I keep reading diary after diary that is miscalculating the popular vote. It irritates me on several levels, specifically on a journalism level.
Ugh.
So the numbers that are often cited for Clinton's popular vote are slightly above 13.5 million, while Obama's are slightly before. Where do these numbers come from?
This website (or others like it) echos those numbers and seems to be the "source" for many people. However, that website's source is CNN.
We see these numbers are reflective of what CNN says. However, whoever compiled this list was not paying attention to the column titles at CNN. In a state such as New Hampshire, it's pretty simple: Candidate, # of Votes, Vote %, # of Delegates. In a state like Iowa, the # of Votes column is replaced by a "state del" column.
State Delegates are NOT the same thing as the number of votes by any means. If you want to get a better idea of the popular vote for a state like Iowa (or Alaska, etc.), go down to the map and drag your mouse over the various counties (cool, right?!). For example, in Woodbury County alone, Clinton got 2,480 votes! Waaaaay more than the 737 that the so-called popular vote chart is allocating to the entire STATE of Iowa.
I know the fact checkers are the first to go at media outlets when hard times hit, but come on, people, this is substantial.
On that note, does anyone have an ACCURATE count of the popular vote or Barry O vs. Hilly C?
UPDATE: This site has primary totals, but no caucus totals, which is equally deceiving. Again, the only way to REALLY tell is to add up those caucus vote numbers, which no one seems to want to do.