The Numbers
A Run at the Latest Data from ABC's Poobah of Polling, Gary Langer
Gary Langer is director of polling at ABC News, where he's covered the beat of public opinion for nearly 20 years - conducting and analyzing ABC News polls, evaluating data from other sources and setting the news division's standards for poll reporting. Langer is a two-time Emmy award winner, both for ABC's reporting of public opinion polls in Iraq.
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Dicing the Democratic Vote
June 01, 2008 9:11 PM
Hillary Clinton is still contending that she's ahead in the Democratic popular vote, repeating that claim Sunday in a TV ad airing in Montana and South Dakota. But figuring in the DNC's weekend machinations, there are reasonable arguments to the contrary.
As I've been reporting the last few weeks, it's a real challenge to compute a sensible Democratic vote total. But in four ways we've figured it, Clinton leads in just one – awarding her all her votes in Michigan and giving zero there to Barack Obama, who stayed off the Michigan ballot to respect a DNC dispute with the state party.
One bit's easy: Puerto Rico. With all precincts reporting from Sunday's primary there, Clinton won by 141,662 votes. We've added that to the tally below.
A continued problem is what to do with the five state caucuses that didn't bother to tally votes; I've previously proposed a way to handle that (see here for details). I've gone on to propose tallies including Michigan and Florida (where the candidates didn’t campaign, in another DNC/state party kerfuffle), including only Florida, and excluding both.
The DNC's Rules Committee's work this weekend offers another option. It seems fair now to use the popular vote in Florida, since the DNC is seating all that state's delegates (albeit at a half-vote each). The question is Michigan – and given the DNC's action there's an argument now for awarding the uncommitted vote there to Obama.
That's because the Rules Committee gave Clinton 54 percent and Obama 46 percent of the Michigan delegates. Obama didn't actually get any votes in Michigan, but the delegate award suggests that the DNC is allocating the uncommitteds to him (albeit not exactly on a 1-1 basis). The vote in Michigan was 55 percent for Clinton, 40 percent for uncommitted and 5 percent for other candidates. So we've run another calculation below giving the uncommitted vote, 40 percent of Michigan's total, to Obama. That nets him just over 238,000, well, "votes."
It's worth noting that the Rules Committee also didn't allocate delegates to vote totals on precisely a 1-1 basis in Florida (there's a 15-percent threshold to qualify for delegates). There it gave 57 percent of the delegates to Clinton, 36 percent to Obama and 7 percent to John Edwards. The actual popular vote was 50-33-14 percent. Since we're using votes cast rather than votes apportioned by delegate allocations in Michigan, and wherever else possible, we'll stick with that approach in Florida.
As noted, in three of the four scenarios below, we find Obama leading in the popular vote, or "vote," even with Clinton's Puerto Rico blowout. Only in one – counting all her Michigan votes, and zero there for Obama – does she come out on top.
None of this, though, is the final word. As discussed previously, we've done at least a few things here with which reasonable people can disagree. In Washington, where no caucus count at all is available, we've used results of the separate, non-binding beauty contest primary. In Nebraska, where a caucus count is available, we did not include that state's beauty contest primary.
Toughest is Texas, where we've counted both the primary and an estimate of the vote in the state's caucuses, since these separate events both awarded delegates. But admittedly there's a double count there, since you had to vote in the Texas primary to attend a caucus. Take the Texas caucuses out of the equation and Obama loses around 108,000 votes (by our admittedly rough estimate – again see here), moving Clinton slightly ahead, even with 40 percent of Michigan going to Obama.
At the end of the day, what we really learn from all this is that the popular vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses has been darned close – so close that, with the klugey nature of the vote count, for anyone to claim a clear and convincing lead in the total vote is a dicey proposition at best.
With FL vote and With FL vote and
MI uncommited to Obama MI zero to Obama
Obama 18,551,043 18,312,875
Clinton 18,485,290 18,485,290Ob +65,753 Cl +172,415
Without With FL,
MI and FL Without MI
Obama 17,736,661 18,312,875
Clinton 17,285,995 18,156,981Ob +450,666 Ob +155,894
June 1, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (53)
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Can't compare apple to oranges. No one can agree as to who has what. It is a useless exercise, Caucus States, primary states, beauty pageant state, one candidate state.
It is up to the supers now and they are not looking at this by popular vote anyway. They, if anyone, can tell what all this means.
Obama08
Posted by: Thinking | Jun 1, 2008 9:34:07 PM
Hillary does NOT have the highest popular vote total.
She as always is using "Hillary math" instead of true math.
Posted by: Stacey | Jun 1, 2008 9:45:48 PM
If BO is the presumptive nominee and has been so since NC, why is he losing KY,WV and now PR by blowout margins? Why are the Democratic votes voting for HRC in large numbers? Shouldn't he be sewing it all up like McCain did for weeks? Why was the KY and WV white blue collar Reagan Democrat voters even more harsh in their rejection of BO comapred to OH? While PR does not vote in Nov, it indicates that HRC will carry lationo votes while BO will lose them to JM. Why on earth is the Democratic party chosing the best winning moment since Nixon to nominate BO who simply cannot win over key sections of the voters who are going to determine our next President?
