This year, 30 states have held presidential primaries (counting D.C. as a state). As noted in an earlier post, the cumulative vote totals for the leading major party presidential candidates are: Hillary Clinton 13,920,268; Barack Obama 13,855,412; John McCain 7,613,865.

Although 12 more presidential primaries are yet to occur, one can imagine that McCain’s vote total will never catch up to the vote totals for the two leading Democrats. If the U.S. used the “top-two” system that Washington state will be using this year, the general election would be between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; no one else would be allowed on the November ballot.

The 12 presential primaries that lie in the future are: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Not all of those primaries will choose delegates.

OpEd News ran this story on March 22 about the Green presidential nomination. It features Kent Mesplay, who says he is serious about defeating Cynthia McKinney for the nomination.

Filing has closed for candidates to put themselves on California primary ballots. The primary is June 3. California has 53 U.S. House districts.

All six qualified parties in California will have fewer nominees for U.S. House in 2008 than they did in 2006, except that the Republican Party has the same number in both years. Below is the number of districts in which each party will have a nominee, in 2008; the 2006 number is in parantheses.

Democratic: 51 (52)
Republican: 46 (46)
Libertarian: 20 (25)
Green: 5 (7)
Peace & Freedom: 5 (8)
Constitution: 1 (2)

In theory, the parties could gain nominees by write-ins at the primary, but the law requires a write-in candidate in a partisan primary to poll a large number of votes, in order to be deemed nominated. Even the major parties have trouble with that requirement; no Republican or Democratic was able to gain a write-in nomination in 2006 for U.S. House.