Trailhead points out that the popular vote in the Democratic nomination process is a flawed number because it's impossible to take into account the fact that many states had caucuses, which have lower turnouts than primaries. True, but the popular vote is flawed for two other important reasons as well.

The Democratic nomination process was set up as a contest over delegates. No one told the candidates that the popular vote would matter, and they planned and allocated their resources accordingly. If overall vote totals had mattered, we might have seen a different campaign that fought over votes where candidates thought it futile under the system they actually had. We can’t turn back the clock now and find out what might have happened if the campaigns were run differently; it would be like wondering if Bush would have won the popular vote in 2000 if he had campaigned more in California in New York, which weren't worth his time because the contest was about electoral votes, not overall vote totals.

And even if the primaries express the “will of the people,” one would be hard-pressed to determine whose will is being expressed given the very different people allowed to vote in each state. Some states allowed only Democrats to vote; some allowed independents to join in; and some allowed everyone to vote, including some Republicans who might have purposely voted for who they thought was the weaker candidate.

In short, the popular vote is a mess: just because someone adds up numbers and calls it the “popular vote” doesn’t mean those sums are accurate or meaningful. And given that the process was presented to the candidates as a contest over delegates, and that the candidates ran their campaigns accordingly, it’s hard for me to see why the popular vote would matter. Sure, there are problems with the delegate acquisition process, but that’s the only process we really have. It’s the one the candidates planned their campaigns around, and so it’s the only one that should be determinative. And while the term “popular vote” sounds nice—who could be against the popular vote?—it’s hard for me to see why the popular vote should matter, how one would calculate it if it did, or what it would mean if one could.

ha. all of this because poke'mon just realized that Hillary could actually win the popular vote (as well as the registered democrat vote, the working class/blue collar vote, the rural vote, the hispanic vote, the asian vote, the NY and California and Texas vote, the union vote, and so forth)...

No, that's not the point. Perhaps you might respond to the arguments: (1) that the nomination process was set up as a delegate, not a popular vote, contest; (2) that the popular vote, even if it mattered, can't be calculated because many states held caucuses; and (3) it's impossible to tell what the popular vote means because so many different groups were allowed to or restricted from voting.(Whose popular will should matter? If the point is to have a winning candidate in November, why not include non-Democrats? Are we going to subtract the votes of Republicans in Ohio who say they listened to Rush Limbaugh and voted for Clinton? And if it should matter, shouldn't the issue of restricting the "popular" vote to registered Democrats have been told to the candidates before the campaigns started?)

These arguments are completely independent of who is ahead and who is behind, or who might win, and should be addressed on the merits. One could just as easily respond that Clinton supporters want the popular vote to count, even though it should be irrelevant and couldn't be calculated meaningfully if it were, just because it's the only possible (but slim) shot that they have of convincing the superdelegates. Why the superdelegates should be told to take into account a number with a nice sounding name but no real meaning is a mystery to me. (I can call a law the "Patriot Act," but that doesn't make it patriotic.)

Real Slim, we meet again.

Simon says (and gives concrete evidence to the effect) that "popular vote" = "meaningless number"

So you go ahead and post:

ha. all of this because poke'mon just realized that Hillary could actually win the popular vote MEANINGLESS NUMBER.

So, I have to say that Simon didn't bring this up because he realized she "could win the race to a meaningless number", he brings it up because it's Clintron's latest logical fallacy to try to present a meaningless number as proof of her support. And it's yet another measure of her ability to either critically think or critically deceive.

Good points: I think #3 is your weakest point, because the fact that different states allowed different groups of people to vote is reflected in both the delegate count, as well as the popular vote.

It's likely, however, to be a moot point, as Obama will likely retain his advantage in both pledged delegates and popular vote.

If so, I will lose one of my strongest arguments in favor of a Clinton nom, and I will admit it.

If not, and Hillary wins the popular vote, it spells more trouble for Obama

If not, and Hillary wins the popular vote, it spells more trouble for Obama

Maybe. But you still haven't explained why the "popular" vote should matter since the process was set up as a delegate contest, nor whether it would be fair just to add up all caucus and primary votes, nor whether just Democratic votes should count, or independent votes should count, or Republican votes should count.

So why is the vote total a strong argument if it wasn't what the candidates were competing for and we don't know what it means? People may pay attention to it, but it doesn't mean people should pay attention to it. What I'm asking is: why should people pay attention to it? (And if there's no good answer, then maybe people won't pay as much attention to it and will use other, more legitimate factors in making their decisions.)

With Florida (and probably Michigan) off the table, how exactly does Hillary win the popular vote? Even if they do a revote in Michigan, it's going to come out pretty close to even. I don't think she can get enough votes in Pennsylvania to swing the vote that much.

well, I haven't given up on revotes for those states. We'll see, regardless.

I haven't given up on revotes for those states.

I'd go along with revotes, but only because they'd be a legitimate way of going after pledged delegates. But I still haven't heard a response as to why adding up all the primary and caucus votes should matter.

By the way, it seems to me that a redo in Florida of any kind seems just about dead. There's still a possibility in Michigan. (And how anyone can argue that the original Michigan results should be counted is beyond me. I don't know anyone who thinks that an election where every candidate but one removes his or her name from the ballot constitutes a legitimate contest. Most lawyers know that you're better off conceding what's not defensible; that the Clinton campaign fails to do so here is one of the things that makes me doubt her sincerity. Being perceived as someone who will do anything to win can make it harder to win.)

dsimon, congratulations on a ridiculously inverted argument.

