Since February 20th, there have been 16 Democratic Primary contests. Hillary has won 9, Obama 7. So Hillary has won more Democratic Primaries since February 20th than Obama.

In the 16 contests since February 20th, Hillary has won 507 pledged delegates; Obama 470. So since February 20th Hillary has won more pledged delegates than Obama.

In the 16 contests since February 20th, Hillary has gathered 6,929,767 votes, Obama 6,313,396. So since February 20th Hillary has won more votes than Obama.

Summing up, since February 20th Hillary has won more states, pledged delegates, and votes than Obama. Are the democrats going into the Presidential Election not only with the weaker candidate of the two, but with a candidate that stopped being viable more than 3 months ago?

Its football teams having all failed to qualify for the European Championships, Britain’s national sport for the next few weeks will be to name Brown’s challenger and/or successor.

A reasonable way of going about finding that brave Labour MP is to identify those cabinet ministers whose seat is most in danger.

The most marginal seat held by a cabinet minister is Bolton West - Ruth Kelly’s majority is only 2,064 (5.1%).

Jacqui Smith’s position isn’t much better: her majority in Redditch is just 2,716 (6.7 %). Both are going to be wiped out if something big does NOT happen between now and the spring of 2010.

Yesterday Labour was humiliated in a by-election triggered by Gwyneth Dunwoody’s death. And Labour’s former PM Tony Blair had a near-death experience. Add those two events together and what you get? In the next two years, the Labour Party had better look after its MPs very carefully. It wouldn’t be very Labour, but they might want to seriously consider private health care and private security for their precious Members of Parliament…

One striking feature of Rove’s electoral maps - which I hadn’t noticed the first time I looked at them the other day - is that with Obama as the Democratic candidate even the state of New York (N-E-W Y-O-R-K!!!) is in play! Obama has only a 4% advantage, just enough to paint the state blue on Rove’s maps (3% advantages count as toss-ups).

I don’t know which polls Rove used for New York, but here there is a pretty comprehensive list, which appears to suggest that maybe Rove is underestimating Obama in New York: have a look at the list and you will also see, though, that there is at least one scary poll for Dems…

Since February 20th, there have been 13 democratic primary contests: Obama has won 439 pledged delegates; Clinton has won 456 pledged delegates.

So since February 20th Obama has gathered fewer pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton.

In the same last 13 contests Obama has received 6,085,465 votes; Clinton has received 6,569,504 votes.

So since February 20th Clinton has received 484,039 votes more than Obama.

I had missed this further twist in the Scottish independence referendum saga (hatip: Scottish Sketch). So Wendy stole Gordon’s idea, then. Thereby compromising the idea - and their relationship - alltogether. At a different time, the whole story would have also compromised their reputation and credibility, but it’s far too late for that now.

Mike Smithson asks an interesting and legitimate question: what kind of result today in Crewe would mean that Gordon Brown will not lead Labour into the next general election?

What about coming more than twenty percentage points behind the Conservatives or coming third behind the LibDems? Can Brown really survive either or both these humiliations? No, but then again neither scenario is likely. Much more likely that Labour contain their defeat within single digits, and that the LibDems suffer the kind of squeeze suggested in recent polling.

In a way that’s Labour’s problem: having already installed a Leader and a PM without voting, they need a really loud and clear excuse for doing it again. The near certainty of losing the next general election would be one such excuse, but the public doesn’t really think that far in advance. So that doesn’t seem to be big enough. Boris Johnson was a loud enough excuse alright, but Labour did its best to downplay it, and they seem to have convinced themselves that they can live with that.

So now they have set the bar real high for the kind of circumstances that will justify ousting their leader: certain defeat won’t do; Boris won’t do; what must happen so that Labour find the courage to help themselves?

While we wait for the final numbers from Oregon to establish what kind of win Hillary needs in Puerto Rico to overtake Obama in the popular vote count even without Michigan, just a wee thought: many agree that, with the kind of numbers she has, Hillary will be hard to stop if she really wants to become VP. Let us suppose that to be true.

Conventional wisdom also has it that, the way in which Obama and Hillary have over the last few months brought to the polls such diverse elements in the electorate - and in such substantial numbers - their ticket could not be stopped: Hillary would campaign in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, New Hampshire, West Virginia; and Obama in Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan. And they would win. Let us suppose this also to be true.

Finally, conventional wisdom also has it that Hillary is convinced that Obama cannot win in November (not alone, anyway). Let us also suppose that Hillary thinks that, independently from the merits of such view.

Now, suppose you are Hillary Clinton. Given the above, you have a clear path to become VP - neither Democrats nor Republicans, we have supposed, can stop you. But also, given the above, you are convinced that if you don’t push yourself onto the VP seat, Obama will lose, and you will very likely pick up the shuttered pieces of the Democratic Party in 2012, and probably defeat old John McCain - after all, there would be no need to remind everyone that you did warn them against Obama: even unborn babies know that much. So what do you do, Hillary?

In the last three months - since February 20th - there have been eleven democratic primary contests (two more, Oregon and Kentucky, take place today).

In these eleven contests, Obama has obtained a total of 394 pledged delegates, while Clinton has taken 398.

So in the last three months Obama has gathered fewer pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton.

In the same last eleven contests Obama has received 5,515,438 votes; while Clinton has received 5,858,938.

So in the last three months Clinton has received 345,500 votes more than Obama.

Today’s rumoured Brutus is Alan Milburn, courtesy of PoliticalBetting.com’s Mike Smithson. Both Dale and Guido already picked up on it. In this frenzy of names, I keep wondering why nobody mentions the most obvious one, PM.