These delegate equivalents are derived from the preferences of individual caucus-goers, or the raw vote. But before becoming delegate equivalents, those votes must essentially first pass through a complicated system of filters that can reflect geography, population, local voting history, and the national party’s requirement that, if possible, any candidate who garners support from more than 15 percent of voters at a caucus site get at least one delegate.
Despite that ambiguity, the delegate equivalents allotted in these four states are the only official numbers out there. As such, they form the basis of most press estimates of the popular vote. How?
Here’s comes a lot of math: take the total number of caucus-goers, and split it up using the percentage of delegate equivalents earned by each candidate. So in Iowa, 37.6 percent of the delegate equivalents went to Obama, about 29.8 percent went to Edwards, and 29.5 percent went to Clinton. The Iowa state party claims approximately 239,000 caucus-goers. Mash those numbers up, and Obama gets 89,836 votes, Edwards gets 71,103 votes, and Clinton gets 70,433 votes. That’s how CNN, Real Clear Politics, and the Times handled Iowa and Nevada, which use nearly identical caucus systems.
But not Chuck Todd at NBC. In Iowa and Nevada, he hoped to avoid the imprecision of the delegate equivalents—especially the 15 percent rule and supporters who switched their choice after their preferred candidate fell under that bar at their site—by instead using percentages from the National Election Pool’s entrance polls, data gleaned from questioning a hopefully-representative sample of people on their way into the caucuses.
Everyone I spoke with, besides Todd, dismissed NBC’s entrance-poll method. “We didn’t do that because exit polls have been terrible this election, so I don’t know why the entrance polls would be any better,” said Real Clear Politics’s McIntyre.
“You’ve got an estimate based on an estimate,” said CNN’s number cruncher.
But as it turns out, in Iowa and Nevada, the methods make surprisingly little difference. By my math, Todd’s approach yields these Iowa numbers: Obama 83,651, Clinton 64,506, and Edwards 59,988.
Amazingly, that means the Clinton-Obama spread in Iowa—which is, of course, what people now want to know—is, by happy accident, nearly identical by either method: about 19,403 by delegate equivalent and about 19,145 by entrance poll.
Nevada is a little different, but not much. Again, by my math, Todd’s entrance-poll method would yield a Nevada spread of 8,082 in Clinton’s favor, the delegate-equivalent method gives Clinton a 6,040-vote advantage.
That closeness means that both methods are, if you’re optimistic, equally good, or if you’re pessimistic, equally bad. Both raise obvious red flags. But absent the real votes, we’ll never know how close the estimates track to what actually happened.
And unfortunately, Washington and Maine don’t give us any more data to test that question. Todd’s entrance-poll method is useless in those states, because there were no entrance polls.
Washington’s Democratic party claims that 244,458 people caucused, resulting in 21,629 delegate equivalents for Obama and 9,992 for Clinton. In this case, Todd simply added the delegate equivalents to the each candidate’s overall popular vote tally, as if they were raw votes. This means that—poof!—more than 200,000 Washingtonians go missing in NBC’s count.
The Times and RCP stick with the delegate-equivalent method, which, by my math, produces these popular-vote estimates: Obama 165,058 to Clinton’s 76,246—a spread of nearly 89,000 votes.
CNN introduces another Washington wrinkle. Ten days after the Washington caucuses the state held a primary—of sorts. Washington Democrats did not use the primary to allot delegates, but the Democratic candidates were nonetheless listed on the ballot. CNN uses this pseudo primary contest, rather than an estimate based on delegate equivalents, in its popular vote tally. That beauty contest had almost three times the caucus turnout, but was considerably closer: 691,381 votes were cast, but Obama only amassed a 38,386 spread. That tally nets 27,000 more votes to Obama than Todd’s, but 50,000 less than the Times’s and RCP’s counts.
