In many comments and diaries, I keep hearing a falsehood being shared -- either intentionally or unintentionally -- that suggests "Clinton still leads in the popular vote". In fact, it seems not to be the case. But there is a source of confusion that is understandably contributing to this misconception. Read on for more...
First, let's define terms: "the popular vote" refers to the actual human beings who vote, whether in primaries or caucuses, for a candidate. It is also referred to as the "raw vote".
In primaries, these raw numbers are simply reported directly in the columns for Obama or Clinton. So, for example, when CNN reports the vote tallies for Alabama, since it was a primary, that is the actual number of human beings who actually voted for those candidates.
Caucus vote reporting is different. However, in caucus states, there are a variety of ways to report votes. What generally happens is that the raw vote (the number of human beings who voted one way or another) is converted to a caucus equivalent vote, which may be a county delegate equivalent or a state delegate equivalent.
As USAToday explains on the Iowa caucus results (scroll down):
The Democrats do not report straight vote numbers but use a mathematical formula to determine support for a presidential candidate in percentages.
For the Democrats, the district-level "vote" numbers listed above are extrapolated from the "state delegate equivalent" numbers provided by the Iowa Democratic Party. They do not represent actual votes or have anything to do with actual turnout at the caucus. Rather, they are representative district-level figures derived from the "state delegate equivalent" numbers reported throughout the night.
Caucus votes reported are MUCH lower than actual raw votes. For the caucus contests, the numbers that are actually reported are therefore MUCH LOWER than the actual raw vote (the actual votes cast). Look, for example, at CNN's vote tally for Maine's caucus today. With 90% of the votes tallied, it shows Obama receiving 1873 votes, compared with Clinton at 1300. The total votes given in the tally are 3190. If this is 90% of the votes reporting, then 100% would be about 3540 votes for the whole Maine caucus. However, the Democratic party has reported that about 40,000 Dems voted in Maine today. So clearly, these vote tallies are representing not the raw votes, but the caucus equivalents.
Again: most states who have caucuses DON"T REPORT the actual raw votes for inclusion in these tallies. They only report the caucus equivalent votes, which are then used to determine how many of the state's delegates are parceled out.
Exact caucus vote totals are difficult to discern. Forbes Magazine has thankfully stated this explicitly. In this recent article, they note that Clinton was ahead by just under 4% in the popular vote...BUT, they explicitly state that:
We excluded counts from caucuses due to a lack of uniform presentation of the data released by the states. It is worth noting, however, that Obama has won seven of the eight caucuses held by the Democrats.
My best estimate comes from totaling the popular vote by considering the turnout of the Dems in the caucus states and trying to correlate those to the percentages provided on the tallies. But it's impossible to have an exact calculation without the raw data from the caucuses.
Obama leading. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, if Clinton is leading in popular vote by only a few percent when primaries alone are considered, that when the caucus voters are added to that, Obama must be leading in the overall popular vote overall, at least for now.
(Update: Reader DemocraticLuntz has kindly provided more up-to-date data in this diary thread showing that, even when considering ONLY the primary votes, Obama is ahead in popular vote totals. So when Obama's caucus margins are added to that, it's pretty clear that Obama is leading in the popular vote. At least for now.)