Let the people decide the nominee? Hillary is up 678,000 Democratic votes in the popular vote total.

Karmadillo

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Sun Feb-17-08 08:50 PM
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Let the people decide the nominee? Hillary is up 678,000 Democratic votes in the popular vote total.

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27036

Count WHOSE Vote?
guest post by Paul Lukasiak

Based on exit polls, among the approximately 16.3 million people who identified themselves as Democrats, over 678,000 more voted for Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama. If we�re going to �let the people decide" who the Democratic nominee would be, shouldn�t we be basing that on the will of Democrats themselves?

The latest meme from the Barack Obama camp (and one that is being heavily promoted by the media), is that super-delegates should comply with �the will of the people� as reflected in the popular vote count. But this was hardly even mentioned until the week after Super Tuesday, when Obama took the lead in total votes cast in the primaries.

In fact, on Super Tuesday, 295,952 more primary voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton than for Obama, yet somehow neither the Obama campaign, nor the media, was paying much attention to Clinton�s lead in the popular vote. If we include all the states that held primaries before Super Tuesday (NH, SC, MI, FL) Clinton was up by 468,024 votes�that was 2.51% of the total votes cast. But talking about that number was not a media priority either.

Only now that Obama has a miniscule lead of 128,736 in the number of votes cast (and that includes assigning all the �uncommitted� votes in Michigan to Obama) has the media focused on total votes cast. This lead represents less than 1% (0.62%) of votes cast in the primary elections held so far, yet it is trumpeted by the media endlessly.

But, since this is actually the Democratic primary, perhaps we should look at how Democrats have actually voted. Based on the available exit polling data, we find that Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead over Barack Obama in the number of votes � As of February 16, 2008, 391,992 more Democrats voted for Clinton than Obama.

That number does not include results from the District of Columbia, because of a lack of exit polling data. If we include DC, and assume that 100% of the voters were Democrats, Clinton still has a lead among Democrats of 333,981 votes.

But that number also doesn�t include Florida. Add in Florida�s Democrats, and Clinton�s lead advantage increases to 565,684. Nor does it include Michigan; and even if we assign all the Democrats who voted �uncommitted� to Obama, Clinton�s lead among Democratic voters grows to 678,276.

In terms of actual Democratic voters, the numbers from Super Tuesday are astonishing � and were, of course, ignored by the media. Out of over 12,100,000 votes cast by Democrats that day, Clinton beat Obama by nearly 7%, and just short of 837,000 votes. And if we include all the primaries that took place before Super Tuesday (NH, SC, MI, FL) the Clinton advantage among Democrats rises to 7.5%, and well over a million votes.

As Democrats, it is our votes that should be the determining factor in a close race. We�re the voters that the party can depend on, and ignoring the will of Democratic voters can lead to Democratic voters ignoring the will of the party.

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