With news of Hillary's upcoming concession, or something equivalent, I thought I would attempt to dispel her continuing belief that she has won the popular vote. To start off, I'll illustrate the metric she is using and then move into a more thorough calculation. To begin, the table below shows the vote totals for each primary. Each race links to a government or party affiliated election results page that depicts the numbers used in this analysis. There are four races (American Somoa, Kansas, Virgin Islands, Hawaii) in which I could not find a government or party reported page detailing vote totals. For these states I cross checked results on numerous media sites to verify accuracy.
New Hampshire |
104815 |
112404 |
285040 |
-7589 |
Jan-8 |
Primary |
Michigan |
0 |
328309 |
328309 |
-328309 |
Jan-15 |
Primary |
South Carolina |
294898 |
140990 |
532151 |
153908 |
Jan-26 |
Primary |
Florida |
576214 |
870986 |
1749920 |
-294772 |
Jan-29 |
Primary |
Alabama |
300321 |
223096 |
536635 |
77225 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Alaska |
6674 |
2194 |
8880 |
4480 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Arizona |
193126 |
229501 |
456626 |
-36375 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Arkansas |
82476 |
220136 |
314234 |
-137660 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
California |
2093318 |
2524799 |
4882620 |
-431481 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Connecticut |
179742 |
165426 |
355561 |
14316 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Delaware |
50467 |
39984 |
96374 |
10483 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Georgia |
704247 |
330026 |
1060851 |
374221 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Illinois |
1318234 |
667930 |
2038614 |
650304 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Massachusetts |
511680 |
705185 |
1263764 |
-193505 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Missouri |
406917 |
395185 |
825050 |
11732 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
New Jersey |
501372 |
613500 |
1141199 |
-112128 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
New Mexico |
71396 |
73105 |
149779 |
-1709 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
New York |
751019 |
1068496 |
1862445 |
-317477 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Oklahoma |
130130 |
228480 |
414696 |
-98350 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Tennessee |
252874 |
336245 |
624764 |
-83371 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Utah |
74538 |
51333 |
428459 |
23205 |
Feb-5 |
Primary |
Louisiana |
220632 |
136925 |
384346 |
83707 |
Feb-9 |
Primary |
DC |
93386 |
29470 |
123994 |
63916 |
Feb-12 |
Primary |
Maryland |
532665 |
314211 |
878174 |
218454 |
Feb-12 |
Primary |
Virginia
|
627820 |
349766 |
986203 |
278054 |
Feb-12 |
Primary |
Wisconsin |
646851 |
453954 |
1113753 |
192897 |
Feb-19 |
Primary |
Ohio |
982489 |
1212362 |
2233156 |
-229873 |
Mar-4 |
Primary |
Rhode Island |
75316 |
108949 |
186439 |
-33633 |
Mar-4 |
Primary |
Texas |
1362476 |
1462734 |
2874986 |
-100258 |
Mar-4 |
Primary |
Vermont |
91901 |
59806 |
154960 |
32095 |
Mar-4 |
Primary |
Mississippi |
265502 |
159221 |
434110 |
106281 |
Mar-11 |
Primary |
Pennsylvania |
1046822 |
1260937 |
2307759 |
-214115 |
Apr-22 |
Primary |
Indiana |
632035 |
646233 |
1278268 |
-14198 |
May-6 |
Primary |
North Carolina |
887391 |
657669 |
1580726 |
229722 |
May-6 |
Primary |
West Virginia |
91663 |
239187 |
357031 |
-147524 |
May-13 |
Primary |
Kentucky |
209903 |
459210 |
700855 |
-249307 |
May-20 |
Primary |
Oregon |
372823 |
258438 |
636680 |
114385 |
May-20 |
Primary |
Puerto Rico |
121458 |
263120 |
387299 |
-141662 |
Jun-1 |
Primary |
Montana |
102544 |
75053 |
181906 |
27491 |
Jun-3 |
Primary |
South Dakota |
43576 |
54015 |
97591 |
-10439 |
Jun-3 |
Primary |
Hillary's Calculation |
17011711
|
17528570
|
36254207
|
-516859
|
|
|
+ Uncommited MI for Obama |
17249879 |
17528570 |
36492375 |
-278691 |
|
|
Totaling these numbers we are left with what the Clinton campaign is calling a decisive victory despite excluding 16 contests. Also notice that the 'uncommitted' votes from Michigan are not included in Obama's column. The Clinton campaign does not associate the 238,168 votes as Obama's because he electively chose to have his name removed from the ballot. At this juncture Clinton has a clear advantage but if I take into consideration the decision of the Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) pertaining to delegate allocation and apply it to raw votes a different result arises. Following their recommendation necessitates halving the votes of Florida and Michigan requiring a recalculation of primary contests.
