Fair and Balanced Popular Vote Totals
by DHinMI
Mon May 05, 2008 at 04:25:13 PM PDT
A NYT op-ed by Rhodes Cook:
While Hillary Clinton probably can’t catch Barack Obama in the race for most pledged delegates at the Democratic presidential nominating convention, she does have a shot at overtaking him in the popular vote. Whoever triumphs in that symbolic total will have a persuasive argument to use with the wavering superdelegates who are likely to decide the race this summer.
Granted, Mrs. Clinton boasts that she has the lead already, but her count includes the votes in the unsanctioned primaries in Florida and Michigan. A fairer calculation would eliminate the ballots cast in those two states, as well as the votes from caucuses where no statewide tally of the actual vote was compiled. (Those states are Iowa, Maine, Nevada and Washington; Mr. Obama won three of them.) Territories that do not possess any Electoral College votes should be ruled out, too.
What a compelling argument! There's no way Hillary Clinton will come out ahead of Barack Obama in pledged delegates. Obama may soon pass Clinton in commitments from super delegates. It's quite possible that by the end of the primaries that Obama's combined total of pledged delegates and commitments from super delegates will exceed 2,025, the number of delegates required to secure the nomination in Denver. Obama will have won more states. He polls ahead of Clinton nationally, and he consistently polls better than Clinton among independent swing voters.
To be fair, Cook doesn't count the totals from Florida and Michigan, which were not sanctioned by the DNC and which Clinton said shouldn't be counted. She's harped on MI and FL because she needs to keep uncertainty to keep everyone from telling her she's lost, and that she won't be the nominee.
But, if Clinton does really well the rest of the way out, and if you don't count four states that that don't count caucus votes, three of which Obama won outright and the fourth one from which he won more pledged delegates, then maybe Clinton will squeak past Obama in what this author calls the popular vote.
In other words, if you give Clinton a several state handicap, she might look better than Obama, but even then, only on one measurement, and not one that is anywhere in the rules for determining our nominee.
I can't wait for the Olympics. I'm looking forward to hearing and reading arguments about how the winner of the 100-meter dash shouldn't be given the gold medal, because the second-place finisher's time over 92 meters was faster than the time of the winner's over the entire 100 meters.
Who could possibly argue that that's not a fair calculation?
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