Texas delegates math. Obama wins regardless of how you slice it.

[DerekJ]

Some HRC supporters have voiced their concern that the prima-caucus system is unfair because of how the delegates are allocated. And that delegate allocation doesn’t take into consideration the amount of voters in each contest (primary versus caucus).
So I decided that I will create a hypothetical scenario, where delegates are apportioned according to the number of voters in each contest instead of being fixed at 65% of the delegates for the primary, and 35% for the caucus. I wanted to see who wins in this case.

What we know (AKA: The Givens)

According to this ; the total number of voters in the primary is approx. 2.8 million.

According to this ; The total number of caucus goes are over 1 million. I will put it at 1.1 million for approximation (if you repeat the below calculation assuming only 1 million instead of 1.1 million you will get the exact same conclusion at the end).

The total delegates for Texas are 193.

The current status quo gives you 126 delegates for the primary (about 65% of the total delegates), and 67 delegates for the caucus (about 35%).

You are saying that this system is unfair to Hillary because of the difference in the number for each of the contests.
Fine, we will do a hypothetical scenario where the delegates are apportioned according to the number of voters in each contest, and let’s see who wins.

Now let’s do some simple math.

Apportioning the delegates to reflect the number of voters in each contest

The total number of voters is 3.9 million (2.8 + 1.1).

The ratio of the primary voters to the total is (2.8/3.9) * 100 = is 71.7%. I will approximate that to 72% in favor of Hillary.

The ratio of the caucus voters to the total would be in this case 28% (again approximated in favor of Hillary)

The total number of delegates is 193.

In our new system the number of delegates for the primary should be 72% of the delegates instead of 65%. That gives us 139 delegates out of the 193.

Thus, the caucus delegates are 54 (193 - 139).

139 + 54 = 193, so the total delegate numbers don’t change, but how it’s allocated is now different to reflect the ratio of the primary voters to the caucus voters, to make it “fair” for Hillary.

So now 139 delegates for the primaries, and 54 delegates for the caucus

The primary delegates according to our new system

Hillary won 65 delegates of 126 delegates in the official system or 52%. (This is heavily approximated in favor of Hillary)

Thus; Obama won 48% of the delegates.

Let’s carry this forward to our new number of 139 delegates.

Hillary in this case wins 72 delegates instead of the initial 65 delegates (52% of 139 delegates).

Obama wins 67 delegates (48% of 141 delegates)

So now Hillary has won 72 delegates, Obama has 67 in our hypothetical system giving Hillary an extra 1 delegate compared tothan the official system (72 – 67 = 5, instead of 65-61 = 4)

Now the caucus delegates

We have 54 delegates left for the caucus in our hypothetical system instead of 67.

If the current projections stands; Obama wins 38 delegates, and Hillary wins 29 out of 67 with the official system.

That’s 57% Obama (I will give him only 56%, again favoring Hillary in the approximation heavily)

Thus Hillary have 44%.

Now let’s carry this forward to our new number which is 54 delegates.

Obama gets 30 delegates out of 54 (56% of 54 delegates).

Hillary wins 24 delegates (54 -30).

So in our hypothetical system, Obama wins 30 delegates to Hillary’s 24. Making Hillary gain 3 more delegates delegates (30 – 24 = 6, instead of 38 – 29 = 9)

Summing it all up

In the hypothetical system:
Primary: O: 67, H: 72
Caucus: O: 30, H: 24

Total Obama: 97
Total Hillary: 96

Obama still wins albeit with only 1 delegate

If I didn't favor Hillary in the approximation Obama still ends up wining with 2 to 3 delegates.

Feel free to correct me.

Edit to fix link

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[DerekJ]

2. That’s not true also. Obama wins the total vote.

Hillary took 1,459,814 votes in the primary, Obama took 1,358,785.

That’s a difference of 101,000 (100K votes) votes (nowhere near the 1 million votes you are talking about)

Taking the caucus into consideration, where Obama won, by 56% of the delegates (taking that as a measure for the number of votes. He gets 56% of 1.1 million votes, gives you 616,000 votes compared to 484,000 for Hillary.

The total votes:
Obama : 1.974 Million votes.
HRC: 1.943 Million votes
Obama wins total number of votes.

[joshcryer]

9. Your caucus math is bizarre, where are you getting your caucus totals?

[DerekJ]

11. There is a link in the OP

[joshcryer]

13. Do you have any more concrete link than that?

That's astounding if nearly a fourth of the primary voters managed to cram themselves into a caucus.

[DerekJ]

3. Kicking my own post.

:kick:

[DerekJ]

4. I am keeping this post up until it sinks in.

the HRC supporter that claimed to be "smarter than all Obama supporters combined" can't even do simple math, so let's see how many more.