Posted by: Warren5678 | Jun 1, 2008 9:50:34 PM
Who cares about the popular vote any way. It is hard to determine since there were many caucuses which don't count in the overall popular vote total.
I think that this is a useless exercise.
Posted by: Stacey | Jun 1, 2008 9:55:14 PM
How can you explain the following.
In Texas:
a 4 point win of Hillary in primary is turned to 12 point loss in caucus
In Washington:
a 6 point win of BO in primary is turned into is boosted to 37 points loss in caucus.
Using caucus winning margin to boost BO's popularity vote counts is insane. Your Maths is at fault.
Posted by: John_Lai | Jun 1, 2008 9:58:46 PM
She wishes..........wow glad she is not doing my check book must be why she is so far indebt....
Posted by: older person | Jun 1, 2008 9:59:50 PM
Problem is, the DNC did sanction the michigan and florida vote. Its official now.
So tap dancing around it is useless.
The only measure where Obama is ahead is where they allocate Obama ALL the uncommited vote.
This isnt possible.
Some would have gone to Richardson, and a noticable chuck would have gone to Edwards.
Obama took his name off the ballot, so the fact you are giving him any votes at all is stupid .
But for arguements sake, giving Clinton 55% of the vote, Obama 28% of the vote, Edwards 15% of the vote and Richardson 2% of the vote seems like the most likely scenerio.
See, the whole point to this article is FORCE the popular vote onto Obama so that there is no CONTROVERSY.
but the fact is plain and simple. More people voted for Clinton.
If Obama left his name on the ballot in michigan, he could have won the popular vote, but he didnt. Plain and simple.
Posted by: cgeast | Jun 1, 2008 10:00:20 PM
The Obama camp will try to keep the popular vote waters muddy since confusion on the popular vote favors their candidate. So even if you say it was a dead heat on the popular vote ( I think Clinton is ahead in that category):
1) she has a commanding electoral college lead;
2) she beat Obama in all the key states Dems must win;
3) she has the momentum and he is sinking and will continue to sink;
4) he has shown an inability to connect with the working class heart of the Dem base; and
5) his connections to Wright, Pfleger, Ayers etc. are like an open wound on his candidacy that he will not be able to heal.
Posted by: hopesprings52 | Jun 1, 2008 10:01:35 PM
Who said math was dull? Thanks for so brilliantly illustrating how any attempt to do a popular vote count requires more creative than mathematical skills.
A few quotes:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton's assertions that she leads Barack Obama in the popular vote are a stretch, at best."
(Associated Press, May 15, 2008)
"The debt-strapped Clinton campaign is appealing for money with an e-mail telling potential donors that polls "consistently" show she would beat McCain in November, and that she's leading Obama in the popular vote. We find both claims are misleading."
(Factcheck.org, May 30, 2008)
"The popular vote isn’t as pure a number as people think. For all the biases of the Democrats’ pledged-delegate selection system—proportional allocation, caucus math, open vs. closed voting—the popular vote has its own inadequacies. Namely, it understates Obama’s success in caucus states."
(Slate.com, March 12, 2008)
"Here is a little known fact (..) The networks exit polled Michigan voters as they left the polls on January 15 and asked whom they would have voted for had Edwards and Obama been on the ballot. The results, as published by CNN kill the Clintons' argument.(..)
The results? Clinton 46, Obama 35, Edwards 12.
That's an eleven point margin for Hillary, out of 595,000 total votes cast, or a 65,450 vote margin. She and her supporters are therefore overstating her margin by 262,589 votes."
(Slate.com, March 12, 2008)
There is no way to do a reliable popular vote count. Period.
Posted by: El_Pajaro | Jun 1, 2008 10:04:03 PM
If Clinton would have campaigned in the caucus states, run a better campaign in general, raised more money, had more delegates, etc she would have won. The difference in popular vote is minuscule. So the superdelegates will decide as everyone figured they would.
Posted by: MIguy | Jun 1, 2008 10:06:58 PM
Cnn already did the popular vote total today.
They even calculated estimates from other caucus states popular vote turnout and added them to Obama's totals.
Clinton beats him in all the votes , except where they allocat Obama ALL the uncommited votes in michigan.
They are already giving Obama delegates in a state where his name wasnt on the ballot, which of course has never happened in the history of american voting.
now he wants popular vote too?
The uncommited were voting for Obama richardson and Edwards.
Obama cant claim they were all his.
So the bottom line is this is Obama's fault for taking his name off the ballot.
He may well have edged clinton out in popular vote if he had left his name on there, but he didnt.
So officially, Clinton wins the popular vote.
