Popular vote in primaries

[anamnua]

All with (largely) pro-Hill states remaining. The issue may be raised of his not participating in Mi. Well tough. Being POTUS involves having to live with the consequences of your decisions.

[GarbagemanLB]

1. Too bad the primary isn't decided by popular vote. It's all about the delegates!

[anamnua]

8. And by the superdelegates who will be studying the above data with interest nt

[IDemo]

12. But will not act to overturn a pledged delegate lead without overwhelming reason

as badly as Hillarians believe otherwise.

[anamnua]

21. Please read up on the origin of superdelegates

[IDemo]

24. I've done my homework already, thanks

The super delegates are not lurking in a smoke filled room waiting to act on their own personal whims.

They do not exist as a tool to up-end the will of the voters, which is expressed as a lead in pledged delegates for the purposes of the primary. The only reason they would take such a measure is if a candidate is seen as a GE catastrophe waiting to happen. Even a somewhat lower popular vote total is not going to make them wreak havoc on the party by ignoring the pledged delegate numbers and the voters who yielded them. If you want to believe that Super D's are going to deny the nomination to the candidate with a significantly higher number of delegates at convention time, you can hold on to that dream. Because that's all it is.

[bellasgrams]

9. But,but, I keep hearing the delegates have to vote the will of the

people. Have you guys changed your minds

[mckeown1128]

20. The will of the voters is for Obama...

He is ahead in votes.... The OP is wrongly counting FL and MI and not counting the many states that vote in Caucuses.

[tritsofme]

13. Unless you have 2024, pledged delegates don't mean much.

The nomination comes down to a contest of who can get to 2024, a nominal lead in pledged delegates is just one factor to consider.

[bain_sidhe]

18. That isn't helpful

responding with a "nyah, nyah, tough nookies, we got the delegates" (paraphrasing slightly) doesn't do anything to address the concern about whether Obama will be able to pick up those Hillary votes in the swing states. (I agree with others who've said that the deep-blue states will stay blue regardless of which candidate won the Democratic primary.)

Pennsylvania is key, to me, as someone who is currently leaning toward Obama. Not "who wins" specificially, but to see how many (percentage wise) of Hillary's "base" voters are willing to switch after several weeks of Hillary being portrayed as a "loser" in the media.

[MadBadger]

2. Mark, Howard, is that you?

[anamnua]

5. Who is Mark Howard?

[MadBadger]

6. Usually people dont have a comma in the middle of their name.

Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson.

[anamnua]

22. It doesn't pay to overestimate the typographical skills of some DU

contributors.

[SoCalDem]

3. meaningful ONLY from the standpoint that so many people were SO ready

to vote to get rid of Bush...and because Obama inspired SO many young people and formerly-disenchanted people to register & vote..

[grantcart]

4. Of course had it actually been about the popular vote

Obama would have campaigned with that in mind and not have campaigned in Idaho and Kansas.

He would have run up the urban vote and then you would be on your way with another graph.

[bunnies]

7. Popular vote in primaries = No Such Thing. nt

[crankychatter]

10. The dead roam the night eating the flesh of other Democrats

...forgive me for appearing "fresh," but haven't I seen you someplace before?

what's your sign?

[mohc]

11. So illegitimate elections in FL and MI count, but all the caucuses do not?

All these twists of logic that have to be made to show some way of Clinton being in the lead are absurd. If all the states are counted, including FL and MI, Obama is ahead in the popular vote 13,964,924-13,858,725. If you are going to throw out all the caucuses to get your result, there is simply no basis to retain Florida and Michigan in the count. Without those states even the primaries-only popular vote leans to Obama. What it all comes down to is Obama has a small lead in popular vote and delegates from primaries alone, and the bulk of his lead comes from caucuses. One can make arguments that primaries are preferred to caucuses, but that does not mean caucuses are completely invalid. Its a wash with primaries alone, and the caucuses basically break the tie. If you want to completely disregard caucuses because they are not as representative, Obama still leads in just the primaries. You can not include Florida and Michigan into that comparison because regardless of how valid you may see them, they certainly are less valid than the caucuses.

