There has been a lot of talk about chaos, wailing, and gnashing of teeth if the superdelegates overturn popular sentiment. However, what would people considering "overturning" the preceding voting? Another way of viewing this is, what would you consider close enough to consider the race tied with the superdelegates being the tiebreaker?
This would seem to beg for a poll, but I can think of too many different permutation considering several possible variables. Feel free to go through the partial list below one by one or give just a general discussion.
Interpret this like so... Say one candidate at the end of the nomination season has the following which are approximately of increasing "lead". The question then is would you accept (feel free to intrepret that too) the other candidate then winning because the superdelegates go in that person's favor by a sufficient amount.
- Pledged delegate lead and/or popular vote lead but only without MI & FL
- Tiny (e.g., <10) pledged delegate lead + popular vote deficit
- Tiny (e.g., <10) pledged delegate lead + popular vote lead
- Small (e.g., <25) pledged delegate lead + popular vote deficit
- Small (e.g., <25) pledged delegate lead + popular vote lead
- Medium (e.g., <60) pledged delegate lead + popular vote lead
- Large (e.g., 100) pledged delegate lead + popular vote lead
This list is far from comprehensive. Suggest any other scenarios you would like to discuss. For example, something like the race status of not long ago: consider Obama the leader because of more pledged delegates (though perhaps trailing in that count if MI & FL as stand now were included), the supposed popular vote about even, and already "committed" superdelegates make the total delegate count about even. Would you accept the remaining superdelegates going in numbers that give Clinton the win?
