-
sponsorship
Something we didn’t mention in our assessments of Hillary Clinton’s claim that she’s winning the popular vote: the Texas caucuses.
We and many other outlets have taken to using the Real Clear Politics popular vote count. The problem is, RCP factors in the Texas primary but not its caucuses. As a result, we end up underestimating Barack Obama’s popular vote tally. But by how much?
One way to estimate is to look at the results from the evening of March 4. Texas uses a “voluntary” reporting system, so only 41 percent of precincts ended up reporting their results on election night. Those numbers showed Obama winning the caucus by about 10 points. We can also look at the results of Texas’ county and state district conventions in late March, in which Obama won 58 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 42 percent. Again, that’s rough, but it’s the best we’ve got until the state convention in early June.
Based on those numbers, it looks like Obama won by anywhere from 10 to 20 points. (There are no official figures.) The Texas Democratic party estimates that turnout was roughly a million, which means that Obama probably netted anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 votes—enough to cancel out Clinton’s 100,000-vote victory in the state’s primary.
You can see why outlets like NBC choose to ignore Texas entirely when counting votes. “We’re just all screwed up,” laughs Texas Democratic spokesman Hector Nieto. “We’re the only state with stripes on CNN.” There are other caveats: The March 4 caucuses were chaotic, with overflowing caucus sites and accusations of voter fraud. Also, Texas voters could vote in both the primary and the caucuses, and there’s no way to figure out exactly how many votes got counted twice. (Update 8:14 p.m.: Actually, there is: All of them got counted twice, since you had to vote in the primary in order to attend the caucus.)
But if you factor in this rough estimate of the Texas caucus results, Clinton is decidedly not winning the popular vote. RCP puts her ahead by 64,000 votes if you count Florida and Michigan and all the caucus states. But 100,000 votes from the Texas caucus would swing the advantage back to Obama.
-
sponsorship
Now that we’ve laid out Hillary Clinton’s logic for how she’s winning the popular vote, it’s worth examining whether and how she can turn this from a tenuous argument into a compelling case.
Right now, superdelegates aren’t buying it, most likely because no one thinks Michigan should be counted toward the popular vote, especially if you’re not counting the "uncommitted" votes for Obama. So if she’s going to persuade them, she needs a lead that doesn’t rely on counting Michigan’s dubious vote in order to put her ahead.
The upcoming votes in Montana and South Dakota won’t help her much. South Dakota currently has 194,000 active registered Democrats. Even if turnout is as high as 50 percent and she wins with a 60-40 split, she’ll only net around 20,000 votes. Turnout in Montana is expected to be in the mid-100,000 range, which likewise won’t net Clinton more than a few thousand votes. And those are optimistic scenarios.
Puerto Rico looks like her best shot. The island has 2.3 million registered voters, all of whom are eligible to vote in the Democratic primary. (Puerto Rico’s parties don’t align with U.S. parties.) I’ve seen turnout estimates of 80 percent. That seems high, but say it’s true and 1.84 million people vote. If Clinton wins a 60-40 split, that would net her about 370,000 votes.
So it’s possible that in the next three contests, Clinton could net as many as 400,000 votes. Obama currently leads by 257,000 votes, counting Florida and all caucus states but not Michigan. Which means Clinton could still come out ahead by more than 100,000 votes. That sort of margin isn’t Florida-proof—it relies on counting Florida’s popular vote in order to hold. But counting Florida could become standard practice if the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee decides to seat the state's delegation on May 31. If all that happens, Clinton could make a reasonable case to superdelegates that more people voted for her than for Obama.
Update 6:16 p.m.: Clinton's task is even harder if you factor in the enigmatic Texas caucuses. Check out the revised analysis here.
-
sponsorship
Last night, Clinton announced that she’s "winning the popular vote." It’s a claim she’s been making since Pennsylvania, but now that Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates, it’s really her last plausible argument for the nomination.
