Legal Commentary

Who's Winning the Popular Vote Total?

By Jeralyn

Both candidates agree the popular vote count will be an important factor for superdelegates to consider in deciding how to cast their vote. It's one of several, others being their view of the candidate's electability in November and the pledged delegate totals.

So, how many human beings have gone to the polls so far and cast votes for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

The popular vote total is the votes cast by individuals in state primaries. Caucus votes don't count in the popular vote total because they are counted in terms of delegates, not votes, and many states don't count the number of people attending caucuses. More on this below.

Sources and Methodology below:

• Real Clear Politics
• Washington Secretary of State

Methodology: Add WA primary votes to primary votes of other states, including FL and MI.

• On the popular vote total:

  Under Democratic rules, each vote isn't tallied at caucuses. The caucuses serve only to award delegates to go to a state convention (which then elects the national delegates). The results from caucus states reflect the number of convention delegates to the state convention won by each candidate.

• The Michigan uncommitted votes were not votes cast for Barack Obama. As Real Clear Politics states,

  ** Senator Obama was not on the Michigan Ballot and thus received zero votes. Uncommitted was on the ballot and received 238,168 votes as compared to 328,309 for Senator Clinton.
  

Bottom Line: Hillary and Obama each have 50% of the popular vote. They are separated by 130,000 votes. There are 10 states left with up to 12 million potential voters (pdf).

An estimated 12 million individuals are eligible to vote in the 10 remaining Democratic primaries or caucuses (Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana, South Dakota.) Together, these states and territories will have 566 elected pledged delegates and 124 superdelegates.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 05, 2008 (boomark / email).