There's another problem with calculating (or at least trying to use) the "popular vote" to think about who is the real choice of Democratic voters and that is that caucus states get underrepresented in the calculation. Imagine two states that both have 1,000,000 Democratic voters, but one is a caucus state and the other is a primary state. The primary state has a turnout of 600,000 and Hillary beats Obama 60-40, that is 360,000 votes to 240,000 for a margin of 120,000 net Hillary votes. The caucus state has a turnout of only 200,000 (because the process itself reduces turnout) and Obama beats Hillary by exactly the same margin, 60-40. That means 120,000 votes for Obama and 80,000 for Hillary, a net margin of 40,000 Obama votes. What does this mean? In one sense, it means that Obama and Hillary have exactly tied. Two states, same population, each won a 60-40 vote in one of them. But the "popular vote" count would give Hillary an 80,000 vote edge just because primaries generate bigger turnouts. That's a ridiculous measure of who is the "true" choice of Democrats. What you have here is too different methods of "sampling" Democratic voters. The weight of the results should be in terms of the size of the population of the Democratic voters, not the size of the "sample."
Posted by Graham Jeffries
on Fri 2 May 2008 at 07:59 PM
This analysis just goes to show what a bogus political argument that popular vote is for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. The only reason the candidates give it any credence is simply so that they dont appear to be discounting the will of the people. Just like the electoral college elects the President the pledged delegates elect the nominee. Calculating a popular vote total from these contests is like trying to divine dog puke. You might see your slippers in there but you sure can't tell the breed of the dog.
Posted by billreef
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 12:28 AM
Great job with this.
One other major problem with popular vote is that it ignores the fact that political campaigns set their strategy based on the rules (i.e. winning delegates). If popular vote was going to matter, the Obama campaign wouldn't have worked so hard in the caucus states. It would've been better for them to focus on CA, where, even if they lost, they would've been able to get more popular votes than in all of Iowa.
For that matter, no state would have a caucus if the important number was popular vote. It would completely disenfranchise the caucus states to use popular vote as the deciding factor.
The media has treated the popular-vote angle from the Clinton camp with too much legitimacy. More media outlets need to explain why it's a problem.
Posted by vshawnt
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 02:19 AM
There is one further problem with this analysis not mentioned in the article:
The degree to which the current system influenced the campaign strategies of the candidates. As Axelrod has noted repeatedly, if they had known they would be judged by the popular vote counts (especially in Florida and Michigan) they would have campaigned very differently, spending more time in California, refusing to agree to not campaign in Florida or Michigan, and not removing Obama from the Michigan ballot. They spent time and money organizing in the caucus states because they thought *delegates* count, and to tell them now they were playing the wrong game is simply duplicitous.
Bill Clinton's argument is now quite explicitly that we should not count the Democratic voters that caucused in states that will go Republican in the general election. If he wants to base which Democrats get to vote based on whether or not they will influence the outcome of the general, he concedes those states forever and changes the system to a distinctly undemocratic one; and makes the same mistake Obama spoke of: He views the state of the nation as static and unchangeable.
It is too late to change the rules of the system for this election anyway. The same thing goes for Hillary's argument about "If this were the GOP I'd be the nominee already." First, everybody would have campaigned differently; and second, go ahead and run as a Republican and let's see how you do; you certainly can lie like one.
Posted by TonyC, SA
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 09:45 AM
If the Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) want a system that produces a general election winner they would adopt a system that exactly -- and I mean EXACTLY -- mirrors the general election's Electoral College. Because that's the yardstick that is going to matter in November.
Every other primary system seems designed to produce something else. Overheated Atmospherics (hot air) perhaps?
Posted by egc52556
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 02:31 PM
In fairness to the various state parties and their apparently bizarre methods of voting, it is important to realize that there is fair and accurate method of aggregating voter preferences. 1972 Nobel Prize winner, Kenneth Arrow, revealed this in 1952 with his "impossibility theorem" which states "There is no consistent method by which a democratic society can make a choice (when voting) that is always fair when that choice must be made from among 3 or more alternatives." Given this, it is not such a bad thing that we use lots of different (imperfect) methods of aggregating preferences and, in essence, try to achieve converging evidence for a dominant preference.
