Hillary on track to win the popular vote overall
Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics has a spreadsheet showing how Hillary could end the primary season with the lead in the popular vote. The three key contests are West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. The spreadsheet is interactive, so you can play with the numbers to test various results.
Last night Hillary out-performed the prediction for West Virginia, taking 41% of the vote (which also had higher turnout than predicted) for a net of 147,328 votes.
If she goes on to perform as predicted in Kentucky and Puerto Rico, she’ll end this race with an easy majority in the total popular vote. That’s assuming you count Florida, though you can leave Michigan out.
And yet the media has collectively decided that the race is over, nothing to see here, move along. It’s astonishing. It’s the most blatant example of journalistic manipulation I’ve ever seen.
Consider if Hillary and Obama’s situations were reversed. Can you really imagine the national media ignoring the guy like this? Ignoring the fact that the two candidates are neck and neck, that the guy has just won a primary in a swing state by more than 40%, that 17 million people across the country have voted for him? Can you imagine the media simply yawning and saying, “geez, when is this chump gonna drop out?”
Edited to add: I forgot to point out that Hillary is ahead in the popular vote now, using the same metric as we did after Pennsylvania:
4 Responses to “Hillary on track to win the popular vote overall”
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Jeff says:
I’m playing around with the numbers, and the only scenario in this spreadsheet where I see where Clinton comes out ahead in the popular vote is if one excludes caucus votes. Is that right?
May 14th, 2008 at 3:33 pm EST -
Jeff says:
Doh. Scratch that. I’m a doofus.
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Bruce says:
But the popular vote doesn’t determine the nominee, just like it doesn’t determine the president, so I’m not quite sure why I should care who ultimately gets the most of them?
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Violet says:
Having the majority of the popular vote means she is the choice of most of the people who voted in the primaries. Delegate pledges aren’t mandated by law; they follow byzantine party rules.
