Activists were there, no doubt, but dominated? No, not at all.
Yep. That's why I looked for fuller quotes of what she actually said and posted it too.
And meanwhile New Mexico is counting. . . .and counting. . . .and counting. . . .
Hillary must have forgotten that she won the Nevada caucus.
Foxfyre wrote:And meanwhile New Mexico is counting. . . .and counting. . . .and counting. . . .
And in Washington state, the GOP is refusing to count ... and refusing to count ... and refusing to count ...
(Just teasin' ya :wink: )
The other question to ask is why is Hillary Clinton unable to energize activists of her own in caucus states?
If people wanted to strongly support Hillary, then they would have come out for her in those caucus states.
Can anyone help me figure out if Hillary's claim that she's leading the popular vote is true? I think I remembered reading earlier today that Obama is leading by about 200,000, but if so I can't find it back.
I did find this:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pRkCa8hgD4bOxFiEJIIx_YA
from a Daily Kos guy. It puts Obama at 7,831,328 and Hillary at 7,719,028, but seems to only go through Super Tuesday (so not including, for example, the weekend sweep) and I'm not sure how authoritative it is.
Meanwhile, I've been looking for some substantive articles that compare all the candidates on issues that we can all chew on. Feel free to add more if you find some. I will too. I'll admit upfront, I haven't read all of them yet. Am just plonking links at the moment.
Where the Candidates Stand on Crime and Death Penalty
Where the Candidates Stand on Immigration
Where the Candidates Stand on Environmental Issues
Where the Candidates Stand on Technology
sozobe wrote:Can anyone help me figure out if Hillary's claim that she's leading the popular vote is true? I think I remembered reading earlier today that Obama is leading by about 200,000, but if so I can't find it back.
In the Polls etc thread, three days ago:
nimh wrote:Butrflynet wrote:Just any fairly reputible place with a running tally will do.
The problem is, it's not really that simple. Because you have those caucuses, and for a number of caucuses - Iowa for one - they never registered the actual number of individual caucusers, or how many of them exactly caucused for each candidate in the first round or second round. All they registered is the number of
delegates allocated by each precinct to the state total.
So if you go to
the MSNBC Primary Results page, what you see is for most states the raw number of actual votes, but for Iowa and Nevada (and judging on the numbers Alaska too), only the number of delegates. So there's no way to get a complete total national tally of individual votes, I guess..
For what it's worth, I did just add up all the numbers on the MSNBC page (well, pasted it into Excel and had it calculate them) - so the number of votes in most states, and the number of delegates for the two or three others - and got this:
Including Michigan and Florida:
Code:
Obama 8,394,386 45.5%
Clinton 8,919,966 48.4%
Edwards 806,547 4.4%
Other/Uncomm 315,972 1.7%
18,436,871
Excluding Michigan and Florida:
Code:
Obama 7,825,345 48.4%
Clinton 7,734,607 47.8%
Edwards 557,943 3.5%
Other/Uncomm 50,286 0.3%
16,168,181
That was before this weekend though, so you have to add the results of Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and Maine.
Except, of course, some of those were caucuses, so you might not find actual vote tallies for those, but only tallies of the delegates chosen at caucus precincts.
Quote:Forget about all those news stories about record turnouts, often a factor of 2,3, hell, 10 times higher than in previous years.
I wonder how many people gave up and went home without casting their ballot....I mean leaving a scribbled note on a card stating who they wanted to vote for. I wonder if these cards were counted in any systematic way.
All the more reason why it would have been more inclusive and more democratic to hold a primary.
Per Chris Bowers at OpenLeft:
http://www.openleft.com/upload/Popular%20Vote_xls.pdf
1. Straight And Narrow Count
Popular votes plus state delegates, FL and MI not included
Obama: 8,119,171
Clinton: 7,916,422
2. Broadest Possible Count
Popular votes, plus Florida, plus estimated popular support in state delegate states, plus estimated Michigan results with Obama on ballot
Clinton: 9,233,213
Obama: 9,183,338
3. Best Obama Count
Popular votes plus estimated popular support in state delegate states
Obama: 8,394,947
Clinton: 8,109,228
4. Best Clinton Count
Popular votes plus state delegates plus Florida plus Michigan with zero for Obama
Clinton: 9,101,781
Obama: 8,688,212
Cycloptichorn
Lola wrote:All the more reason why it would have been more inclusive and more democratic to hold a primary.
