Newsweek: Clinton's Popular Vote Argument Flawed

[JBoy]

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/04/23/flashback-the-popular-vote-still-doesn-t-add-up.aspx

Terry McAuliffe is a quick draw. Last night, mere seconds after the networks had crowned Hillary Clinton the Keystone State victor, the former DNC chairman--and current Clinton adviser--was already on the air, spinning like a top. His main talking point? It's the popular vote, stupid. "By the time we finish this process," he told MSNBC at 9:20 p.m., "Hillary Clinton will have moved ahead in the popular vote."

We can sympathize. Winning in Pennsylvania earned Clinton only 10 to 12 pledged delegates, which is a lot less than the 150 or so separating her from Barack Obama at the start of the night. And the Illinois senator will inevitably erase her gains with a big win in North Carolina. That said, the New York senator did manage to pick up more than 200,000 votes, significantly narrowing Obama's lead of 800,000--and giving her the potential to pass him if Florida (and, perhaps, Michigan) are ever factored in. (McAuliffe, of course, included the Sunshine State in his count.) So it's understandable that Clinton and Co. want to deemphasize the delegates and argue that the popular vote is the proper metric for determining the Democratic nomination.

The thing is, it's also preposterous. For starters, the Democratic rules clearly state that delegates, not votes, are decisive. But even if you grant that Team Clinton is only asking tiebreaking superdelegates to consider the popular vote when choosing a candidate--and not claiming that votes should replace delegates altogether--there's still a pesky little problem to deal with: the popular vote is completely and utterly uncountable. So as speculation swirls and the math gets mangled, we thought it'd be a good time to remind you, dear reader, of a few incontrovertible truths. From our April 4 item entitled "The Popular Vote Fallacy" (updated to reflect the most recent results):

... (more at link)

[FrenchieCat]

1. So if the truth is this evident, why don't Pundit heads and Hillary supporters

"get" it?

What is the matter with those people? :crazy:

[ej510]

3. They are in denial.

[Poll_Blind]

13. Give it a few more days or a week and then they'll be falling over themselves..

...to show how "informed" they are.

PB

[kwenu]

2. Hillary's got to be stuck on stupid if she thinks this argument is going to work.

How is it anyone can still support this woman? She is an embarrassment.

[HooptieWagon]

8. Well, if anyone knows Stu, it's Hill.

[kentuck]

4. Excellent points!

"Here's the math. To date, 41 of the 47 states or territories to hold primaries or caucuses have released precise, undisputed popular-vote totals. In this count, according to RealClear Politics, Obama leads Clinton by 501,138 votes (14,397,506 to 13,896,368). So far, so good. But what, you ask, about the remaining six states? That's where we get into trouble.

First, there's Florida. Despite warnings from the Democratic National Committee, the Sunshine State scheduled its primary before Feb. 5--and true to its word, the party stripped the state of its delegates. That said, we're not talking about delegates; we're talking about votes. In Florida, where both Obama and Clinton were on the ballot, Clinton won by 294,772 (870,986 to 576,214). It's an open question, of course, whether a primary in which both candidates refrained from campaigning should even count. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it should--which reduces Obama's popular-vote advantage to 206,366. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us much.

Next up is Florida's fellow gun-jumper, Michigan, where Clinton racked up 328,309 votes. Obama's total? Zero. That's because his name wasn't even listed on the ballot. On Jan. 19, Michiganders had two choices: Clinton or "uncommitted." And while "uncommitted" earned about 45 percent of the vote, it's impossible to determine what portion of that bloc backed Obama and what portion backed John Edwards, whose name was also absent. Ignoring the fact that Clinton herself said Michigan wouldn't "count for anything," this murkiness alone makes an overall popular-vote tally impractical: either you award all of the "uncommitted" votes to Obama, which would be grossly inaccurate; count Clinton's votes and leave Obama at zero, which would undoubtedly disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters; or don't include Michigan at all, which would disenfranchise even more, both pro-Clinton and pro-Obama.

That said, the worst is yet to come. The final four states--Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington--all held caucuses. But unlike Florida and Michigan, none of them even kept track of how many people voted for each candidate. (This is standard operating procedure in some caucuses, where delegates are awarded proportionally in thousands of precincts.) Wonks can devise equations to estimate the popular vote all they want, but mixing precise vote totals from other states with caucus approximations--which are, by definition, inaccurate--is mixing apples and oranges. Besides, thousands of voters in Iowa entered the caucuses intending to support Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich, but were forced to jump to Obama, Edwards or Clinton once their preferred candidate didn't reach the 15-percent viability threshold; in Nevada, the same thing happened to Edwards supporters. How can you possibly pretend to count people required to resort to their second choices?

The fact is, the Democratic Party has only one mechanism in place for deciding the nomination: delegates. The system is simply not equipped to produce an accurate tally of popular votes."

[JBoy]

5. Has the Clinton camp stated precisely "how" they conclude they lead in popular vote?

Or are they content to just go around "saying it".?

[GarbagemanLB]

7. It is astounding in its stupidity:

Count FL and MI, but give Obama NOTHING from MI. If he was given all the 'uncommitted' votes in MI, he would STILL BE UP by over 100k votes.

It really shows the stupidity an desperation of those who use that argument.

[roseBudd]

17. Give her Michigan when she was the only one on the ballot & BO gets nothing for 40% uncommited!

[JBoy]

19. And no doubt the problematic counting of caucus votes is handled by

NOT COUNTING THEM AT ALL!

[Alii]

14. The latter...

[TahitiNut]

6. "Flawed" = euphemism for an enormous pile of steaming elephant manure

:rofl:

[DerekJ]

12. like this?!

[TahitiNut]

18. Sorta. More like ...

[wileedog]

9. Praise Jesus, signs of intelligent life in the media

Hey, look at those pig flying by....

[City Lights]

10. Kicking and recommending with glee.

:7

[ClassWarrior]

11. Her "big state" arguement is flawed too. Dems have been drawing record turnout...

...in EVERY state, large or small, swing or solid. MULTIPLE times the number of Rape-Publican votes. So once Obama is officially named the nominee, and the Party is united behind him, why wouldn't he win most of those Dem votes? (Other than Limbaugh's Operation Irrelevancy voters, that is?)

:shrug:

NGU.

[Why Syzygy]

15. Everyone knows it but her and her advisors.

Or maybe they do and just hope for a few more paychecks. ha

How can she be so clueless. And believe us to be as well.

[Poll_Blind]

16. Interesting piece. Read the whole thing. n/t

PB