Sabato’s Crystal Ball: DEMOCRATS AND THE POPULAR VOTE

As the closely fought Democratic presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama moves deeper and deeper into the primary season, there is a growing sentiment that the nomination should go to the candidate that ultimately wins the popular vote.

Fair enough. Ever since the current primary-dominated era of nominations began in the 1970s, every Democratic and Republican nomination has gone to the candidate who received the most votes in the presidential primaries. The last nominee who was not his party’s top primary vote-getter was Democrat George McGovern in 1972. And that was the last election in which less than half the states held primaries.

In recent decades, the aggregate nationwide vote has been won in decisive fashion by the ultimate nominee. But so far this year, that has not been the case with Clinton and Obama. There are different ways to count the Democratic popular vote. And while Obama comes out of the Feb. 19 voting leading in all of them, Clinton could still vault on top with a succession of strong showings in the big primary states that vote directly ahead.

Limit the tally to sanctioned Democratic primaries, and Obama presently enjoys a lead of more than 700,000 votes. Count the ballots from all primaries, including the non-binding votes in Florida and Michigan that Clinton dominated, and his advantage drops to barely 100,000 votes.

But add to this mix the reported vote for the candidates from caucus states, where Obama has had the upper hand, and his lead grows to more than 300,000 votes. And if one wishes to delete the unsanctioned Florida and Michigan results, and limit the tally to sanctioned primaries and reported caucus votes, Obama’s lead swells to more than 900,000 votes.

To compound the complexity, the actual presidential preferences of attendees was not tallied in some of the most highly-publicized caucus states, including Iowa, Nevada and Washington. There, the state parties presented the vote in terms of local delegates elected and did not conduct a primary-like tally of participants. If such a tally is attempted by extrapolation–multiplying the delegate percentages for Clinton and Obama times the voter turnout–the Illinois senator would add roughly another 100,000 votes to his total.

What then is the “popular vote”? It would probably take a judge wiser than Solomon to declare a hard and fast winner at the end of the primary season in June if different formulations of the popular vote produce different winners.

Democrats can hope it does not come to that, and they have history on their side. The pattern over the last two decades has been for candidates to trade victories over the first few weeks of the primary season before one candidate catches hold and scores a long string of wins that puts the nomination away. By the end of the process, there has been a clear winner and the popular vote is regarded as little more than an interesting curiosity.

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