If primaries and caucuses are 'not equal' as you say, we should go with one and not the other. We should then elect our nominee based on the more representative, and therefore better, process - which happens to be just the primaries.

If, on the other hand, primaries and caucuses are equal (well, no one's stopping people from caucusing for their candidate!), then this argument is invalid.

Take your pick.

Separately, I do think that primaries and caucuses are totally unequal.

First, a fundamental requirement of democracy is that everyone speaks their TRUE choice, their 'free will' in their ballot - no matter how right or wrong the choice, is, no matter how non-mainstream or unacceptable that decision is. Therefore, a secret ballot is critical to ensure privacy, non-intimidation and non-coercion, also that choices are not made to return or demand favors, but independent of external influences. This is NOT the case in a caucus. We're seeing those results every day - since Obama's the 'kewl' candidate, and all the 'kewl kids' really like the guy, everyone is forced to accept that choice in public. In the primaries, a lot of people are able to make their own choice, which turns out to be Clinton - you may like or dislike her, but the truth is that people, when deciding for themselves, choose her. Second, a caucus is extremely high involvement and has intangible and tangible entry barriers - (a) they take many hours as opposed to a quick vote, (b) they take place in a very fixed time as opposed to throughout the day so everyone can participate at their convenience, (c) they require a great deal of people management and leadership skills amongst every one of the participants, not just the precinct captains, (d) they involve a deep knowledge of the process, again for most participants - not just the leaders. This knowledge takes time to acquire and build upon, and therefore the people who win caucuses are people who are deeply entrenched int he political system, not the 'real people'. For all these reasons, caucuses are undemocratic.
What we're seeing in these primaries/caucuses is exactly that - Texas was a market-researcher's delight, because it was a perfect way to measure differential results keeping everything else ceterus paribus (the same population universe, the same inputs, the same timing, the same polling location, etc.). If all the states had primaries and not caucuses, it's possible she would've been the Democratic candidate by now - and if all the states had caucuses and not primaries, Obama would likely have been the candidate by now!

This knowledge takes time to acquire and build upon, and therefore the people who win caucuses are people who are deeply entrenched int he political system, not the 'real people'.

That's one view. But if it were true, wouldn't Clinton as the more established and well-known candidate have had an advantage?

If all the states had primaries and not caucuses, it's possible she would've been the Democratic candidate by now - and if all the states had caucuses and not primaries, Obama would likely have been the candidate by now!

Perhaps. But my point is not that one system is fairer than the other. It's that if we were just going to count the popular vote, the candidates would have run different campaigns and allocated their resources differently. It's possible Clinton would have done better in Iowa under a primary, but we don't know how the other campaigns would have operated in such a system, so we'll never know. That, and the lower turnout that is typical in caucus states, makes it difficult to just add caucus and primary votes to come up with something and call it a nationwide "popular vote."

I'm not taking sides in the caucus-primary debate, just arguing that the term "popular vote" is being thrown around without justifying why it should matter given the system the candidates were given at the outset, or what it would mean if it did matter.

We should then elect our nominee based on the more representative, and therefore better, process - which happens to be just the primaries.

If, on the other hand, primaries and caucuses are equal (well, no one's stopping people from caucusing for their candidate!), then this argument is invalid.

Sorry for the double post. If we want a true popular vote system, then that's what the candidates should have been told mattered from the start. I'd be glad to argue that to the DNC for the next go-around.

But we don't have that system this time, and it's not how the candidates ran their campaigns. To say "the popular vote should matter now" (disregarding the difficulty of determining what it really means) is kind of like saying Gore should be the president because he won the popular vote. Bush could rightly respond that if he had been told the popular vote would matter, he would have spent more time in California and New York to pick up more votes, but since those states weren't in play and attempts to get votes there wouldn't have differed in the electoral college--the rules at the time--he didn't bother. The rules shape the race, and the Democratic candidates were given a delegate contest, not a popular vote contest.

And even if the popular vote were to matter, not only candidates but those states that held caucuses should have been told beforehand too, and perhaps they would have changed their processes. But the rules said that all states would be given delegates to apportion in ways they saw fit. We can't go back now and tell them "well, we're going to count the popular vote, so your process doesn't mean as much." They played by the rules. Want to change the rules for next time? I might support that. But we can't turn back the clock now and say "what if?"

Nor does just adding up primary votes address my other issue: whose will is being represented? As I wrote before, some states allowed only Democrats to vote, some allowed independents, some allowed Republicans some of whom may have deliberately voted for who they thought was the weaker candidate. So what does that total mean? (To complicate things further, some states that allowed independents to vote had their primaries when the Republican race was still competitive, some are having them when that race has been decided, which can swing turnout dramatically.)

The candidates were given a delegate contest. They operated under the delegate contest rules provided by each state. And those delegate allocations are all we really have. It's not a convoluted argument; it's a fact as to how campaigns are run, and they're run according to the rules of the contest, just as the general presidential election is an electoral college contest and not a popular vote contest (as much as I would like that changed for future contests).

In the primaries, a lot of people are able to make their own choice, which turns out to be Clinton - you may like or dislike her, but the truth is that people, when deciding for themselves, choose her.

My God, you're an idiot. Obama has won 16 primaries -- 3 more than Clinton.