Excellent analysis of the popular vote by RenaRF over at dailykos

[bluestateguy]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/1/16747/37393/979/526838

[Oregone]

1. There is NO SUCH THING as the "popular vote"

Let it die allready.


LEts add up the amount of letters in the name of each state the candidates won, and compare that tally. Thats the true winner.

[housewolf]

2. She makes a good case but it still doesn't matter because primaries are about delegate counts

not a popular vote count.

We are a representatonal democracy, not a direct democracy. When it comes to presidential elections, both primaries and the general election, it's the state-level representatives who actually vote. At the primary level, we call then delegates. For the general election, we call them electors.

The only purpose of a counting popular votes in a state is for the state parties to use to allocate the delegates for each of the candidates. The only purpose for counting popular votes for the general election is to inform the state's electors who to vote for when the Electoral College is convened in Washington DC in December and they actually elect the president.

At no level of presedential elections do we roll up the votes into some "national popular vote." It's not the popular vote that wins presidential elections at either the primary or general electons.

What's so sad about this is that we have a presidential candidate, a well known and respected member of our Senate, who is going around the country spreading a myth that popular votes wins presidential elections. It doesn't. It never has in this country. Maybe it should... maybe that's something that should be looked at and debated... but this year it's nothing but a myth. What's even sadder is that this candidate is using this myth as a political slogan to generate support for herself amd her candidacy, gemerating support and loyalty through a tenet that has no basis in reality, in effect setting up her supporters for disappointment.

[AtomicKitten]

3. Sure if you don't count Maine, Washington, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and

Democrats Abroad ... all of which Barack won but Clinton conveniently leaves out of her selective fuzzy math popular vote computation red herring in a delegate count wins primary.