Is everyone watching the popular vote

[MineralMan]

in the Democratic Primaries? It's educational.

Here's the current state of things. Anyone claiming that Hillary Clinton is not popular with Democratic voters should be watching this as the primary season continues. The numbers will change on Wednesday, but probably not the percentages, which have remained steady throughout the season. Bookmark the link and follow along:

Clinton, Hillary Diane Rodham 4,263,516 59.80%
Sanders, Bernard "Bernie" 2,745,545 38.51%

Source: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/D

[JonLeibowitz]

1. Aren't you an expert with caucuses ?

Surely you know that they do not count towards the popular vote.

[MineralMan]

4. Depends on the state, actually.

Some report actual votes. Others do not.

I'm not an expert on anything, but I understand the caucuses in my own state, and I'm pretty new at that, too.

Anyhow, here are the popular vote numbers for Minnesota, my caucus state, from the same source. Those numbers are included in the national popular vote count.:

Sanders, Bernard "Bernie" 126,229 61.69%
Clinton, Hillary Diane Rodham 78,381 38.31%

Source: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/MN-D

[NCTraveler]

2. I have been and planned on posting an op about it later.

Did a little googling and didn't find a link as you had. Was going to add it myself. Just glancing it over I could tell the difference was enormous.

[MineralMan]

39. I hate doing that kind of arithmetic, so I looked

for a single source for all of the primary states. That was the best one I could find, and it also has massive amounts of other information on elections that is well worth reading.

[NCTraveler]

40. I did look at it. Lots of good info.

Before last week I did the addition myself. A little bit tedious at this point. Thanks for the link.

[MineralMan]

41. I like their pages on how each state selects their delegates.

You can also learn how the unpledged superdelegates are selected and who they are. It's a terrific resource. I've been referring to it almost daily.

[floppyboo]

3. I've been watching the popular vote

and recall that the numbers above (not contesting!) were just about exactly opposite a month ago. Roller coaster season!

[MineralMan]

8. Keep watching.

The more primaries there are, the more stable those numbers will be.

[floppyboo]

11. 00ps - missed the popular vote/caucas vote thing

Looking forward to seeing pure popular vote #'s later.

[MineralMan]

14. The caucus states that don't report actual voting numbers

will not be included. Most, however, do report those numbers. Iowa and Nevada didn't, though.

[DCBob]

5. Hillary leads 60-39.

On any other planet that would be considered a blowout landslide game over.

[MineralMan]

15. On this planet, too, really.

It's hard to see those numbers and come up with any other explanation.

[jeff47]

6. It sure is convenient to not include caucus results when trying to make a point. (nt)

[MineralMan]

10. See my #4.

Some caucus states do report actual vote numbers, like mine in Minnesota.

So does Colorado. They're all in that national count at the link.

[jeff47]

33. Good thing there have only been two caucus states....oh wait... (nt)

[BainsBane]

7. No, they weren't opposite

because over the course of a month more people vote. She now leads by 1.5 million votes. On March 15, that gap will become significantly wider.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_vote_count.html

[MineralMan]

12. The gap will be wider on Wednesday, too.

Every cluster of primaries will be reflected in those statistics the day after they occur.

Some people, early on, asked what would happen if Sanders had more popular votes than Hillary. I think that's very, very unlikely, nationally.

The people are speaking through their votes. They are telling us who they want as the Democratic nominee.

[Bread and Circus]

9. Thank you Mineral Man, I appreciate the post. I think Sanders is doing awesome!!!

Everyone, don't give up. Let's keep this going until the convention.

40% of Democrats are basically voting for a real change and which is similar to the "Green Party" platform, aka Jill Stein.

This is amazing and wonderful news.

I sent Bernie Sanders $50.00 yesterday.

Chip in all the way to the convention, let's have our voice be heard.

[lostnfound]

16. I agree, Sanders IS doing awesome!

I'm heartened at how he is often exceeding expectations in his stronghold. And that there have been NO polls in California since early January. Maybe California will be the tipping point. The trends were sure looking good.

[grossproffit]

13. Thank you for posting this. I had to manually add them up last time and didn't want to do it again

[MineralMan]

17. That link is marvelous. It's always up-to-date and

appears to be very accurate. You can also look at the individual states by clicking on their abbreviation below the table of results.

It's a great resource for political wonks like DUers. Pure, unadulterated information.

[NurseJackie]

18. Great post ... Very informative!

But there was no information or tallies for the Bumper Sticker War or the Lawn Sign Competition.

[MineralMan]

20. Sorry. I don't know anyone who reports those.

I'm an information junkie. The site at that link presents pure information, without commentary. As far as I've been able to determine, it's very accurate and not at all biased.

You can find delegate counts, too, both separate and including unpledged superdelegates, in different columns.

It's my go-to site for all information about the primaries. If you drill down in that website, through the links, it's amazing what you can learn about how it all works.

[NurseJackie]

24. It's a great resource ... I've already bookmarked it!

Thanks!

[DemocraticWing]

19. We aren't going anywhere, and you can't stop us.

Young people have already convinced 40% of Democratic voters that real change is necessary. Even if we lose this time, count on us being back next time.

[MineralMan]

22. One election at a time.

That's all I can keep track of. We can deal with the next presidential election in 2020, OK?

[edgineered]

21. How many states are closed caucus or primary?

NH,MA are mixed
NV,OK,CO,KS,LA,NE,ME are closed

Seems like a lot of indy votes don't get counted using this model. One might think the popular vote doesn't mean much at this point.

