Hillary Clinton is the Popular Vote Leader

If you only count the states that matter.

In another attempt to deny reality, Paul Lukasiak is making the case that Hillary Clinton is the popular vote leader base on exit polls.

Via Taylor Marsh.

Based on exit polls, among the approximately 16.3 million people who identified themselves as Democrats, over 678,000 more voted for Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama. If we’re going to “let the people decide" who the Democratic nominee would be, shouldn’t we be basing that on the will of Democrats themselves?

Taylor Marsh calls herself a Democrat, but she also allows Larry C. Johnson to continue his racist attacks on Senator Obama on her blog. Taylor Marsh even goes as far to call Larry C. Johnson an expert to legitimize his rants against the Democratic Senator of Illinois. I won’t link to Taylor Marsh and Larry C. Johnson's Obama hate feast.

Paul Lukasiak continues to make this case.

In fact, on Super Tuesday, 295,952 more primary voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton than for Obama, yet somehow neither the Obama campaign, nor the media, was paying much attention to Clinton’s lead in the popular vote. If we include all the states that held primaries before Super Tuesday (NH, SC, MI, FL) Clinton was up by 468,024 votes—that was 2.51% of the total votes cast. But talking about that number was not a media priority either.

Only now that Obama has a miniscule lead of 128,736 in the number of votes cast (and that includes assigning all the “uncommitted” votes in Michigan to Obama) has the media focused on total votes cast. This lead represents less than 1% (0.62%) of votes cast in the primary elections held so far, yet it is trumpeted by the media endlessly.

But, since this is actually the Democratic primary, perhaps we should look at how Democrats have actually voted. Based on the available exit polling data, we find that Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead over Barack Obama in the number of votes – As of February 16, 2008, 391,992 more Democrats voted for Clinton than Obama.

Nice play on words. Notice how he does not cite the actually vote totals to support his case. This whole argument is base on unreliable exits polls. Tom in Texas over at Balloon Juice rips apart Paul Lukasiak’s facts.

Apparently, if you only count votes up to Super Tuesday, discount every state that had a caucus, only go by the exit polling, and eliminate any voters who weren’t registered Democrats, then Hillary Clinton*actually has the popular vote lead. In other news, based on exit polling and early voting from 2004 President Kerry will be running for reelection.

Even if you add Florida and Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot, Hillary Clinton still is not the popular voter leader. Hey, if Mark Penn can dismiss States and Democratic primaries as insignificant. Hillary Clinton supporters can also dismiss actually votes totals as insignificant.

[Update]

Hillary Clinton supporters have no shame. Now, only Clinton’s Superdelegates matter.

A co-chairman of Hillary's Michigan campaign and has a line that's sure to drive a whole bunch of red state governor's up the wall:

"Superdelegates are not second-class delegates," says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. "The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vo, te Democratic."