Posted by: cgeast | Jun 1, 2008 10:15:12 PM
If BO is the presumptive nominee and has been so since NC, why is he losing KY,WV and now PR by blowout margins? Why are the Democratic votes voting for HRC in large numbers? Shouldn't he be sewing it all up like McCain did for weeks? Why was the KY and WV white blue collar Reagan Democrat voters even more harsh in their rejection of BO comapred to OH? While PR does not vote in Nov, it indicates that HRC will carry lationo votes while BO will lose them to JM. Why on earth is the Democratic party chosing the best winning moment since Nixon to nominate BO who simply cannot win over key sections of the voters who are going to determine our next President?
Posted by: Warren5678 | Jun 1, 2008 10:22:24 PM
With FL vote and
MI zero to Obama
Obama 18,312,875(-TX)
Clinton 18,485,290(-TX)
Clinton plus 108,000+172,415 (No double counting TX)
More than 17 million people have cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, more votes than any candidate has received in the history of the Democratic Party during primaries.
MORE THAN 17 MILLION REASONS TO TAKE THE FIGHT ALL THE WAY TO DENVER!!!
Posted by: Angel | Jun 1, 2008 10:24:41 PM
The winning margin at caucus states are wrong because they boost up the winning margin unrealistically.
We should go back to one person one vote; the primary system.
Then Hillary's winning margin is by landslides.
In Washington, the winning margin of BO in caucus boost the actual one by more than 6 times.
In Texas, it even disguises the truth that Hillary win by 4 points;
No vote should be more equal than the other. We are not living in Animal Farm.
Posted by: John_Lai | Jun 1, 2008 10:24:51 PM
The Democratic nomination is to be decided based on delegates -- not popular vote. Those are the rules. HRC should not have had her name on the Michigan ballot in the first place. Obama and the DNC compromised in awarding the FL and MI delegates to HRC in the spirit of ending these controversies and seating delegations from both critical states. These compromises, which Obama could afford because he is decisively ahead, should not be used to try to wrest the nomination away from him at the last minute. If HRC thinks she can take the nomination away from Obama at this point and still win the presidency, she's badly mistaken. Pursuing the fight in this way is damaging any remaining shred of integrity HRC may still have.
Posted by: Jerry | Jun 1, 2008 10:26:06 PM
TODAY’S RASMUSSEN
McCain 47% Hillary 44%
McCain 46% Obama 45%
Hillary is not running as well as Obama against McCain in the national polls.
All the electability crap is nonsense.
Both candidates are statistically tied with McCain right now.
Polls mean jack this far from the GE. Electoral guessing maps are also meaningless. No one knows how people will vote six months from now. The ‘experts’ have no idea what will occur during a six moth campaign.
Posted by: SAME STUFF, DIFFERENT DAY | Jun 1, 2008 10:26:15 PM
There is no question that both candidates have had a lot of people for them. The race, though, wasn't for votes but delegates. Senator Clinton needs about 90% of the remaining superdelegates. Seems unlikely to me that she'll get that, but if I were that close (especially going up against a Republican candidate saddled with Bush's negatives) I would wait until the opponent was over the top before giving up.
Posted by: MIguy | Jun 1, 2008 10:27:17 PM
There have been a comedy of errors.
-Obama taking his name off the ballot so his supporters in Michigan couldnt even show their support.
-Clinton winning the nevada caucus by 6% , and Obama getting one more delegate
-Clinton winning the texas primary by 4% , then somehow the voters got to vote TWICE , and further astonishing the same voters caucused to a 10% obama win.
How does Clinton win a 4% primary then LOSE by 10% in a caucus later on the SAME NIGHT with the SAME VOTERS.
They need to do something about these idiot methods of determining delegates.
Posted by: cgeast | Jun 1, 2008 10:28:49 PM
There have been a comedy of errors.
-Obama taking his name off the ballot so his supporters in Michigan couldnt even show their support.
-Clinton winning the nevada caucus by 6% , and Obama getting one more delegate
-Clinton winning the texas primary by 4% , then somehow the voters got to vote TWICE , and further astonishing the same voters caucused to a 10% obama win.
How does Clinton win a 4% primary then LOSE by 10% in a caucus later on the SAME NIGHT with the SAME VOTERS.
They need to do something about these idiot methods of determining delegates.
Posted by: cgeast | Jun 1, 2008 10:29:16 PM
Angel, you suggest no one in MI would have voted for Obama. While you may want to believe Hillary has Detriot all locked up, we know better don't we.
There are four ways to count the popular vote. Hillary is winning in only one. Anyway, it's all about delegtes now.
----------------------------
"I intend to campaign hard through February. As you know, it’s the DELEGATES who determine our nominee. I believe I will have the majority of pledged delegate by the end of the races in February"
-Hillary Clinton Dec '07
“You don’t hear us whining about the press”
- Bill Clinton in PA ‘08
Posted by: SAME STUFF, DIFFERENT DAY | Jun 1, 2008 10:32:24 PM
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