[MineralMan]

23. Right now, all votes in Democratic primaries are being included.

If you vote, you get counted. If you don't, you don't matter when it comes to delegate allocation. This is primary season. All that matters is what leads up to the Democratic National Convention.

I can't really discuss independent voters who don't vote in the primaries. If they do vote, they'll show up in these popular vote numbers. They reflect actual voting. They're not polls. They're actual results from the states that have had primary events.

[edgineered]

27. What you say is true, just as it is true in your OP

My point is that voters in closed Democratic primaries and caucuses is a subset of how the GE popular vote is counted. IMO, a small subset. Anyone not carefully reading what you are saying may not realize how far from November's reality it is.

[MineralMan]

29. This has nothing to do with the general election.

The numbers from the primaries only affect who is selected as the nominee. There's no real point in discussing general election turnout or results at this point, and this thread is not about that in any way.

It is primary season. This thread is about the Democratic primaries and nothing else.

November will happen in due time. We'll have plenty to talk about after the Democratic Convention, I'm sure. Until then, I'm focused on the races at hand. Tuesday will be interesting, I'm sure, as will next Tuesday. That's what's interesting right now.

[edgineered]

31. Yes, with MI and MS being open primaries on the 8th,

and the same for IL, MO, and OH on the following Tuesday it will be very interesting to see how things go.

[MineralMan]

36. It's all interesting. I'm following it closely.

[DefenseLawyer]

25. Of the states that have voted so far in the primaries

roughly 26,000,000 people voted in the general election in those states in 2008. You can extrapolate what you want from raw numbers in the primary.

[MineralMan]

26. I'm not extrapolating anything at all, nor am I

talking about the general election in any way. I'm showing actual results from the primaries that have already occurred. We are in the process of selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention right now. The results will determine who the Democratic nominee will be. That's all that is going on at the moment.

Comparing primary voting with general election voting is irrelevant in figuring out who will be the nominee.

Right now, it's primary election season. After the Convention, we can discuss general election issues and turnout.

[DefenseLawyer]

28. Well if that's what you're discussing

I'm sure you realize that the nominee isn't selected by popular vote. So, other than the fact that it favors Clinton at the moment, why exactly should we be focusing on it?

[MineralMan]

30. I suggest you compare percentages for both the

popular vote and the delegate count. They are almost identical, as they should be, since the popular vote determines the number of delegates from each state.

In each state, delegates are allocated according to the percentages of the popular vote. By looking at the national popular vote, you can get a very clear picture of things. Or, you can look at the delegate count and figure the percentages. They're almost exactly the same, really.

Our primary system is working as it is designed to work. Precisely so.

That's why I recommend watching these numbers. They tell the story. The site at the link makes it easy to do that.

If the lead changes, you'll see it there. If it doesn't, you'll see that, too. Only the delegate count matters, and that is determined by the popular vote in each state.

[DefenseLawyer]

34. Actually Clinton won the popular vote in the 2008 Democratic Primaries

and lost the delegate count and the nomination. So no, they don't "tell the story".

[aaaaaa5a]

32. I said the same thing in a pro Sanders thread a while back

You can't measure popular vote when mixing primary and caucus states. It's like mixing the total scores of 2 different sports into 1 total.

Popular vote totals in this context are irrelevant. Some caucuses don't even tally popular vote totals at all.


At least for the sake of credibility for both the pro-Sanders group and the pro-Clinton group, when using this metric in the future, please use primary vote totals only. Without it, there isn't much news here. And both sides are conveying a message that is not fully accurate.

[MineralMan]

35. Please compare the popular vote count to the

percentages reflected in the delegate count. You will find that they are almost identical. From here on out, there are fewer caucus states, anyhow. That will make the two sets of numbers even closer to the same.

Right now, the unpledged delegate count percentages are:

Hillary - 58.44%
Sanders - 41.55%

The correlation is very clear.

[Jitter65]

37. Here is the big problem I see.

Unless there are huge popular votes missing from the Dem side, the three top GOP candidates far exceed the the top three Democrat candidates in popular votes. I assume that that gap will significantly narrow as we begging to see results from the blue state elections but still...the gap is too wide for my liking. And the increase in voters IDing as GOP is worrisome.

[MineralMan]

38. Vote count in the two parties' primaries

really don't indicate anything regarding the general election turnouts. We have two candidate. The Republicans have four. Our primaries are rather boring, in some ways. The Republican primaries are a cage match.

I wouldn't put to much weight on those differences. November will produce its own results.

[pat_k]

42. How do you factor in caucus states?

Sure the people in the following states/territories deserve to be counted?

Alaska
American Samoa
Colorado
Hawaii
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Maine
Minnesota
Nebraska
Nevada
Northern Marianas
Puerto Rico
Virgin Islands
Washington
Wyoming

[MineralMan]

43. Their delegates are tallied on the same

link.

[pat_k]

44. I don't see how this translates to voters.

I suppose you could find the number of registered voters of each caucus state, and use the proportion of delegates to estimate, but I don't think that would accurately reflect what would have happened in a primary, with who knows what turnout.

In any case, we don't pick a nominee on popular vote, to it's pretty much a moot point.

PS link not active.

[bigtree]

45. that looks like a movement to me

....fueled primarily by a lopsided turnout of black voters.