Bernie vs. Hillary: The Real Popular Vote Count
Image: DonkeyHotey via Flickr
Hillary Bots and Bernie Bros can both agree that Sec. Clinton’s Democratic Primary lead of 3 million votes cannot be considered accurate if it does not include caucus voters’ results. So what would the vote count be if caucuses were included? After Shaun King’s recent (and mostly correct) proclamation that “NONE of those [caucus state] votes count in the ‘popular vote totals’“, the Broke-Ass Big Data Lab decided to take a crack at analyzing what the popular vote totals of the Democratic primary would be if caucus states’ votes were included.
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/733357861808529408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As an undecided voter (yes, STILL. I have another 12 days!), the vote count in the primaries thus far is absolutely a factor in my decision. If the vote count is wrong because the caucus states aren’t included, I want to know that. So which candidate is ahead — and by how much — if you do include the caucus states?
CAUCUS VOTE TOTALS THAT WE KNOW
There are 15 states and US territories that held caucuses thus far. Indeed, many of these votes are not included in Sec. Clinton’s widely reported 3,031,245 vote lead. Those that did not report raw vote totals are Iowa, Nevada, American Samoa, Maine, Northern Marianas (!), Alaska, Washington and Guam.
But there are 7 caucus states that did report raw vote totals (Utah, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, Idaho, Hawaii and Colorado), and these are included in Hillary’s 3 million vote lead. So it’s not like all the caucuses are excluded, but about half of them are.
CAUCUS VOTE TOTALS THAT WE CAN ONLY PROJECT
NOTE: These are just some back-of-the-envelope projections where in some cases we took “rounded numbers” of reported voters (real numbers are not available for all caucuses!) and multiplied that by the reported percentage totals for each candidate. It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s the best we got. If anyone knows a better way to calculate this, let us know in the comments!
IOWA: “186,000 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 49.9% (92,814)
Sanders: 49.6% (92,256)
Clinton +558
NEVADA: “84,000 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 52.6% (44,184)
Sanders: 47.3% (39,732)
Clinton +4,452
AMERICAN SAMOA: “223 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 68.4% (162)
Sanders: 25.7% (61)
Clinton +101
MAINE: “3,463 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 35.5% (1,232)
Sanders: 64.3% (2,231)
Sanders +999
NORTHERN MARIANAS: “167 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 54% (102)
Sanders: 34.4% (65)
Clinton +37
ALASKA: “10,610 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 20.2% (2,146)
Sanders: 79.6% (8,447)
Sanders +6,301
WASHINGTON: “26,314 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 27.1% (7,136)
Sanders: 72.7% (19,135)
Sanders +11,999
GUAM: “1,305 Democratic votes”
Clinton: 59.5% (777)
Sanders: 40.5% (528)
Clinton +249
SO SANDERS PICKS UP 19,000-ISH VOTES
By this analysis, Sen. Sanders has cut into Ms. Clinton’s popular vote lead by 19,299 votes. She’s still well ahead, for now.
This total is negligible compared to what’s at stake on June 7. Nearly 5 million Democrats voted in the California 2008 primary, and turnout like that could completely change the math this year. Make sure you turn out at your polling place on June 7 and to be sure that your vote is included in the “real vote count”.
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