While it’s fairly clear that Hillary Clinton has no chance of overtaking Barack Obama’s pledged delegate lead, the Clinton campaign seems to be holding on to the hope that they can surpass him in total popular votes, thus giving her at least one argument for the nomination.
The question is, can she do it ?
Here’s where the Realclear Politics numbers stand:
This is a slight change from where things stood before yesterday because, before then, Obama was ahead in the popular vote even if the votes from Michigan were included, and he would still be in the lead if you added popular vote estimates from Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington into the mix, or if he was credited with the 238,000 votes that “uncommitted” received in the Michigan primary.
Given the numbers above, it’s fairly clear that Clinton has no chance of taking the lead in the popular vote either. She’d have to take 60% or more of the vote in each of the remaining primaries, and that’s simply not going to happen.
Update: Vivian Paige, correctly I think, points out the problems of estimating popular votes from caucus states like Iowa, so let’s leave out the caucus numbers.
That leaves us with four possible scenarios:
1. Popular Vote w/o Michigan and Florida:
Obama — 14,397,506
Clinton — 13,896,368Obama +501,138
2. Popular Vote w/ Florida:
Obama — 14,973,720
Clinton — 14,767,354Obama +206,366
3. Popular Vote w/ Florida and Michigan
Obama — 14,973,720
Clinton — 15,095,664Clinton +121,943
4. Popular Vote (w/ Florida, Michigan & MI Uncommitted to Obama)
Obama — 15,211,888
Clinton — 15,095,664Obama +116,224
In other words, there’s currently only one scenario where Clinton leads in the popular vote; and that requires you to give her full credit for the votes she received in Michigan and Florida, two states who broke the rules that the DNC and all parties involved agreed to, while giving Obama none of the votes from Michigan.
After North Carolina and Indiana, even assuming a Clinton win in the Hoosier State, these numbers are going to go away and Obama will have the popular vote lead all to himself again.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
So the Penn win wasn’t big enough and Hillary should just drop out. The real winner was McCain.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
See the problem with those numbers? They include an estimate of the caucus numbers, because they don’t have the real numbers from Iowa, Nevada, Washington & Maine. Those four states have not released their popular vote totals.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
Vivian,
I’ve updated the post to address that concern. The numbers w/o the caucus states that don’t release popular vote totals are still in Obama’s favor.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:28 am
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