Wednesday, April 23, 2008

the tide is turning



Hillary has now pulled ahead in the popular vote.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That statement that Clinton is ahead in the popular vote is a little disingenous, because it assumes Obama received zero votes in Michigan. What portion of the 238,000 uncommitted votes in that state would have actually gone for Obama if his name had been on the ballot?

Bradley said...

Obama had the opportunity to have his name on the ballot but chose not to participate. We can re-do the election if he wants to participate now. With all the votes counted, this is how it stands.

Anonymous said...

Still misleading. Florida and Michigan were flawed because there was no motivation to get out and vote - with rational voters knowing it would not count. I would like to see a re-do there.

Big Tex said...

Clinton's assertion that she is ahead in the popular vote is more than just a little disingenuous. First of all, Obama chose not to put his name on the ballot in Michigan out of respect for the party's rules. And the popular vote doesn't actually count for anything in the nominating process, it's just being used as a piece of supporting evidence to indicate the will of Democratic voters. For the Clinton campaign to make an argument that the popular vote shows Hillary as the preference of a majority in the party, when they're including a state where countless thousands of voters weren't able to express their preference for Obama, is flat-out dishonest.

Secondly, Obama wasn't able to implement his ground game in Florida, which would have certainly made a difference in the vote total there. There's certainly a stronger argument for including Florida in the popular vote, because both candidates were at least theoretically on equal footing there by not being able to campaign. But Clinton obviously benefitted from familiarity and name recognition, which Obama might have been able to counter had he been able to campaign there. History shows that when Obama spends time in a state, his numbers go up and Hillary's go down.

And the popular vote total also doesn't include votes that were cast in states that held caucuses - if it did, Obama would have a much wider lead than he already does. In any honest rendering of the popular vote, Hillary would be behind.

Bradley said...

No Big Tex, check again. Including the caucus states and Florida/Michigan, Hillary would still be up in the popular vote by about 15,000 votes. Not including caucus states, it's more like 100,000.

You can choose not to count Florida and Michigan in the primary, but guess what? They will be counted in the general. There are real people there that deserve their voice heard.

Bradley said...

Anonymous, I disagree that there wasn't a motivation. 2 million people voted in Florida, that's unmotivated? Michigan I can understand, but there was certainly a big campaign there to get Obama voters to choose "uncommitted" which garnered a respectable 40% of the vote. It was Obama's choice to take his name off the ballot.