The final DEM numbers are now up on Liberal.ca. It should be noted that these results don’t take the Rae funny business in BC into account. And they don’t take the backfill spots into account (for those not familiar with the Liberal delegate election system…it’d take a 13,000 word post to explain it, so I won’t even bother attempting). And they don’t take into account ex-officio votes or turn-out for delegates at the convention. But, they still provide us a very good snapshot at how the first ballot should look:

Ignatieff 1309 (30.2%)
Rae 881 (20.3%)
Kennedy 751 (17.3%)
Dion 694 (16%)
Volpe 211 (4.9%)
Dryden 187 (4.3%)
Brison 153 (3.5%)
Findlay 38 (0.9%)
Undeclared 109 (2.5%)

To get a better picture of the first ballot, I factored the undeclared among the other candidates using the same percentages. I then cruised over to the wikipedia ex-officio endorsement page, portioned out the undeclared ex-officio and added it all up. Put it all together and bippety boppity boo – you’ve got a projected first ballot:

Ignatieff 1566 (31.3%)
Rae 988 (19.8%)
Kennedy 877 (17.5%)
Dion 840 (16.8%)
Dryden 254 (5.1%)
Volpe 226 (4.5%)
Brison 203 (4.1%)
Findlay 43 (0.9%)

As for what that all means:

1. Ignatieff needs to pick up 18.7% of the delegates to get over the top. Which means if he’s facing Rae, he’ll need 38.2% of the non-Rae and Iggy delegates to cross over to him when their man (or Martha) drops off. If he’s facing Gerard, he’ll need 36.5% of the other delegates and if he’s facing Dion, he’ll need 36%. So if the delegates break 2 to 1 against Iggy, he can’t win. If he manages to get 40% of them, he’ll come out on top.

2. Despite the early hints of a neck and neck duel, Gerard Kennedy should be in third place, ahead of Dion, on the first ballot.

3. Either Kennedy or Dion could blow past Rae once the bottom four contenders drop off if they get a key endorsement. However, I ran the math and even if Iggy only gets 1/3 of the bottom four delegates, Rae just needs a little over 10% of the free delegates to drift his way to stay ahead of at least one of Dion or Kennedy. So, what that means is that Bob is in your final three, although it’s hard to tell if he’s second or third. And with so many delegates in play by this point, I think whichever of Kennedy or Dion make it to the final three stand as good a chance as Rae of being the challenger to Ignatieff on the final ballot.

4. Bear in mind, this is all working under the assumption that delegates will vote for the candidate they were elected to support until their man drops off the ballot. As Susan Kadis will tell you, this isn’t always the case.

So, after all of this, the only real conclusion is still that any of our four frontrunners could win this thing. I know that doesn’t sound overly insightful but it will sure make for an interesting convention.