General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: People voted for Obama because he was not like Hillary [View all]karynnj
(61,188 posts)The fact is that in all previous years - even when Bill Clinton ran - the media reported the DELEGATE TOTALS.
As I said, mathematically, you CAN sum the "votes" over states. However, it ignores the fact that each state determines its process. It is ridiculous that some states that had caucuses where there were no released numbers that could be used as "votes" would get none - yet PR, gets full credit for all of its.
If you wanted to sum the states, at least there should be weights applied to give each state a reasonable weight based on the number of Democrats in the state. This would make the estimates closer to the delegate count.
Check if you want, but "popular vote counts" were not mentioned until the Clinton team did less well than they assumed they would on SuperTuesday. That is when the idea of superdelegates supporting the "better" candidate shifting the lead -- and one justification was the "popular vote". (Consider that there would have been NO talk of giving the nomination to Obama if Clinton won the majority of pledged delegates.)