As was pointed out in prior posts, however, this is a purely academic question that is relevant only to how the "rules" get established. Once they are established, it would be utterly illogical and patently invalid to use a different method of aggregating preferences. There should be no serious consideration of anything other than counting delegates at this point in the process.
Posted by Arrow_Imp
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 06:00 PM
Actually Barone’s figures give HIllary the popular vote lead by any count now.
Estimating popular vote backwards from caucus delegates has two problems. The easiest one to adjust for is that caucuses favor Obama’s voters over Clinton’s. WA state had both caucus and primary, and Obama did 16% better in the caucus than in the primary. So in extrapolating actual popular vote for other caucus states, we’d have to move 16% from his column into hers.
Less easy to figure is low turnout. The state gives the same total delegates on a small or a large turnout.
Posted by 1950democrat
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 07:06 PM
Once they are established, it would be utterly illogical and patently invalid to use a different method of aggregating preferences. There should be no serious consideration of anything other than counting delegates at this point in the process.
The time for counting delegates is in August. At this point in the process, the current rules call for the each Superdelegate to vote for the candidate he/she thinks best, period. The current rules have NO other limits or guidelines or metrics to constrain each SD's vote.
Which, imo, is as it should be. The process is messy, new information has turned up, we've seen how the candidates perform under pressure, what demographics each one can and cannot reach, which metrics were gained fairly and which by gaming the system; only the SDs voting last thing in the process, considering the whole picture, have the perspective to make the best decision.
Posted by 1950democrat
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 07:15 PM
Add to the mix that I, a WA state Democrat, voted in the caucus but did not vote in the primary (because a: I was unexpectedly out of town on primary day and b: when I realized I wouldn't be able to vote I not upset because I knew it didn't count anyway). How many more like me are there?
Posted by banditthecat
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 07:23 PM
1950democrat makes a good point about the value of a protracted primary process. Voters do learn about the candidates over time. It also allows for self correction in the system of indicating and aggregating preferences. For example, one might be willing to vote for a relatively unknown candidate to bring that candidate's standing more in line with one's complex mutlifaceted preferences, yet not be willing to vote for that same candidate if her/his standing exceeds that of other candidates by too much, again to bring that candidate's standing in line with one's preferences. In either case, this is why it is important that the DNC tried to set up the dates for primaries in a way that would provide the most consistent and valid demographic sampling over time, partly for the reasons mentioned in my last post.
The point about binding delegates to candidates only upon a formal vote a the convention, while technically correct, has been moot for decades. Voting against the results of a delegate's own primary or caucus just is not a realistic option any more (any more than it is for the electoral college even though they also, in principle can vote for whomever they like).
If delegates could vote for whomever they think is in the most favorable position at the time of their vote, one could make the argument that delegates should vote for John Edwards, or even Al Gore, because they would have lower negatives after months of the anti-inspirational downward spiral of the current campaigns. Clearly this would be silly but it is exactly how things used to work at the conventions, albeit 50 years ago. Even then, however, it was well known by the candidates that this was how things worked and their campaign priorities and strategy reflected it.
As most people recognize, all the action will be with the superdelegates. While, in principle, they can do anything they want, they are almost certain to consider the rules that all candidates assumed in their strategic communications and competition. The will be (an apparently are being) influenced mostly by preferences expressed according to the various state rules of aggregating preferences, consistent with the rules of the DNC, not what the preferences might have been if the candidates had assumed different (hypothetical) rules. This is the only explanation for the steady week-by-week flow of superdelegates, more in the direction of Obama than Clinton, since February.
Posted by Arrow_Imp
on Sat 3 May 2008 at 11:18 PM