Sunday, June 01, 2008

Who Is Really Winning the Popular Vote?   [Byron York]

With the Puerto Rico results, it looks like Hillary Clinton gained about 140,000 votes on Barack Obama in the Democratic popular vote race. The result is that, at the very least, she and Obama are in a virtual tie for the winner of the popular vote after more than 35 million votes have been cast.

RealClearPolitics has tweaked its numbers on the popular vote total. With Florida's results now in everyone's totals after the DNC rules and bylaws committee meeting, the new figures are: 1) the popular vote without Michigan; 2) the popular vote with Michigan but with no Obama (uncommitted) votes counted; and 3) the popular vote with Michigan and the uncommitted going to Obama.

In each case, I think it is best to include the estimated vote totals from the Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington state caucuses, although there are no official vote totals. So given all that, you have three possible figures:

** Popular vote without Michigan: Obama leads by 135,000 votes.

** Popular vote with Michigan but no Obama votes: Clinton leads by 194,000 votes.

** Popular vote with Michigan and uncommitted to Obama: Obama leads by 45,000 votes.

I think the correct number is somewhere between the second and third options. At this point, it is reasonable to include votes from Michigan, something the DNC committee seemed to recognize when it awarded more delegates to Clinton than to Obama on the basis that she received more votes than he did in Michigan. But it makes no sense to give Clinton her full total and zero to Obama, on the grounds that his name was not on the ballot. On the other hand, it also doesn't make sense to give Obama every uncommitted vote, given that John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and others were also not on the ballot in Michigan and certainly received some votes. So my feeling is that the right figure would be the popular vote with Michigan and uncommitted to Obama, minus a little bit, meaning I think Obama leads by less than 45,000 votes, or is perhaps behind Clinton by a small amount.

So now we have Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, both of which Obama is expected to win. By how much? I don't know, but it appears that in the end, by the best count available, he might come out ahead in the popular vote by one or two tenths of one percent of the more than 35 million votes cast. In other words, a virtual tie.

06/01 10:37 PMShare