1/2 Votes Michigan |
0 |
164154.5 |
164154.5 |
-164154.5 |
Jan-15 |
Primary |
1/2 Votes Florida |
288107 |
435493 |
874960 |
-147386 |
Jan-29 |
Primary |
RBC Total |
16723604 |
16928922.5 |
35348137 |
38612.5 |
|
|
Simply stunning; it appears that using the determination of the RBC gives Barack Obama the popular vote lead among primaries. As a sneak peak I'll just tell you that he accrues a significant lead in the "less important caucuses" ensuring a popular vote victory. At this point I'll digress and move onto the caucus numbers to see if Obama can dent Clinton's rather impressive lead using the full votes from Michigan and Florida.
American Somoa |
121 |
163 |
285 |
-42 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
Colorado |
80113 |
38839 |
120971 |
41274 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
Idaho |
16880 |
3655 |
21224 |
13225 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
Kansas |
27172 |
9462 |
36723 |
17710 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
Minnesota |
142109 |
68994 |
214066 |
73115 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
North Dakota |
11625 |
6948 |
19012 |
4677 |
Feb-5 |
Caucus |
Abroad |
15214 |
7501 |
23105 |
7713 |
Feb-5 |
Other |
Nebraska |
46279 |
43614 |
93757 |
2665 |
Feb-9 |
Caucus |
Virgin Islands |
1772 |
149 |
1970 |
1623 |
Feb-9 |
Other |
Hawaii |
28347 |
8835 |
37562 |
19512 |
Feb-19 |
Caucus |
Wyoming
|
5378 |
3311 |
8753 |
2067 |
Mar-8 |
Caucus |
Guam |
2264 |
2257 |
4521 |
7 |
May-3 |
Caucus |
Caucus Total |
377274 |
193728 |
581949 |
183546 |
|
|
The caucus results clearly show that Obama excelled in this style of election winning all contests but American Somoa in which only 285 people voted. If we add the result of these caucuses to the primary results we get the values shown below.
Hillary's + Caucuses |
17388985 |
17722298 |
36836156 |
-333313 |
|
|
+ Uncommited MI for Obama |
17627153 |
17722298 |
37074324 |
-95145 |
|
|
Here comes the hard part. At this point Hillary has a commanding lead but the four remaining contests (Iowa, Nevada, Washington, Maine) all of which Obama won, do not report or for that matter record individual votes. All calculations done from this point are estimates, but they attempt to include "the voice of all who voted," a rallying cry for the Clinton campaign in the closing days. This is probably redundant but it needs to be said, Hillary only cares about counting the votes when the votes in question favor her. To estimate the number of votes in each of the remaining four states I will calculate the ratio of votes per delegate using the primary and caucus results in which votes are reported. However, Texas still remains an issue. For this calculation we will assume that everybody who participated in the Texas caucus also participated in the primary. Crunching the numbers shows that 3,170.5 delegates correspond to 37,074,324 reported votes. A division yields 11,693.53 votes per delegate meaning that for every 11,693.53 people that voted for a given candidate, that candidate would be allocated 1 national delegate. Multiplying 11,693.53 by the number of delegates received in each state will yield our estimate; those estimates are shown in the table below. For Iowa the initial delegate allocation will be used because some delegates originally allocated to Edwards moved to Obama after the Edwards endorsement.
Iowa |
187096 |
163709 |
526209 |
23387 |
Jan-3 |
Caucus |
Nevada |
163709 |
128629 |
292338 |
35081 |
Jan-19 |
Caucus |
Washington |
619757 |
292338 |
912095 |
327419 |
Feb-9 |
Caucus |
Maine |
175403 |
105242 |
280645 |
70161 |
Feb-10 |
Caucus |
Estimates |
1145966 |
689918 |
2011287 |
456048 |
|
|
Obama makes up 450,000 votes in these four elections. Adding these totals to the previous totals we arrive at our results.
Total + Estimates |
18534951 |
18412216 |
38847443 |
122735 |
|
|
+ Uncommited MI for Obama |
18773119 |
18412216 |
39085611 |
360903 |
|
|
The final results show that no matter how Michigan and Florida are counted, just as long as all other contests are counted Obama wins the popular vote. If at this point Clinton still wants to dispute the estimates for the four remaining caucuses she only has razor thin margins to fall back on and any additional estimates will likely reveal identical conclusions; for example RealClearPolitics.com conducted a similar analysis and the final results were comparable.
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Hillary's Popular Vote Miscalculation
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