[Debi]

15. Dammit, once again Iowa doesn't count

:banghead:

[tritsofme]

16. Reasonable popular vote estimates can be made in the caucus states.

There is a great spreadsheet on RealClearPolitics that does just this.

I am currently on a mobile device and cannot grab the link for you, but it is really a great spreadsheet.

[mohc]

25. I personally use thegreenpapers.com

I used it to check the numbers cited in the OP. Since I knew Obama was ahead in the overall popular vote even with FL and MI included I knew there had to be something left out. Adding up primaries only led to the numbers cited, which was the reason my response focused on the exclusion of caucuses in the formation of the OP's chart. Basically the chart is saying: If you ignore delegates, include two contests that were sanctioned and all parties agreed would not count, and then throw out all of the 15 caucus contests you can show that Clinton has as slim lead in votes.

[tritsofme]

28. Here is the sheet I was referencing:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/chooseyourown.html

You should check it out, it is very interesting.

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. Caucus votes should be included, definitely

except in a rare instance like Texas where all the caucus goers already had their votes counted in the Texas Primary since you could not participate in the TX caucus without first voting in the TX primary.

I don't like caucuses but I don't hold that against the Democrats who participated in them, that was their only option to vote under the rules in play.

The popular vote is not an official way of determining who wins the nomination BUT NEITHER IS PLEDGED DELEGATES. The winner is determined by who gains the support of a majority of all delegates.

A pledged delegate lead is just as arbitrary and unofficial a way of claiming victory for the Democratic nomination as is a popular vote lead. Neither, under the rules, means anything other than a need to go to a second ballot (where there no longer are pledged delegates) if whoever leads in pledged delegates or popular vote doesn't have enough overall delegate votes to win the nomination on the first ballot.

The whole point of the Obama campaign claiming that a pledged delegate lead equals "the popular will" is to influence the votes of undecided Super Delegates. An overall lead in the popular vote by the time primary season is over is an alternate way of arguing who ended the primaries with the best claim of representing "the popular will". Both claims are simply debate points, nothing more nothing less. However if one candidate can persuasively argue that he or she holds both the pledged delegate lead and the popular vote lead, that candidate has the much stronger case to claim his or her candidacy represents "the popular will, as unofficial a standing as that may be.

Here is a great site to spec out who can claim to win the popular vote under a multitude of scenarios:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/chooseyourown.html

[Abacus]

14. Consequences

All with (largely) pro-Hill states remaining. The issue may be raised of his not participating in Mi. Well tough. Being POTUS involves having to live with the consequences of your decisions.

So do the state party leaders of Florida and Michigan, who only needed to show good faith in opposing the date changes to have there delegates seated, have to live with the consequences of their actions. Michigan and Florida voters are pissed now and I don't blame them, but where was the outrage last year before the vote? Why are the complaining loudly now to the DNC but not then to their state leaders?

Nice cherry picking of vote results. Obama leads in nearly every reasonable calculation and even a few unreasonable ones (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html), but you managed to find one where Clinton is ahead (by less than 0.4% of the total vote), nice job. We caucus states would prefer not to be dismissed simply because our voter totals don't suit you.

Regarding your data itself, Blue states will stay blue. The best hope for Red states is the candidate who can draw the most votes -- with Obama, it's possible that Nebraska might split its delegates this year for the first time ever. With swing states, it will depend on the party who can get out the most people. Given the 200,000 new PA voter registrations and the consistent poll shift, who do you think is best able to do that? Here's a hint: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/democratic_presidential_nomination-191.html

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

19. COMEDY! I LOVE IT!!!

[phrigndumass]

23. I'd love to know your source for this graph. Could you link me? Thanks!

:hi:

[chascarrillo]

26. If you're not counting my state because we held a caucus, you can go fuck off.

[Dawgs]

27. "Being POTUS involves having to live with the consequences of your decisions"

Like losing the nomination because of your Iraq war vote?

:rofl: