; it was a calculated political move just as Obama's decision to take his name off the ballot was.  That's what politicians do in elections, and always will do.  This shouldn't be a shock to anyone here, since we all tend to be political junkies and kinda know how things work.

Well, unless you're Ron Paul then you just... well, I don't know what you do.  Just get crazy supporters to slap stickers and yell at people to "Google Ron Paul." But I digress.

We have no idea of how Michigan would have worked out if they hadn't moved passed the deadline and played chicken with the DNC, hoping the DNC would blink.  Ultimately, it doesnt' matter, since they didn't, but I find it interesting.  And since I'm writing this diary, I'll go ahead and write about it.

We do have some estimates, which are very, very theoretical.  Actual theory to be taken with several grains of salt, not a theory like evolution (well, unless you're a Republican hunting for the science-denier vote...).

The aforementioned Nate, or AFKAP, had his analysis:

Overall, we project that Obama would have carried Michigan by a narrow margin -- about 4.0 percentage points or 80,000 votes. After accounting for delegates awarded at the statewide level, we project him to win 65 Michigan delegates to Clinton's 63.

He has exactly how he did it up at his site, the transparency is one of the many great things about the site, and I won't attempt to explain it.

Chuck Todd of MSNBC had his own analysis after talking to experts.

In Michigan, my experts believe timing would have been everything.  Had the primary been in March, these folks gave it to Obama by 2 points. Had the primary been held post-Rev. Wright and the "bitter-cling" comments, our experts believe Clinton would have eked out a win. Nobody believed either was capable of anything more than an Indiana or Missouri margin for either candidate.

My simulation gave Michigan to Clinton, 51-49, which would have netted her approximately 4 delegates (66-62).

Michigan would have gained two delegates from Todd's scenario.

Of course, these are both mere speculation.  But it is interesting that all experts agreed it would have been close.  But then experts are wrong.

Todd (that man again!) also said Obama had the votes to get a 50-50 split; but decided not to, so as to get a larger majority.

Florida was a little more cut-and-dry.  They broke the rules, and deserved to be punished.  Cutting the delegates in half was the proscribed punishment, and Florida knew that going in.

So they cut them in half, including super delegates.

The popular vote total is another thing that looks to be... problematic at best.  Though it is an unofficial number, it is one the Clintons hope will sway the super delegates.  Which doesn't look likely at this point.

In order to win even this unofficial metric, some numerical backflips will have to be done.  

You have to subtract some caucuses, pretend Obama would have got zero votes in Michigan, would have been beat soundly in Florida, and count Puerto Rico, a territory with no electoral votes in November, but more delegates than 27 states, including my state, New Mexico.

Finally, what do these results mean for the delegate count, the number that truly matters in the race for the nomination.

DemConWatch has the goods on that.

As of after the RBC meeting, Obama has 2052 delegates, Clinton has 1876.5.  The new finish-line is 2117.

This means Obama needs just 65 delegates to pass the line.  Clinton needs 240.5.

There are 276 delegates left to be assigned, including 190 super delegates (again, going by DemConWatch's numbers as of May 31).  This means Clinton would need to gain every single super delegate PLUS 36 pledged delegates out of the remaining 86 to win the nomination.  

As we all know, super delegates aren't officially counted until the convention.  But we also all know that super delegates will need a compelling reason to change sides from Obama to Clinton or vice versa at this point.  Barring a dead girl/live boy scenario with Obama (I put the odds of this near me winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning simultaneously -- and I don't buy lottery tickets), I don't see how this happens.

And one final thought, if you've braved the entire diary to read this far:

If you say you're going to vote for McCain over Obama or Clinton, leave.  You're not wanted on any site dedicated to Democrats winning to promote George Bush III.  Go to Red State, they'll accept you with open arms.  They're nice enough fellows*.

I voted for Barack Obama in the primacaucus here in New Mexico (which New Mexico probably wishes they moved to, say, March, instead of Super Tuesday now).  But it was a close thing; I could have voted for Clinton.  I made my decision in the days leading up to the vote.

Clinton won our state (by a slim, slim margin), and if she had won the nomination (yes, past-tense.  This is for John McCain.  Or should I say, John McCain?) I would work for her as hard to win in November as I will for Obama.

OK, now I'm off to go ahead and write about the newest on New Mexico politics.  Remember, we have down-ballot races as well.  And those are crazy-important too.

* Actually, I have no idea if they are.