Someone thinks I should do something besides work this afternoon. So I’m taking a quick break.
A while back one of the front pagers posted a list of total votes by candidate. I went searching for those numbers because, while I have nothing against Bernie Sanders, and trust me I’d vote for him over anything the other side has to offer, I’m annoyed by the new outcry about delegate math.
Delegate math and super delegates have been this way for a while and suddenly crying that we need a change mid-stream because your candidate is behind (and I’m looking at certain Hillary people in 2008, too) doesn’t make for a strong argument for support of that candidate. IMO.
There seems to be an assumption that Bernie was winning the popular vote, so I went in search of answers. This was the source for both a CNN and NPR report. If anyone has a better source, I would love to see it because for my own peace of mind, I need a response to this new complaint.
The Green Papers – Democratic Convention
The Green Papers – Republican Convention
cleek
265 for Vermin Supreme!
that 6M difference in totals between Dems and GOP is troubling, though.
Betty Cracker
Hillary Clinton’s middle name is Diane? I was not aware of that.
PS: Nice mug!
TaMara (BHF)
And sorry about the screenshot size – that’s a big as I could make it on this site – click the links for full size documents.
dr. bloor
Baud! has a lot of fucking ground to make up. An ambassadorship might be a more realistic goal at this point.
TaMara (BHF)
@cleek: 538 did a piece on how primary turnout has little to no bearing on general election turnout for either side. It was interesting. I’d link to it, but I need to move the cat and get back to work. ;-)
Damien
Ugh, another thread about how Bernie supporters need to face reality. TaMara, Bernie is winning! He is winning in the most important way, too, despite what your “math” and “facts” and “votes” say; Bernie is winning the FUTURE. He’s making promises that young people like, and we will propel him to the nomination and then we will definitely, 100% show up on election day to make him president, which is the most important thing because Congress will follow along with the political revolution.
So quit trying to harsh my buzz with all this stuff about how Bernie is down by 2.5 million actual votes when that is obviously biased by primaries where old, disabled, shy and working people can participate. I saw THOUSANDS of people lining up for the caucuses, which obviously demonstrates passion and dedication beyond what Hilary’s supporters could muster up. And most of them weren’t even white in Hawaii!
And we have the little bird vote sewn up, too.
#feeltheBern
cleek
@TaMara (BHF):
this one, i assume : http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/primary-turnout-means-nothing-for-the-general-election/
can’t argue with that. i withdraw my concern!
NCSteve
@Betty Cracker: Seriously, with the Clintons, through no fault of their own, being the most TMI couple in the history of American politics, how can we not have known that before now?
Steeplejack
@cleek:
Republicans have more incentive to vote in the primary because there are (were) more candidates in contention. Anecdatum: I didn’t vote in the Virginia Democratic primary because Clinton had it locked up.
In November I will crawl over broken glass, if need be, to vote for whichever Democrat is the nominee and against whichever Republican monster seeks to open the seventh seal and unleash the apocalypse.
Alex.S
Bernie is not going to win the popular vote, even if he wins the pledged delegate vote.
This is because he received a lot of delegate wins from caucuses. Some caucuses don’t report the raw vote totals and are not set up to track them. And in general, caucuses have dramatically fewer voters — a quick comparison of two states would be Arkansas (200K voters in a Clinton win) vs Kansas (35K voters in a Sanders win). Close to the same number of delegates and total state population, but the total voters was very different.
Amir Khalid
@Damien:
Hmm. Probably snark, but hard to tell for sure. If snark, an excellent example.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: Even for Vermin Supreme? I dunno, that may be a bridge too far for me.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
This. I honestly don’t care which of the Democrats wins the primary, though the more fervent Berniebros are getting on my last nerve. I’m saving my energy for GOTV work for the general election.
jl
I surmise that Bernie got a little carried away in last week’s Young Turks interview and said some stuff he had to backpeddle in interviews on Sunday.
From what I understood from his interviews yesterday, his plan is IF he has a lead in pledged delegates going into the convention, then he will ask the superdelegates representing the caucus and primary states he won, to support his nomination in order to reflect the popular vote (or caucus results) of those states. And IF those superdelegates do that, then his delegate math works out and he has reasonable path to the nomination. I have no clue whether that is true or not. He hopes and dreams that other superdelegates will move over to him based on his (supposedly) superior electability, but didn’t go further than that yesterday.
