How Does Sanders Only Have 46% of Delegates, But Only 42% of Popular Vote?

[TomCADem]

On DU, there is a lot of discussion about how the Democratic nomination is rigged and undemocratic and tilted toward Hillary. This would seem to make sense, since Hillary is the establishment candidate, thus you would expect Bernie to be bleeding delegates to her similar to the stunts being pulled against Trump in the Republican primary. Yet, it appears that Bernie has only 42 percent of the popular vote:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/D

Yet, he has 46 percent of the delegates:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/democrats/

This would appear to be the exact opposite of what you would expect. Shouldn't the numbers be reversed?

[hrmjustin]

1. They don't release caucus popular vote totals.

[TomCADem]

6. I Thought Caucuses Are By Definition Not Popular Vote

After all, isn't that how Ted Cruz is able to beat and lock out Trump out of States. By using caucuses and delegate rules to run up the score irrespective of Trump's popular support. Put another way, aren't you arguing that its Bernie that is taking advantage of Democratic delegate allocation rules to gain delegates irrespective of the popular vote sort of like Cruz out manuevering Trump.

All is fair in love, war and politics, but it does not look like Bernie is a victim, but rather he is a savy player of the delegate game.

[hrmjustin]

7. Caucuses are nutty but the reason Sanders has more delegates than the reported popular vote is

the AP popular vote count doesn't include caucus results.

If they did my guess is Sanders popular vote totals would be up a few percentages.

Caucus work on a delegate system but they also record the popular votes of voters. Some states like Wyoming report theses numbers and others like Iowa do not.

[dchill]

8. It's ALL ABOUT delegates.

So it's GOOD to be savvy.

[revbones]

2. Because the numbers being used are incorrect.

Despite being cited by Hillary followers everywhere, people fail to read the disclaimer at the bottom of your link:

Popular vote total includes AK,AL,AR,AS,AZ,CO,DA,FL,GA,HI,ID,IL,KS,LA,MA,MI,MN,MO,MP,MS,NC,NE,NH,OH,OK,SC,TN,TX,UT,VA,VT,WI and excludes IA,ME,NV,WA,WY.

[geek tragedy]

3. He benefits from the caucus system. nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. because hillary is only ahead by 8% of delegates

And the vote totals are misleading

[Recursion]

5. Roughly, we have no idea what the actual "popular vote" is in most caucus states

And it's not even clear that that concept has any real meaning in that context.

[JackRiddler]

9. Caucuses vs. primaries.

Presumably he'd have won the same states if they'd had primaries (certainly the Western ones) and the PV% would be more in line with the delegate totals.

[mythology]

10. There are a couple of reasons

One Sanders does well in caucuses which don't report totals, although given that caucuses promote smaller turnout, that's probably not nearly as significant as people want to think.

But also proportional delegation is imprecise. It's not like every state has 100 delegates to be divided up to match the percentage of the vote. Some states have more and some states have less. So look at the results of Wyoming where Sanders won the caucus vote, but because there are so few delegates, they tied. Being off by 4% is effectively a rounding error.

Sadly it won't put an end to the inaccurate lamentations and gnashing of teeth that Clinton and/or the DNC/establishment is somehow stealing the election from Sanders.

[pat_k]

12. Even more complicated by district/county level allocations, at large, etc...

Actual delegate allocation can be pretty far off what it would be if you multiplied the number of national delegates allocated to the state by statewide results and rounded up or down.

The process varies by state, but generally, you have district-level delegates being divvied up based on results for each district, not overall totals for state, with some "rounding" up or down within each district. Any "at-large" delegates get allocated based on statewide results. As you progress from district conventions to state conventions, where the delegates sent to national convention are elected, there's another round of "whittling down" and rounding off.

And, of course, as others have pointed out, Sanders won more caucus states, which have no 'popular vote" totals.

[Skink]

11. After viewing all of his Washington events....

If there had been a primary he would have gotten a million more votes.

[thesquanderer]

13. It takes a different # of voters to get a delegate in different states.

One variable is turnout. A state has a certain # of delegates regardless of whether turnout is heavy or light. SO if turnout is light, a smaller number of votes gets you a delegate.

Caucuses have been mentioned... fewer people than in primaries.

Also, I think there is some adjustment in delegate assignments for a state depending, essentially, on how "red" or "blue" it is,