Dismiss Hillary's Popular Vote Argument

better yet, just dismiss her.
if only it were that easy. anyway, her camp is arguing popular vote! popular vote! and as we've already stated here, like her bogus "big states" argument, popular vote is also bogus because you can't get an accurate count for caucus turnouts and the missing michigan and florida. a reader did however come up with some numbers here using cnn's caucus numbers.
here's some analysis at newsweek:

Here's the math. To date, 41 of the 47 states or territories to hold primaries or caucuses have released precise, undisputed popular-vote totals. In this count, according to RealClear Politics, Obama leads Clinton by 501,138 votes (14,397,506 to 13,896,368). So far, so good. But what, you ask, about the remaining six states? That's where we get into trouble.

First, there's Florida. Despite warnings from the Democratic National Committee, the Sunshine State scheduled its primary before Feb. 5--and true to its word, the party stripped the state of its delegates. That said, we're not talking about delegates; we're talking about votes. In Florida, where both Obama and Clinton were on the ballot, Clinton won by 294,772 (870,986 to 576,214). It's an open question, of course, whether a primary in which both candidates refrained from campaigning should even count. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it should--which reduces Obama's popular-vote advantage to 206,366. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us much.

Next up is Florida's fellow gun-jumper, Michigan, where Clinton racked up 328,309 votes. Obama's total? Zero. That's because his name wasn't even listed on the ballot. On Jan. 19, Michiganders had two choices: Clinton or "uncommitted." And while "uncommitted" earned about 45 percent of the vote, it's impossible to determine what portion of that bloc backed Obama and what portion backed John Edwards, whose name was also absent. Ignoring the fact that Clinton herself said Michigan wouldn't "count for anything," this murkiness alone makes an overall popular-vote tally impractical: either you award all of the "uncommitted" votes to Obama, which would be grossly inaccurate; count Clinton's votes and leave Obama at zero, which would undoubtedly disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters; or don't include Michigan at all, which would disenfranchise even more, both pro-Clinton and pro-Obama.

That said, the worst is yet to come. The final four states--Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington--all held caucuses. But unlike Florida and Michigan, none of them even kept track of how many people voted for each candidate. (This is standard operating procedure in some caucuses, where delegates are awarded proportionally in thousands of precincts.) Wonks can devise equations to estimate the popular vote all they want, but mixing precise vote totals from other states with caucus approximations--which are, by definition, inaccurate--is mixing apples and oranges. Besides, thousands of voters in Iowa entered the caucuses intending to support Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich, but were forced to jump to Obama, Edwards or Clinton once their preferred candidate didn't reach the 15-percent viability threshold; in Nevada, the same thing happened to Edwards supporters. How can you possibly pretend to count people required to resort to their second choices?

The fact is, the Democratic Party has only one mechanism in place for deciding the nomination: delegates. The system is simply not equipped to produce an accurate tally of popular votes.

Debunking Clinton's Big States Argument

alas, this comes from the obama camp: Iowa Governor Chet Culver, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill just sent out this memo:

In an attempt to minimize the significance of Barack Obama’s success in winning more than twice as many states as Senator Clinton, her campaign’s supporters have attempted to diminish the importance of the states where Senator Obama has prevailed.

Senator Obama has scored important victories in each of our states – states that will play a decisive role in deciding whether or not John McCain will be given the chance to enter the White House and extend George Bush’s failed policies for another 4 years.

In each of the 30 primaries and caucuses that Obama has now won, including Mississippi yesterday, he’s shown the ability to motivate Democrats to turn out at the polls, win the support of blue collar voters in suburban and rural communities and attract the support of Independents and Republicans. That’s the kind of candidate Democrats need to nominate to beat John McCain in November, and it’s the kind of leader America needs to bring to Washington the kind of change we can believe in.

The Clinton campaign’s argument ignores relevant facts about how significant a role these states played in determining the outcome of the presidential race in 2004. In fact, Obama has won 7 of 9 of the biggest states that were close in the 2004 presidential election and have already selected delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention.

More than half of the votes that Senator Clinton has won so far have come from just five states. It’s also worth noting that polls in four of these five states show that Obama would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton.

Obama Winning Vast Majority of Big States that Were Close in 2004

Nine of the largest states that were decided by a margin of 8 points or less in 2004 have already held a caucus or a primary to select delegates to the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver. Obama has won seven of those nine contests – including four that Bush won.

Listed below is a chart ranking how closely the largest states were decided during the 2004 presidential election. see it here.

Clinton Totals Padded by States Where Obama Does Best Against McCain

The Clinton campaign’s misleading argument about the importance of her performance in the largest states actually highlights the limits of her appeal and her ability to win the general election.

To turn the Clinton argument around, more than 55% of her popular vote total and nearly half of her pledged delegates have come in just five states. In four of them, polls show that Obama would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton. In the fifth, Texas, Clinton admitted that she didn’t expect it to be “in the general election calculation.”

Listed below is a chart (see it here) outlining the votes and the pledged delegates Clinton collected in the five states as a percentage of the votes and delegates she’s collected in the 43 contests so far (not including Mississippi). The column on the far right highlights Obama’s general election strength in the general election in each of these states.
here's my spin on it: Bogus Big States Argument
Obama’s Pennsylvania Strategy
It’s Still Over for Clinton
Clinton’s Deliberate Race Baiting
Who Can Beat McCain?