So, I don’t think Sanders is asking for a rule change, just he plans to appeal to superdelegates, which seems to be me is an acceptable thing to do. I am not worried too much about it, since I seriously doubt Sanders will have enough pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses for it amount to anything at convention time. He will not have a lead in pledged delegates will lose the nomination very fair and square by any standard.
On the Young Turks, Sanders also presented what seemed like a ridiculously long list of demands he would make before supporting HRC. Sanders had to backpaddle on that too.
Anyway, I’d like a link or reference to who is making demands for rule changes. Is it coming from hacks in his campaign (if so, for shame Bernie, fix that right now), or from his overexcited supporters?
Disclosure: I’ve contributed some money to Sanders an have been a supporter of his campaign.
Amir Khalid
@Alex.S:
If Bernie can’t win the popular vote, or back up any claim that he did, his argument for getting superdelegates to switch to him goes poof.
TaMara (BHF)
@jl: Not anyone from Sander’s campaign. And I don’t think there is anything in what I wrote above that suggests that – but if there was, my apologies- it’s coming from supporters who are flooding my inbox, FB and Twitter feeds.
chopper
@NCSteve:
if she’s hiding her middle name, what else is she hiding from us?
Matt McIrvin
I wince a little at popular-vote comparisons in a primary campaign, because Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign constantly touted that she’d won the popular vote in the primaries as if this meant something.
Some states have caucuses and others have primaries, and while that’s the case there’s no way around it: the popular vote count will be skewed toward whoever leads in the primary states. It shouldn’t be determinative of who morally won the nomination.
chopper
@jl:
that “IF” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
jl
As an example of Sanders’ increasingly unrealistic expectations, he deems California a progressive state, so any day not, his poll numbers will start zooming there, or he will pull a Michigan, and win by a landslide.
California may be very progressive in some ways (compared to other parts of the country), but it is pretty moderate in terms of economic policy, the voting population in California tends to like economic moderates. Economically, history strongly suggests that California is much more HRC than Sanders. So, the election might be close in California, Sanders might even pull out a win if he starts making more rapid progress. But I cannot imagine, even should he squeak out a win, that it will be the kind of landslide he needs to make any of his delegate math hopes and dreams come true.
Roger Moore
Your mistake is in counting raw votes. When you apply the proper 3/5 weighting to minority votes, Bernie is ahead.
Ryan
No Lessig? Did I miss it?
Damien
@Amir Khalid: Snark? Who could snark about the way Bernie is absolutely DOMINATING on Tumblr and in gif memes? As a regular Tumblr user, I can vouch for the fact that everyone I follow is #BerninatingtheCountryside, which pretty completely proves that Bernie has the youth on his side. Honestly, I think there’s a real case to be made that while Hillary has the current voters locked up, the superdelegates are going to see that Bernie leads in the hypothetical future voters on his side. And who do the supers want to piss off more? The people who definitely vote for them right now, or the people who might be voting for them in the future?
QED Bernie has this in the bag.
Kathy
@Roger Moore: Ouch! Good one.
SFAW
@chopper:
No kidding. And did you notice that you can’t spell “Denghazi” without the letters in “Diane”?
Coincidence? I think NOT! Wait’ll Alex Jones hears this!
jl
@TaMara (BHF): OK. Thanks for into. There are lot of overexcited HRC and Sanders supporters right now.
I watched Sanders’ Young Turks interview last week and thought to myself “Holy shit, I hope he doesn’t mean all that, and that he backpeddles.” And it looks like he is doing just that, backpeddling as fast as he can.
You get two people like Sanders and Uygur together, and things get out of control pretty quickly. Sanders should have kept turning them down for an interview. But the TYT viewers were asking why Uygur refused to have Sanders on, Uygur went putlic that the show had invited Sanders ‘a hundred times’ and he hadn’t responded, and apparently the viewers flooded the campaign with demands that Sanders come on (and get wild crazy in front of the whole country with ol’ Centk, who is too old now to still be calling himself a ‘Young’ Turk anyway).