[DerekJ]

5. Obama supporters, you lazy bums, not even one recommend.

[crispini]

6. It's too late to do math.

:crazy::hug: :thumbsup:

[DerekJ]

7. Tell me about it, the numbers were looking blurry when I was doing them.

[gear_head]

8. how Texas delegates are chosen... none of HRC's business

how Texas delegates are chosen...
none of HRC or her non/Texan supporter's business

[DerekJ]

10. Some are complaining, saying if the system was more fair (proportioned according to votes) HRC would

have won, I just proved them to be wrong.

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. The flaw in your argument

The caucus goers in Texas were not a different group of voters than the primary voters. In order to participate in the caucus they had to prove that they already voted in the primary. So the caucus didn't have a single participant who had not already had their vote counted in the primary. They were already represented in the popular will. Clinton won the popular will, she won when all the votes weere counted. Obama didn't gain a single new supporter in the caucus, he already got their votes in the priamry, and he lost it.

[joshcryer]

14. The flaw in his argument is that 1.1 million people attended TX caucuses.

I find that extremely hard to believe.

[DerekJ]

15. How many links do you want me to provide?

[joshcryer]

19. Official data.

I know caucuses, I've been looking at the data from these caucuses all across the board. I find it incredibly unbeliebably that 1.1 million people caucused in TX. Incredibly. You got maybe 250 district locations where caucuses were held. 1.1 million / 250 = 4400. Am I to believe that each and every caucus location had 4400 people? Non-sense.

[crispini]

26. Um, no, you're wrong.

I don't know where you got the 250 district locations where caucuses were held from, but Dallas County alone has 400 precincts. I had 400 people attending in my precinct convention, so I'm pretty sure the 1 million caucusgoers is about right.

Anyway, here's a link:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8VE3NDO0.html

:hi:

[joshcryer]

16. The closest link I can find is here:

http://precinctconventionresults.txdemocrats.org/election08district

Now there's always a big controversey about whether or not these delegates are county level or not, but I am to believe that they are in fact votes, given that 90k people aren't going to the state level caucuses.

So there's your number, 100k people. If I am reading the data correctly. Otherwise a better link must be found.

[DerekJ]

18. How about The Associated Press ?!!

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/mar/12/texas-caucus-results-youll-have-to-wait/

Just google "texas caucus 1 million"

[joshcryer]

20. "Estimated." Please provide concrete numbers, not "estimations."

The AP does get it wrong.

[DerekJ]

21. Hoe about the Washington Post

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/11/texas_caucus_chaos_continues_1.html

"the record participation of more than 1 million voters. "

[joshcryer]

22. Fine, I will suspend my disbelief for a moment here.

If it really happened that way, which I find unbelievably suprising, then you're making one fatal mistake. Those who voted in the caucus had to have voted in the primary vote. Are you then saying that if we're calculating "popular vote" we should count caucus votes, even though that would be counting votes twice? Seems dubious to me.

[DerekJ]

24. Nope, that's not my argument.

"Some HRC supporters have voiced their concern that the prima-caucus system is unfair because of how the delegates are allocated. And that delegate allocation doesn’t take into consideration the amount of voters in each contest (primary versus caucus).
"

In other words, I am arguing against the meme that "Obama shouldn't have got so many caucus delegates because the caucus voters are less than the primary voters". That's what I refuted; showing that factoring the correct proportions of the turnout for both the caucus, and the primary, Obama still wins.

What I am not arguing against in the OP is whether or not people voting twice is democratic or not.

[crispini]

27. These delegates were elected going on to the next level.

What you are looking at there is an estimate of County / Senatorial district convention attendance tomorrow.

precinct level turnout was waaaaaaaaaaaaay higher.

I was there. :hi:

[DerekJ]

28. Good Luck.

Try to blog from there. :hi:

[crispini]

29. Thanks!

I'm taking the laptop, the battery, and the cell phone!

So I think there will be bloggage! :D

[DerekJ]

17. This goes back to "Caucuses are not democratic" because my 80 years old was unable to show up.

an argument that I have refuted many times.

My argument here is about proper allocation of delegates in regards to turn out for both primary and caucus.

What you said can be used against my argument in post number 2, but not against the OP.

[Asgaya Dihi]

23. I'm not sure why we're debating this anyway.

If the caucus system needs changed or not is a valid subject for debate but it's no more fair or unfair to one candidate than the next and seems more an issue for next election than this one. The Clinton camp and the Obama camp were playing under the same set of rules and they both had the same time and opportunities to both learn the system and to advance themselves under those established and well known to both sides rules.

If one of them wasn't ready on day one that's a poor campaign, not some innate bias against a particular candidate. They could have competed in the smaller States too instead of just counting on the big ones, they just decided not to and that turned out to be a mistake. The whole argument strikes me as sour grapes.

[DerekJ]

25. I totally agree with you, that’s why I put the word "fair" between two quotes.

All What I did is to show them, that even by the method they prefer, Hillary still loses to Obama.

[quantass]

30. Great job!