It is quite possible that Barack Obama could win the Democratic nomination based on his lead in pledged delegates, even though more voters in primaries and caucuses supported Hillary Clinton.
Texas is the latest state where Obama may win more delegates despite losing the popular vote (Nevada was another example.)
Also, Obama has gotten lots of extra delegates by running up the score in caucus states with comparatively low turnout compared to populous states such as Ohio, where Clinton won the popular vote by a wide margin.
Gordon Fischer writes at his blog, Iowa True Blue:
Matthews grills McAuliffe: The Founder of the Democratic Party [Thomas Jefferson] said that a victory by a single vote is as sacred as a unanimous vote. Do you agree? McAuliffe couldn’t and wouldn’t answer. Why? Because he supports the Clintons and their entire strategy is based, indeed must be based, on ignoring the elected, pledged delegates.
My question to Obama supporters is this: do you see any problem with nominating the candidate who won fewer votes in all of the caucuses and primaries?
Gordon ignores the possibility that the pledged delegate leader could be the candidate who has won fewer votes from real, live citizens.
By the way, if we were only counting Democratic voters, Hillary would be even further ahead of Obama. A strong case can be made that Democrats should select our nominee, rather than Republicans and Democrats-for-a-day.
10 Comments
Obama still leads in the popular vote
Here are the numbers from NBC…
DNC-Sanctioned Contests
Obama 12,920,961
Clinton 12,322,695
Including Florida
Obama 13,497,175
Clinton 13,193,681
Including Florida And Michigan
Clinton 13,521,832
Obama 13,497,175
Obama falls behind by less than 25,000 if you include Michigan where his name wasn’t even on the ballot.
So the answer to your question would be yes, we care about the popular vote. We also care about the pledged delegates won and the number of states won. All of each are in Obama’s favor.
Clinton’s only hope is a backroom deal at the convention.
noneed4thneed Wed 5 Mar 7:20 PM
I hope Obama does end up winning the popular vote
because it would be very bad for our party if he won the nomination despite losing the popular vote.
I support a reform that would ban caucuses for presidential selection, by the way. Primaries allow for broader participation and are clearly more democratic.
desmoinesdem Wed 5 Mar 8:29 PM
It's difficult to compare
caucus states and primary states. By their very nature, you get less “votes” from caucuses. But presumably one should not punish the states that have, for whatever reason, chosen caucuses. Thus, it seems to me that pledged delegates are the fairest way to go about this, as long as we have a mix of primaries and caucuses.
Related to this, does Iowa D’s publish actual “vote” totals from the caucus? I believe the party does not publicize the numbers for first preferences, but do they make the final total numbers public? (Sorry, I’m too lazy to google/research this. I’m assuming somenone here knows the answer.)
rf Wed 5 Mar 7:41 PM
I think the final numbers were released
with Obama getting around 90,000, Edwards around 74,000 and Clinton around 72,000–but I can’t remember where I saw those numbers.
desmoinesdem Wed 5 Mar 8:26 PM
Yes they care about the popular vote
They have to because of the very issues you have brought up in the past about winning delegates and losing the popular vote. However, their priority is winning the nomination. To do so they need the delegates not the popular vote. This is not just a question for Obama supporters. This is a question for everyone.
This question about “do we care if the candidate wins the nomination (or election) while losing the popular vote” is one that comes up again and again. The last two Presidential elections are the two biggest examples. The simple answer seems to be, if your candidate loses, you do care, and if your candidate wins, you don’t care. George Bush unfortunately still took office in 2001 and 2005 despite losing the popular vote and we still have the electoral college because none of the losers or their supporters were motivated enough to mobilize demand for an end to the electoral college.
drinksgreentea Thu 6 Mar 8:20 AM
On the flip side, does Hillary care about the delegates?
noneed4thneed Thu 6 Mar 9:17 AM
either candidate needs to rely on superdelegates
No one will get the needed majority on pledged delegates.
My point is that for Obama to win based on pledged delegates despite losing the popular vote would be akin to winning the electoral college while losing the nationwide popular vote. That’s the system we have, but it would cause a lot of people to question the legitimacy of his victory.
I hope that one candidate emerges as both the popular-vote leader and the pledged-delegate leader to avoid this problem.
In the future, it’s clear that we need to reform the nominating process.
desmoinesdem Thu 6 Mar 10:25 AM
also, I think there is a big problem
with a system that only awards Hillary a few extra delegates for a huge popular-vote win in Ohio, while Obama might get a bigger delegate lead from a big win in a low-turnout caucus.
desmoinesdem Thu 6 Mar 10:27 AM
Can we all just agree
that this system needs to be changed? Ya, I’m an Obama supporter who sees a huge problem with the fact that he got 5 more delegates (so far) out of Texas then Clinton. On the other hand I have a big problem that Clinton is trying to woo PLEDGED delegates and wants to pull this thing off with supers. Using Florida and Michigan in the popular counts is complete BS as Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan and Clinton conveniently changed her mind right before the Florida primary that it should count after all. As it stands Obama has a 3% edge over her in the popular count and thats whats important. Ya the system should be changed. There should be a complete overhaul, but lets not start whining about every problem with every damn state. I’m sick and tired of this primary season and its destroying the chances dems have in November. Lets stop this in-fighting and bitching about everything already and unite as a party… [/rant]
iowa-dem Sat 8 Mar 11:22 AM