Roger Moore
@jl:
California is not demographically favorable to Bernie, either. Whites are not the majority, and we’re likely to lose plurality status before too long. Bernie has not done particularly well among Hispanics, so the general picture isn’t very favorable for him.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Tend to agree, last poll I saw had HRC up by 7. I think with a lot of campaigning and money spent on media here, he could get a win. It’ll be less than 10 points at the most and won’t help his delegate math.
ETA: Too much media out here can also work against a candidate, the voters end up tired of hearing about you.
goblue72
@Alex.S: Pretty much. Which is pretty obvious to anyone actually reading the linked table. There’s a big footnote at the bottom indicating all the states that are not included in the popular vote total.
goblue72
Glad to see the old farts of BJ making fun of “those kids” again. Guess the site is working properly again.
Soylent Green
If Baud doesn’t take it, I will be writing in “Larry Joe” Cohen. Only he is worthy of Baud’s legacy.
SFAW
@Damien:
Nice job, just don’t overdo it.
ETA: And, of course, I am certainly not advocating that you continue to make fun of “the kids,” because I know how important it is not to do so, else I be branded as something something something old fart something something.
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: Math is hard.
Soylent Green
Backpedaling, not backpeddling.
/grammar police
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: I remember reading analysis of California voter ideology from histories of election results, states officials that are elected, fate of ballot propositions, etc.
On social issues, race issues, environment, California has gotten much more progressive recently, compared to its history and to rest of country. But on fiscal policy, tax policy, basic economic issues, it is stuck dead center of US ideological spectrum. Sanders’ seems to think that because California has become very progressive in some ways, that is it progressive in every way needed to feel the Bern by a landslide. I think that is very doubtful.
Probably you know I am CA native an spent most of my life here. I’d like for CA to more progressive than dead center of US in terms of economics, but all evidence I’ve seen is that it is still very moderate in terms of basic economic policy.
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Only an old fart would say something demeaning-to-kids like that.
jl
@Soylent Green: Thanks.
But maybe ‘backpeddling’ is better. Sanders said some stupid BS on the TYT interview and now he had to peddle BS, in addition to pedal backwards, to wriggle out of it.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
#FeelTheVerm! You dismiss
himit at your peril.Bobby Thomson
@NCSteve: you weren’t paying attention? Idk.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I’m also a CA native and have spent all my life here, save 3 years in the rain country for grad school. You’re correct in noting the lingering economic conservatism in the CA electorate. Some tend to forget that the tax revolt started in CA, my first vote was against Prop 13.
Bobby Thomson
@jl: back pedal.
SFAW
I question some of the numbers in the Green Papers: the Rethug side has Jindal, Piyush “Bobby” coming in with a total of 221 votes. Can he really have received so few? I know he dropped out early, but I would have figured he got more than that.
Or is there something (additional) I’m not understanding about these things?
If that number is accurate … that would be what the locals call “wicked pissah funny.”
ETA: Which would also provide Baud! with a new campaign slogan: “Baud! More popular than MarciaMarciaMarcia Jindal”
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
One hopes there is a Hell, in which Howard Jarvis (presumably) is burning.
jl
I do the English language a great service by coining the word ‘backpeddle’ to indicate peddling BS in order to execute the task of peddling backward, and I get persecuted.
I do and do and do for you kids and what do I get?
Now i know how Ted Cruz feels.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW: Ol’ Howard is interred a few miles from my cave.
SFAW
@jl:
Oleaginous? Smug? Arrogant? Whiny?
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
You could probably make a few extra bucks by running a “Piss on Howard Jarvis’s Grave” tour. (In case you haven’t already considered it.)
StellaB
The Democratic party set the rules for its candidate’s nomination back when Bernie was too pure to be a member of the party and now he’s complaining. Get out the tiny violins.
jl
@SFAW: All of that and more. Anything less would be selling Ted short.
J R in WV
Having spent some time looking at these two “spreadsheets” of voter and delegate totals, I have to admit total inability to understand what the delegate totals are trying to tell us. The titles at the top of each column don’t appear to be English at all. And no matter which way I add up the sub-totals, they don’t seem to match any other totals when summed.
