Did Hillary Rodham Clinton really pass Barack Obama in the popular vote last night, as her campaign is claiming this morning? It depends whether you count Florida and Michigan – the two most hotly disputed states in the Democratic contest.
This morning, the Clinton campaign sent out an e-mail titled, "The Tide is Turning – More People Have Voted for Hillary Than Any Other Candidate." It cited an estimate by the Real Clear Politics Web site that "Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes," and an ABC News report that " ‘Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama’ in the popular vote."
Then comes the critical disclaimer: "This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan" – the two states that, at the moment, aren't scheduled to be seated at the Democratic convention in Denver because they held their primaries earlier than the party rules allowed.
The disclaimer appears to refer only to the ABC News report, but actually it applies to both estimates. As the Obama campaign helpfully pointed out in its own e-mail, ABC's The Note reports that "By one (rightly disputed) metric – the popular vote, including Florida and Michigan – Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama. But without the rogue states, Obama is still up by 500,000 – and if you can find another objective measurement by which she's in the lead, let us know."
Likewise, Real Clear Politics has Clinton ahead only if both Florida and Michigan are counted. Even just allowing Florida (where Obama's name was on the ballot, but he refrained from campaigning on the ground), Obama is ahead by more than 200,000 votes. That could be a significant talking point for the Obama campaign because Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.
Clearly, Clinton's supporters are setting themselves up to make a powerful argument to superdelegates: that giving the nomination to Obama would be an injustice if the voters actually favored her. That's not going to go over well with Obama's backers, of course. At least one party elder – Paul G. Kirk Jr., a former Democratic National Committee chairman and an Obama supporter – already has been trying to shoot down the arguments that anyone, other than the winner of the most delegates, should get the nomination.
"We have a set of rules. Everyone understood them going in. At the end of the day, the way you determine the winner is, you count the delegates," Kirk told me yesterday. When the primaries are over, he said, "the superdelegates should just do the math, find out who won, and embrace that candidate before the convention." But it may be getting harder for "just do the math" when campaigns are warring over their own at times creative approaches to running the numbers.
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Comments
Superdelegates can consider any factor they want in regard to determing who the nominee should be. That is within the rules of the party. There is nothing to say that they should not consider the popular vote count. Frankly, it is certainly a better indicator of voter preference than the convoluted system of delegate selection. How "democratic" can that system be if Obama gets 13 of the 25 "pledged" delegates in Nevada, but loses the caucuses handily to Clinton. I firmly believe that the votes of those who cast a ballot in MI and FL should be considered regardless of whether they are used to determine a number of delegates for each candidate in those states. Although Obama withdrew his name on the MI by his own choice, I would not object to the "uncommitted" vote being allocated to him, since his campaign certainly encouraged its voters in MI to cast their ballot that way. While not all uncommitted were really votes for him, that allocation would not be completely unreasonable. Therefore, Hillary Clinton is at least 30,000 votes ahead of Obama in the popular vote count. If she is ahead when at the end of the primaries on June 3rd, then she has a powerful argument to make to the superdelegates. The bottom line is that neither candidate can win the nomination without the superdelegates determining the outcome. Moreover, it is within the rules that they may use whatever individual criteria they decide is relevant in making that choice.
Posted by: Edward
| April 23, 2008 2:07 PM
A very insightful post on DailyKos gave several good reasons why the popular vote isn't the best measure on which the superdelegates should base their decisions. Obviously, they're free to choose whomever they want and can use whomever's definition of a popular vote lead they want, they could flip a coin, vote based on the success of Chicago or New York City sports teams or whatever. I won't argue that. But if we want to talk the value of different measures, let's do it honestly.
The national popular vote totals do several things (as pointed out by PocketNines on DKos):
- Caucuses are highly discounted
- Primaries are very differently weighted (depending on their status as open or closed)
- Some caucuses aren't even included at all (Vote totals were not reported in WA, NV, IA, ME)
- Using this total totally changes the rules of the game in the middle of it; nominees are chosen by delegates, not popular votes. That may be problematic, but that's something to be changed for future elections, not ones currently in progress.
But if you insist,
You must include the estimated votes from WA, NV, IA, ME and allot the anti-Hillary votes in Michigan to Obama. If you do that, Obama is still ahead in the popular vote total. That's not admitting that this is the right measure, but in any objective fair measure, Obama is still ahead. But really, should we say that Minnesota is only one quarter as important as Missouri (a caucus vs. a primary)? Why? We all agreed on delegates. We all agreed on a calendar. Let's just play by the rules.
Posted by: UMCPGreg
| April 23, 2008 8:49 PM
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