>
Hillary claims that she has 2.5 million votes than Bernie Sanders. That claim is deceptive and disingenuous.
Real Clear politics offers these numbers: Clinton 8,924,821, Sanders 6,397, 980
Technically, it's accurate, but that's because of the nature of the primary election in many states where there are caucuses. In Caucus states, a lot less people participate in the voting because of the time involved. But those delegates represent millions of people.
In reality her claim is another Hillary distortion, a reflection of the dishonesty that leads to her being highly distrusted by most voters. But none of the mainstream media have called her on this distortion.
For example, in Washington state, where there are, according to the 2015 census numbers, about 7.17 million people, here are the numbers, Sanders won 19,159 votes for 72.7%. Clinton won 7,140 votes for 27.1%. Based on those numbers, Bernie Sanders gets a 12,000 voter advantage in Hillary's way of counting. Really? 12,000 voters are all the credit Bernie gets for winning a state with over seven million people? (actually, over 250,000 participated in the caucuses. Still those numbers don't reflect the size of the state's population.)
If you do the math on all the caucus states, Bernie's wins could easily represent populations that exceed Hillary's 2.5 million votes, not even including the primary state votes he won. It is insulting to the people of Washington to suggest that they be counted based on the 26,000 who voted in the caucuses.
Because Minnesota is a caucus state, Bernie only gets an advantage of 45,000 when it should be hundreds of thousands. The same is true in Kansas, where he only gets credit for 14,000 advantage, when it should be at least 80,000. Colorado would give him a 23,000 advantage based on caucuses, but he should get at least a 120,000 advantage based on population.
This applies to the following caucus states that Bernie won, Washington, Utah, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska, Maine, Idaho, Alaska, and Hawaii, representing about 32 million people.
Bernie won many of these by 60, 70, even 80%. Of course some are primarily conservative, which has an effect on the numbers. Let's say that Democratic leaning voters represented 45%, which would be 14.4 million. If Bernie won with an average of 60 to 40% that would be a 20% difference, or 2.9 million. Of course voter turnout has to be figured in.
Let's compare Massachusetts with Minnesota. MA has about 6.7 million people. Minnesota has about 20% less, with 5.5 million. Hillary won MA by a 1.4% margin. Bernie won MN by a 23.4% margin. Hillary gets 17,000 margin for her miniscule margin win. Bernie, with a margin thats gets 44,000. A proportional accounting, for a state that large would give him close to 750,000, or 700,000 more. The same kind of math applies to all the caucus states mentioned above.
The truth is that using popular vote numbers is a deceptive way to talk about comparing campaigns. An honest candidate would not attempt to do so. Clinton embraces it.
This is not just important in terms of Hillary's misleading claim. Her superdelegates are using the 2.5 million voter difference as an excuse to stay with Hillary. Their excuse is also disingenuous, though I'll give some of them the benefit of the doubt that they are trusting Hillary on the numbers-- a big mistake.
The fact is, there's no easy way to adjust or calculate the numbers in total. But one thing is true. Hillary claim is deceptive and misleading and the mainstream media should be calling her on it.
9
9
7
