Legal Commentary

Not Good At Math

By Big Tent Democrat

I was never good at math, but it seems Ezra Klein is worse. Ezra gets it completely wrong on the popular vote:

[Clinton]'s far behind in the popular vote. If you add Florida, where neither campaigned, she's still 300,000 votes behind. If you cheat and add Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, and you give him the "uncommitted" voters (as some Clintonites have suggested), she's still 188,000 votes behind. If you do all of that, and then Clinton wins every remaining contest by 10 points, according to Rick Hertzberg's calculations, she'll still be 160,000 votes behind.

(Emphasis supplied.) So Ezra's "math" says that if Clinton wins the last 10 contests by 10 points she only makes up 28,000 votes? Say what? But it gets worse.

Ezra continues:

[These totals] doesn't even include Obama's caucusgoers, who aren't in the straight popular votes tally.

Actually it does, as anyone familiar with the RCP tallies would know. Indeed, these totals reflect the improper inclusion of the Washington caucus numbers instead of the Washington primary result, which inflates Obama's lead by 50,000 votes.

It is not likely, imo, that Clinton will catch up in the popular vote, by my metric, which includes all caucus result where a primary result is not available, Florida and assigns uncommitteds to Obama. But that remains to be seen. Clinton could very well do so. I say let's count the votes. But more importantly, I say stop believing Left bloggers, who seem to have no respect for the facts.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).