If Clinton Is So Sure She Will Win, Why Does She Need To Mislead Us About The Popular Vote?

[Baobab]

"Since the story from New York Daily News writer Shaun King came out on Thursday, there has been a big hullabaloo about what a difference adding the caucus results into the popular vote would make. Estimates have been made by the Washington Post and others, and they consistently show that it is indeed true that Clinton's 3 million number is a misrepresentation of the true will of the people.

If Clinton is so sure that she will be the nominee, why then, does she continue to lie to the people? Ring of Fire's Sydney Robinson discusses this."

[Tarc]

1. Perhaps because King is full of shit? Sanders' #2 shill, only trailing HA Goodman for hilarity

3,033,284.

Reality.

[Baobab]

2. Your criticism?

why?

arent you supposed to explain why?

[Tarc]

3. 3,033,824 votes, 272 pledged delegates

Deal with that reality, Sanders camp.

[Baobab]

5. Obviously you didnt read the story or even watch the (very short) video eh?

The whole point is that caucus states were "votes" too and if you apply the percentages in caucus states to the total as votes then your claimed "popular vote lead" vanishes, my friend.

Grow up.

[B Calm]

7. +1 Now all you'll hear is crickets.

[Baobab]

8. Re-evaluating the video. Does anybody know where there is a description of who votes in caucuses in

each state, who decides who goes and who votes?

[moriah]

11. And the one caucus state to hold a "beauty contest" primary...

... got double the participation of the real caucus and, had it been binding, Hillary would have won it. Of course, just like MI and FL in 2008, because it wasn't *the* primary and not all people cared about it if it wasn't going to count, the results (except for numbers) are difficult to extrapolate.

As I said, the results are hard to extrapolate, but it's more than possible caucus-goers do NOT represent the left-leaning general population of their state accurately. In NV strip workers were given time off, but a McDonald's worker isn't going to get second shift off caucus night easily, especially if everyone wants to go.

[ContinentalOp]

14. I didn't read the story because you didn't link to it.

I watched the video and it was pure spin devoid of any actual numbers or facts. Bernie's big 72% win in the WA caucus only accounts for a 104,871 vote lead, and that's by far the biggest. The caucus votes barely make a dent in Clinton's lead. Maybe it's only a 2.9 or 2.8 million vote lead instead of 3 million.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511949686

[Tarc]

19. Aww, someone needs a widdle bit of help, don't they?

The amount that Sanders nets (net vs gross, not a difficulty concept) from caucus participation is negligible; a few tens of thousands, maybe at most 100k.

3 million, give or take a quibble, voters have chosen Hillary Clinton over Bernard Sanders. The sooner that you step up out of denial, the better.

[KingFlorez]

12. Considering the fact the he has been in a Rachel Dolezal type of situation

I don't know why anyone would even take this clown seriously.

[Waiting For Everyman]

4. They throw that number around as if we don't all realize it's horseshit.

Nobody's interested in debating nonsense with a bunch of unreasonable closed-minded hyper-partisans. That doesn't make them right. We all (most of us) know this, but they don't.

[Attorney in Texas]

6. She cannot help herself. She used the same lie in 2008 (Obama, like Sanders, won many caucuses

because his support was based on high-information voters with genuine enthusiasm and not so heavily dependent on name identification like Hillary in 2008 and 2016) when she discounted Obama's voters by forgetting to count caucus states where she got her ass handed to her.

[ContinentalOp]

9. Last I checked, Sanders' total lead in the Caucuses was about 200k votes.

So she's only winning by 2.8 million. Congrats.

[JaneyVee]

10. THREE MILLION VOTES

[PufPuf23]

13. Clinton's nature is to present by deception.

Habit plus the campaign consultants she prefers to hire.

The political competition is more a game to her than most pols.

[Corporate666]

15. You're wrong. Shaun King's mistake is so glaringly obvious a child could spot it

He takes the percentage of the caucus results that went to Bernie, then extrapolates that to the whole state population. Except the ~3 million votes Hillary is ahead by isn't the sum total of ALL the population in each state that supports her vs the same sum total for Bernie. It is the sum total only of the people that actually turned out to vote.

So the correct method would be to use the number of people who turned out for the caucuses and then take the percentage that HRC/BS got and calculate a number of people they got in each state.

Thankfully that has been done.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/06/is-hillary-clinton-really-ahead-of-bernie-sanders-by-2-5-million-votes/

The latest update is May 19th and includes the KY/OR results. And Clinton leads by 2.9 million votes. The total gain by Sanders when considering caucus votes is 130,000. About 3% of the amount Clinton is ahead by.

