ABC News Analysis: Even with FL and MI included Obama still leads Clinton

[sabra]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2008/05/counting-the-vo.html

Counting the Vote

In an interview with Charlie Gibson this week, Hillary Clinton contended that she's ahead in the popular vote – a critical claim in her last-ditch attempt to win over super delegates. The problem: It's arguably not so.

"Arguably" because there are myriad complications in trying to count votes in this nominating contest – and not just because of the disputed Michigan and Florida primaries. The other problem is that in a handful of Democratic caucuses votes simply weren't toted up. The "vote" totals being reported there aren’t votes at all, but initial delegate counts. Switch to an estimate of actual, human-being voters, and the story changes.

...

And that conclusion? Using these estimates of actual voters in the Iowa, Nevada, Maine, Washington and Texas caucuses, rather than the initial delegate counts, we get a net total Democratic vote to date of 17,607,152 for Obama and 17,504,742 for Clinton, an Obama lead of 102,410 votes – even with Michigan and Florida included.

The national vote count, of course, has nothing to do with winning the Democratic nomination under party rules - that's done by delegate counts. Clinton nonetheless has found her claim of an advantage in total vote a useful talking point. The problem: It doesn't quite add up.

[frylock]

1. ..