The Forgotten Claim

Last week Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become the next president of the United States. Obama's victory seemed to many (at least to many of his supporters) foreordained. But no one should forget that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fought tooth and nail in the Democratic primaries before Obama secured enough delegates to claim victory. Before Clinton conceded defeat, it seemed for a while that she might fight Obama all the way to the convention. Indeed, Clinton began intimating that she should be the nominee because she had (supposedly) won the popular vote during the primary season. Although it is the delegate count, rather than the popular vote count, that ultimately decides a presidential nomination, do Clinton's claims of having captured the popular vote hold water? No national news source, as far as I know, ever tackled this question.

There were 56 primaries, caucuses, and conventions in the Democratic Party's presidential nomination contest (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the ever-popular Democrats Abroad). In determining who captured the popular vote, Michigan stands as the biggest hurdle because Obama was not on the ballot. Fortunately, the media's exit polling included a query on voters' preference had all candidates appeared on the ballot. On that question, Senator Clinton led with 46%, Senator Obama had 35%, and John Edwards trailed with 12%. (Those numbers are very much consistent with the results from Florida, where Senator Clinton scored 50%, Senator Obama 33%, and Edwards 14%. One would expect Clinton to score slightly higher in the Hispanic-heavy Sunshine State and Edwards to benefit from his southern roots.) I feel it is fair to divide the Michigan vote according to the exit poll's result. It answers the Clinton campaign's call to count every vote, it acknowledges that she won the most votes in the state, and it awards many (but not all) "Uncommitted" ballots to Senator Obama. There were several other bookkeeping matters that required consideration. Three caucus states (Iowa, Nevada, and Maine) did not report popular vote totals. Again, media polling came to the rescue. Since Iowa and Nevada were very early on the calendar, there was a treasure trove of information on the voter's intentions as they entered the caucus sites. It is important to go with the entrance polls since weaker candidates are frequently eliminated from consideration and their supporters asked to realign with one of the leaders as the process unfolds. By the time Maine voted, it was a two-horse race and, therefore, no problem to apportion the vote. Washington state, Idaho, and Nebraska Democrats awarded delegates to the national convention through caucuses, but each state subsequently administered an advisory/nonbinding primary. Since more people participated in the primaries, I decided to use them instead of the caucus tallies. It would not be appropriate to use both since this would undoubtedly give some people two votes, which is an absolute no-no in my book. The Lone Star State used both a primary and a caucus to determine its delegation; only the primary was considered. Pundits referred to it as the "Texas Two-Step"; I said even worse things about it. At any rate, that is some of the procedural minutiae that allowed me to find my way in tallying the vote. Among the jurisdictions where the vote totals are absolutely certain, I have Senator Obama with 17.939 million and Senator Clinton with 17.873 million. For the guess-timate states, I have Senator Obama garnering roughly 83K from Iowa, 48K from Nevada, 26K from Maine, and 208K from Michigan. Senator Clinton counters with 65K from the Hawkeye State, 56K from the Silver State, 18K from the Pine Tree State, and 273K from the Wolverine State. By my calculation, that gives Senator Obama the victory by a final count of 18.304 million-18.285 million. Once he closed the deal in Indiana and North Carolina, Senator Obama pretty much left the field to his colleague from New York. She ran up huge margins in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. In short, Clinton did not entirely close the gap, but she came mighty close.