A far cry from the claims of your post that her entire 3 million vote lead disappear.


Furthermore, your paragraph says "Estimates have been made by the Washington Post and others, and they consistently show that it is indeed true that Clinton's 3 million number is a misrepresentation of the true will of the people"

That is a lie. The Washington Post story I linked to above specifically DIScredits King's story - their conclusion is that King is full of shit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/19/yes-hillary-clinton-is-winning-the-popular-vote-by-a-wide-margin/

One wonders why you would view such an obviously biased video that is full of bold claims and not even do the most cursory amount of research before posting it as fact, when it is so easily debunked?

[sadoldgirl]

16. That is nonsense, and you should know it.

The caucus voters represent the party as a whole, even
though many did not go to it.

Thus, just counting "individual votes" is utterly
ridiculous, especially in every state.

Think about it this way: my state with a closed
caucus went to Bernie; did the votes for O'Malley
count? No, but they were there. Thus claiming that
only caucus participants' votes count is really
grasping at straws.

[Corporate666]

17. Ok, so Clinton is leading Sanders by a LOT MORE than 3 million votes then, by your logic

You can pick your viewpoint either...

1) The percentage of people who show up for voting represent the feelings of the public as a whole, and you can extrapolate the support for a candidate to the whole state's population

OR

2) You can't know what the people who didn't vote would have voted for, so you can only count the people who actually showed up to vote.


If you are a proponent of #1, then Clinton is ahead of Sanders by the equivalent of tens of millions of votes.

If you are a proponent of #2, then Clinton is ahead by 2.9 million votes, and counting.


It sounds like you're trying to create an alternate reality 3rd option where caucuses that Bernie won can have the winning percentage extrapolated to the whole state, but caucuses where Hillary won can't be extrapolated to the whole state. Which is obviously loony.

[Baobab]

21. thank you, do you know where there is some single description of how the caucus voters are decided

to be honest with you I have never lived in a caucus state and i have no real knowledge of how caucuses are determined.

Do you know of some reference to how they do this? i am fairly statistically literate if I had some detailed description of what is done..

[Gothmog]

18. Shaun King's analysis is simply false and sad

Shaun King's analysis is simply wrong https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/19/yes-hillary-clinton-is-winning-the-popular-vote-by-a-wide-margin/

The idea that the popular vote totals are flawed because caucuses aren't included has been floating around for a while. The point of questioning the sum is obvious: To question the extent to which Democratic voters (and independents voting in Democratic contests, who usually favor Sanders) have preferred Clinton as the party's nominee.

This has been floating around so long, in fact, The Post's fact-checkers looked at this issue at the beginning of April. Did Clinton at that point actually lead by 2.5 million votes, as she claimed? No, she didn't.

She led by 2.4 million votes.

The Post's Glenn Kessler arrived at that figure by taking estimates of how many people came out to vote in caucus contests and applying the final vote margin to that population. This is admittedly imprecise, as King notes, since in some caucuses (like Iowa's) voter preferences can and do change. Kessler's total included Washington, despite King's insistence -- and in Washington, he figured that Sanders had the support of 167,201 voters to Clinton's 62,330. Despite that, still a 2.4 million advantage for Clinton.

It's worth noting that caucuses, for which it's harder to calculate vote totals, are usually in smaller states and/or have smaller turnout. King's concern about ensuring Alaska's huge Democratic voting base is included in the tally is answered by Kessler's math.

What's more, Kessler continued updating his tally as results came in. The most recent update was after the contests on April 27, at which point her wins in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Northeastern states had extended her lead to "just over 3 million votes" -- including his estimates for the caucuses. (By my tabulation of Kessler's numbers, it's 3.03 million.)

Since then, there have been five contests.

Indiana. Sanders won with 32,152 more votes.
Guam. Clinton won with 249 more votes.
West Virginia. Sanders won with 30,509 more votes.
Kentucky. Clinton won with 1,924 more votes (per the latest AP count).
Oregon. Sanders won with 69,007 more votes (per AP).

In total, then, Clinton's lead over Sanders in the popular vote is 2.9 million. The difference isn't because the total excludes Washington. It's because it includes more recent contests from the past 14 days.

That number will continue to change. There are only two big states left -- New Jersey and California -- both of which vote June 7. Clinton leads by a wide margin in New Jersey, where more than a million people turned out in 2008. She has a smaller lead in California, where about 5 million voted in the Democratic primary eight years ago. For Sanders to pass Clinton in the popular vote, he would need turnout like 2008 in California -- and to win by 57 points.

The analysis in the OP is simply false

[Vote2016]

20. Same reason she lied about the Bosnian sniper fire. She believes she lives beyond the truth.