Historical Errors in Sen Clinton's June primary logic

[jlacivita]

Alright there's plenty of emotional talk about whether or not Sen Clinton should have used the example she used when citing the 1968 primary and how it was still an open game in June. Lets just take her point, though, and ignore the controversial nature of how she expressed it.

It may seem on the surface like a reasonable claim: Other primaries in the past have gone into June and were still open game.

However, if you look at the timelines of the 1968 and 1992 primary seasons, the are pretty different from this primary.

1968:

In June of 1968 only 13 states had conducted their primaries and less than half of the delegates had been awarded.
Thats quite a difference from our current primary in which all but a handful of primaries are over, and 93% of the delegates have been counted (the percent is about the same whether you include MI and FL or not)

Urls to support:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968#Primaries

1992:

Its harder to find numbers on what states had held primaries so far in June 1992, but here's what i dug up:

1) primaries started in Feb, one month later than this season
2) primaries were not so heavily concentrated early in the season like they have been this time around.
3) Bill Clinton was a strong front runner as early on as March. Brown staged a mild comeback which sputtered out quickly. So yes, Brown stayed in the race, but there was no lack of clarity on who was winning and would be the nominee. It wasn't really an open game in June 1992.

Sen Clinton said it herself: her husband didn't wrap up his campaign till June. He finished the task of becoming the nominee by getting a lead in delegates and then "wrapped it up" by waiting for his opponent to realize it was not possible to win (which happened in June)

The only similarity between 2008 and 1992 is that the eventual nominee was continually challenged by a candidate with little statistical hope of winning and was banking on a long shot statistically unlikely victory (Brown was hoping for a lopsidedly win in CA since it was his home state to get enough delegates to prevent Bill Clinton from getting the nomination)

Urls to support:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E2D91138F935A35750C0A96E9C8B63&scp=3&sq=conrad+1992&st=nyt
http://timelinesdb.com/listevents.php?subjid=694&title=ClintonB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Brown#1992_presidential_campaign