This is just as bad for the Dem “green paper” as for the Rep sheet. Is there an explanation of the different delegate subtotals anywhere? how do the sub-totals then add up to provide a “winning” majority for someone?
I thought I was a sophisticated voter and follower of the election races, but I guess not, once you get into the actual primary race mechanics.
So sad! ;-(
cleek
@jl:
like a hagfish?
BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW: He’s over at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, in their mausoleum. I’m not sure it’s open to the public, I know the one at Forest Lawn, Glendale isn’t.
Kathleen
@Roger Moore: Ha! Nailed it!
Walker
@jl:
And thus a new eggcorn is formed.
TaMara (BHF)
@goblue72: You mean this asterisk?: excludes AK,IA,ME,NV,WA
They were won (by vote count): NV, IA – Clinton, AK, ME, WA – Sanders
Looking at the vote totals (which is difficult in caucus states) it doesn’t look like it makes much of a difference in the popular vote totals.
I know here in CO the whole caucus event was a clusterfuck – hours long lines and not everyone got to be counted in the caucus process. So there is no way to be sure how it really averaged out in votes cast.
But since it’s a disadvantage to both candidates, I’m not sure how it changes anything. I think it just goes back to my earlier assessment, caucus system must go, it disenfranchises voters.
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
So you charge a little more, to offset the cost of bolt cutters (and bail). Problem solved!
Damien
@SFAW: Fair enough. Though I actually am a regular tumblr user, as well as someone who probably limbos under the bar for “youth,” I can appreciate how I am sarcastic far beyond my years.
On the other hand, there are far too many people in my generation who seem like it’s their first political rodeo, and if they don’t get their way then they’re willing to ignore hard reality in order to make themselves feel better; but like Karl Rove, they will get hit with the math, and who knows what will happen at that point?
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
OK, I clicked around a little bit and think I understand it now. But not well enough to argue with someone, or to explain it to someone else.
Could they have made it more complex? Yes, by including data from the Large Hadron Collider and the Very Large Array of radio-telescopes in New Mexico.
Alex.S
@Amir Khalid: He can win* the pledged delegate vote, which lets him make an argument that he won the popular vote. He won’t have the raw numbers to back it up, which is a big reason that the Sanders campaign is not making an argument about popular votes. Instead relying on momentum and “something something delegates”.
* He’s very unlikely to win the pledged delegates. New York and the rest of the Northeastern states are mostly closed primaries, which Sanders has done poorly in.
daves910
@Damien: Luckily for the democratic process white hot enthusiasm seldom lasts more than one engagement. If it lasted we’d have fanatics on the left to match fanatics on the right and that is not a recipe for anything good.
boatboy_srq
@BillinGlendaleCA: I must need coffee, because I read your comment as something about lingerie conservatism.
Yellowdog
@Amir Khalid: IIRC, in 2008 Clinton won the popular vote but not the delegates. The criterion should be delegates, not popular vote unless there is a rule change. But this time Clinton is well on the way to win both.
different-church-lady
@jl:
different-church-lady
@jl:
Greasy? Doughy?
different-church-lady
Feh. Clinton only leads the popular vote if you include the people who have already voted. Those people haven’t had a fair chance to comprehend how utterly awesome Sanders is, which is a “thing that takes time.”
It is only after the primaries are over that we can use polls to take a true measure of how many people would have voted for Sanders had they been given enough time.
Ruckus
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I wonder if people decide to be interred in a mausoleum to make it harder for the little people to piss on their grave?
Pinksnapdragon
@different-church-lady: You crack me up!
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
Wouldn’t Jonah get upset?
CalD
Democratic party rules require all primaries and caucuses to award delegates proportionally. Sanders could hardly be ahead in the popular vote while trailing by two or three hundred in the pledged delegate count. The best popular vote roundup for primary elections that I’ve seen is at realclearpolitics.
Paul in KY
@Damien: If somehow Bernie is not the nominee, just ensure you & your buds vote for Hillary in Fall.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: I can aim mine :-)