As this blog has noted before, the popular vote is a flawed metric because the number of people who participate in caucuses is much smaller than the number of people who vote in primaries. But let’s set that objection aside. What’s the logic undergirding Clinton’s claim?
1) If you count the vote in all primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Obama leads by about 552,000 votes, according to an estimate by Real Clear Politics.
2) If you add in Florida, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, and where the candidates agreed not to campaign, Obama’s lead drops to 257,000.
3) If you further add in Michigan, whose primary was not DNC-sanctioned, where candidates agreed not to campaign, and where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot, then Clinton leads by 71,000.
But:
4) In Michigan, "uncommitted" received 40 percent of the vote, which seems kind of high. If we count Michigan’s 238,000 uncommitteds for Obama, then he leads by 167,000. Presumably the Clinton campaign isn’t making this final calculation. In the past, though, her camp has explained away the embarrassingly large proportion of Michigan uncommitteds—remember, Clinton was the only major candidate on the ballot— by pointing out that Obama’s Michigan supporters urged primary voters to pull the lever for "uncommitted." Indeed, on May 10 Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Clinton would be willing to give Obama all the Michigan uncommitteds, provided Obama dropped his opposition to seating Michigan and Florida.
Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, a strong proponent of the popular-vote metric, has argued that if you’re going to count Michigan, you have to take this last step. (Incidentally, Hertzberg later discovered that his own calculations understated Obama’s support.)
5) An additional variable is whether you count all the caucuses. Four caucus states—Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington—never reported their popular votes. So the calculations above are based on estimates. If you don’t count these estimates, Clinton’s 71,000 lead rises to 181,000 votes.
6) But isn’t it inconsistent to argue for enfranchising Florida and Michigan while simultaneously disenfranchising Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington? Yes, that’s inconsistent. So let’s disenfranchise Florida and Michigan in addition to the four caucus states. That gives the popular vote lead back to Obama by 442,000.
7) OK, now let’s put Florida and Michigan back in but give Obama the Michigan uncommitteds, per Hertzberg’s recommendation and Wolfson’s May 10 comment. That also gives the popular vote lead back to Obama, this time by about 57,000.
-
sponsorship
Results from the last several Republican primaries force one to occasionally stop for a fact-check: Mike Huckebee did drop out of the race, right? Like, almost three months ago?
Or more to the point: Is anyone in the McCain camp worried that an opponent who called it off on March 4 is still winning 10 percent of the vote? Or that their guy is only winning about three-quarters of the vote, largely against defunct candidates?
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Kentucky, McCain won 72.3 percent of the vote. Huckabee raked in 8.2 percent, and Ron Paul, who’s actually still in the race, won 6.8 percent. All told, non-McCain candidates won nearly 28 percent of the vote in the Republican contest. By contrast, Barack Obama won 30 percent in the Democratic contest.
Two weeks ago, Huckabee won 10 percent in Indiana and 12.1 percent in North Carolina.
To be fair, the presumptive nominee doesn’t always receive overwhelming margins of the vote after the contest is functionally over. In May of 2004, John Edwards won 13.4 percent in West Virginia and 11.2 percent in Indiana, well after John Kerry had it wrapped up. Perhaps this is the voters’ way of notching their choice for a running mate?
And look how well that turned out for those two.
-
sponsorship
With Tuesday's contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama seizes
a majority of pledged delegates. April fundraising numbers show Obama
still leads in the money race. And key figures ditch Hillary. Obama now
needs about 70 delegates to attain the "magic number" of 2025, so we're
dropping Clinton's chances drop to 0.9 points to 0.7 percent. For every 10 delegates Obama wins, Clinton will drop another 0.1 until … let's just say she'll need a snorkel.
Obama
did not declare victory Tuesday night, but he came about as close as
one can get. "You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination
for president of the United States," he told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd.
He needed only 17 pledged delegates to secure a majority. In Kentucky,
it looks like he won about 14; in Oregon, about 30. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?