Yes, totally -- primaries are better than caucuses. No argument there.
My point was rather that to pretend that the caucus voters were just "dominated by activists" is wrong.
And considering the enormous run on the polls this year, with tens of thousands of first-time caucusers swamping the normally formulaic events in each state, it's also belittling towards those masses of new (or newly engaged) Democratic voters.
Ah, thanks! I did see that but forgot, sorry.
I just opened the MSNBC page again from your link, here are the new totals:
Louisiana:
Obama 220,588
Clinton 136,959
Nebraska:
Obama 25,986
Clinton 12,396
Washington:
Obama 21,629
Clinton 9,992
Maine:
Obama 2,079
Clinton 1,396
That's 270,282 more for Obama and 160,743 for Clinton. Added to the previous (non-MI + FL) totals that makes 8,095,627 for Obama and 7,895,350 for Clinton.
That was useful, Cycloptichorn, thanks.
Ack, all these different numbers.
I won't say "Hillary is wrong when she claims the lead in the popular vote," too complicated. I think she's mostly wrong -- especially if she's including MI and FL -- but I won't say she's totally wrong 'cause it seems like the numbers can be crunched in a variety of ways.
sozobe wrote:That was useful, Cycloptichorn, thanks.
Ack, all these different numbers.
I won't say "Hillary is wrong when she claims the lead in the popular vote," too complicated. I think she's mostly wrong -- especially if she's including MI and FL -- but I won't say she's totally wrong 'cause it seems like the numbers can be crunched in a variety of ways.
Yep, that's why I've been trying to determine who is the final authority on the accounting of all these various numbers.
If we want to have any hope of beginning to reconcile this mess, we have to at least have some static numbers to work with as a foundation to build upon.
I printed out and started reading the DNC rules last night but fell asleep after a few pages. What I read so far seemed to leave it in the hands of the state democratic parties.
The problem with that is a large percentage of the voters for both Clinton and Obama are independents and crossover republicans so there isn't any advocacy representing their votes in the states' democratic party organizations.
If the trend continues with the two candidates being this close, neither is likely to have the necessary plurality/majority come convention time. So we'll have the dreaded brokered convention that could conceivably result in NEITHER Clinton nor Obama being the party's nominee. I'm not saying that is likely, but anything can happen in a brokered convention.
The Democratic Party would of course like to avoid that if there is any way possible. For the rest of us watching, they are great fun though.
CNN's Issues page, including abortion, economy, education, energy, free trade, guns, homeland security, housing, immigration, Middle East, social security, taxes, same-sex marriage, stem cell research
BBC News on US 2008 election candidates on issues of Iraq, Iran, national security, climate change, health care, illegal immigration, abortion, economy
The Candidates on Church and State
Where the presidential candidates stand on nuclear issues
Where the candidates stand on urban issues
Where the candidates stand on urban issues
Where the candidates stand on science issues
Foxfyre wrote:If the trend continues with the two candidates being this close, neither is likely to have the necessary plurality/majority come convention time. So we'll have the dreaded brokered convention that could conceivably result in NEITHER Clinton nor Obama being the party's nominee. I'm not saying that is likely, but anything can happen in a brokered convention.
The Democratic Party would of course like to avoid that if there is any way possible. For the rest of us watching, they are great fun though.
We still have the Edwards and Richardson delegates to throw into the mix. The Democrats aren't shooting blanks just yet.
From one of butterfly's links.
Obama
Supports extending the assault weapons ban. Supports national law against carrying concealed weapons, with exceptions for retired police and military personnel. Supports limiting gun sales to one per month. Watch Obama speak about guns
1 more reason not to vote for Obama (in bold).
