Don't Be Fooled: Obama Is Actually Leading Hillary By 1-2 Million Votes

[Araxen]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-christensen/dont-be-fooled-obama-is-a_b_96118.html

Many DNC insiders fear that if Hillary Clinton manages to lose the pledged delegates, she may still take the lead in the popular vote, thereby causing the superdelegates to make a hard decision as to which candidate they should choose come August. Their fears are rooted in the notion that Clinton is only behind by roughly 800,000 votes, and that she could feasibly catch up with a big win in Pennsylvania.

They'd be wrong.

In fact, Obama leads in the popular vote by anywhere between 2 million to 3 million voters. How is this possible? The reason lies in the ever elusive math of the Democratic caucus.

When voters everywhere were watching the returns of, say, Kansas on Super Tuesday, most of them naturally assumed that Barack Obama won 27,172 votes to Hillary Clinton's 9,462. But those aren't voters they're counting, they're really just more delegates. County delegates. The county delegates represent an undefined amount of peoples' votes, depending on how many people arrive to the caucus and how many county delegates are assigned. This number could be anywhere from 5 to 100 people and beyond.

[MNDemNY]

1. That's if you include made up votes.

[Araxen]

4. like Hillary's made up math?

fair is fair

[MNDemNY]

5. Much the same. Shit is Shit.

[Zhade]

21. They're not made up, they're the votes of citizens who care enough about the process to caucus.

Just because clinton's arrogant sense of entitlement meant her supporters didn't caucus as much as Obama's doesn't make them invalid (unlike clinton's bullshit claim to the decidedly non-democratic MI primary).

Btw, she's still losing.

[MNDemNY]

23. Sorry, they're "made-up".

[babylonsister]

2. There's proof all around that Obama is more popular. Let

the Clintons make this an issue and then we will see how far the 'mighty' can fall.

I just wonder what/where the next goal post will be? They seem to be running out of room and options.

[quantass]

3. As a Hillary supporter I ask you to stop speaking this in fear that MSM might realise this and

destroy our last hope.

[Prophet 451]

6. I thought that said 12 million for a moment

I'm going to call that a senior moment...

[WillyT]

7. Hmmm... Most Interesting...

:shrug:

[BzaDem]

8. UGH. This is completely and utterly wrong.

There are two measures: state delegates and actual votes. That is correct.

BUT... all but 4 caucus states (including Kansas) report actual vote totals! And those are what is being used to compute the popular vote!

For the other 4, vote totals are already estimated based upon turnout * percentage of pledged delegates. This favors Obama, since his percentage of state delegates overestimates his percentage of votes (as caucus rules weigh heavily in favor of the winner).

And with ALL of that... his popular vote lead (without FL or MI) is ..........

827,308

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

[hfojvt]

11. I can no longer find vote totals for Iowa

At least at the CBS news site they report something like 900 to 700 when I know that 150,000 or so caucused. But you are correct, the Kansas totals are vote totals, not delegate totals.

[BzaDem]

12. You are correct: there are 4 states that don't report vote totals. Iowa is one of them.

So is NV (which Hillary won).

To estimate Iowa and Nevada (and Washington and Maine), they take percentage of state delegates * popular vote total.

[PetraPooh]

16. Actually you are wrong. Idaho is a caucus state, and the Boise caucus

had something like 6000 people attend with another 800-1000 turned away because the venue wasn't large enough, but they got to do a paper vote to be submitted for consideration. However the reporting for the entire state of Idaho was only about 21,000, notice that at the top of the column it specifically says "State Del" which means state delegates, not voters, which is the heading for that column on primary states.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#ID

The popular vote in caucus states could only be approximated. There is no record that I am aware of to indicate actual voters. The other problem is that in the caucus setting, "voters" often change their stance within the night. For example if Kucinich only recieved say 3 people in his corner, on the next round those three might decide to move to a different and "more electable" or into a corner to defend against another candidate rather than truly meaning it as being "for" that candidate. So individual votes would be near impossible to track or record

[BzaDem]

17. No, No, No.

CNN is wrong when they say "state delegate" for Idaho. In Idaho and all but 4 caucus states, actual vote totals are recorded. Someone changes his mind? They are recorded in the final count. (They obviously need to count the votes to get the state delegate calculation, and most states simply report both state delegates and votes).

The only 4 caucus states that don't report vote totals are Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine.

[PetraPooh]

18. I assure you that more than 21000 voters showed up to caucuses statewide

So I don't know how to resolve your issue.

[hfojvt]

20. How can you make that assurance?

If only 7,000 showed up in Boise, a city of 190,000 people that's only a turnout of 3.7% of the population. Taking that percentage for the entire state of 1.4 million gives you a vote total of 51,800. That's over twice as much as the 21,000 but still 21,000 would not be a delegate total unless you had one delegate for every 3 voters.

In fact, if Boise was the caucus site for Ada county which has 325,000 residents, then only 2.2% of the population showed up to caucus and taking that percentage for the whole state gives you 30,153. I would guess that Idaho, like every other state has a higher percentage of Democrats in urban areas like Boise, than they do in the rest of the state.

[BzaDem]

22. I assure you that you are wrong. 21000 voters showed up. Here is a link.

http://www.idahoforobama.org/pages/press/2008idahocaucuses.pdf

If you scroll down, you will see that there are 382 total state delegates. Not 21000. 21000 is votes, not state delegates.

[hfojvt]

9. sorry, those are not delegates from Kansas

Kansas had one caucus per state senate district. There are something like 90 districts. With no more than ten delegates per caucus site, probably less than a thousand are going to the district conventions this weekend to select 20 delegates to goto Denver. 27,142 to 9,462 does represent the actual number of people voting. I live in the 6th largest county in the state and we had 600 at our caucus. Which was an awesome turnout and almost more than we could handle.

[Diane R]

10. At my Wash. St. Caucus, 72 attended. 54 For Obama, 18 for HC. He got 8 delegates; Hillary got 3.

So, Hillary got 1 delegate for every 6 votes.

Obama got 1 delegate for every 7 votes.

If anything, the caucus process gave him fewer delegates than he earned.

[BzaDem]

14. That is not the norm. Delegate selection almost always favors the winner. Sometimes the loser gets

no delegates.

If anything, the state delegates * turnout measure favors Obama, not Clinton.

[rinsd]

13. Made up math is fun.

:eyes:

[BzaDem]

15. I hope some of you will e-mail the Huffington post to correct this misstatement of facts.

But I doubt it, since this is Obama underground. Fuzzy math is OK as long as it favors Obama.

[rinsd]

19. You can comment on the article there if you wish.