Counting Delegates

As Markos of Daily Kos noted on Tuesday, us younger voters (is 28 young?) are seeing the first serious primary contest of our lifetimes. That means we'll be seeing discussions of aspects of presidential elections that seemed archaic in recent years.

The party's conventions this summer (which in recent years devolved in giant pep rallies) may even end up serving their original purpose... the final selection of the party nominee. I seriously doubt it'll come to that in either party-- despite GOP panic-- but it's interesting that it's an option. And so, counting delegates is actually important this time around.

So what's the delegate count now, with just a few (ideologically different) states down? It would appear that, on the Democratic side, Sen. Obama has a slight lead over Sen. Clinton. Likewise, the man still holding the lead in delegate #s on the GOP side is... Mike Huckabee (with Romney, not McCain, a close second). So he has a cushion to fall back while he retools his campaign. As does Obama. The bigger states are still to come, and I won't even hazard a guess on how they'll turn out.

Anyway, just a nerdy aspect of the campaign to keep an eye on as we move forward.