Yes, you read that right. Barack Obama has won more delegates to the Democratic National Convention (the body that technically votes on and determines the party’s nominee) than any other Democrat running in the state’s caucuses today.
Obama won with 45% percent of the popular vote. Hillary Clinton finished second with 12 delegates. She received 51% of the popular vote.
Hillary claiming victory in Nevada is like Al Gore claiming victory in 2000 because he won more of the popular vote.
Both Nevada’s caucus system and our electoral college system are imperfect systems that should be reevaluated.
Please share widely!
The AP reported that Hillary would get 12 delegates to Obama’s 13, but that has since been corrected. Perhaps if the county delegates vote in exactly the same proportion and if the math breaks in a certain way, but there’s no way to tell until the state convention in April. For instance, if Edwards pulls out, where do his delegates go?
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p>As stated by NV Democratic Chair Jill Derby:
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Can somebody in the know please clarify? If I’m not mistaken, it seems that Obama won more districts than Clinton, but Clinton won more votes than Obama within the districts she won. So in terms of who won the state overall, Clinton won. But in terms of who won more delegates, Obama edged out Clinton by 1 delegate.
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p>According to the Nation here is the breakdown:
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p>Is that factually correct? And if so, WTF?
PLEO stands for “pledged superdelegates” who will vote in the convention by dint of their position. Harry Reid is one, I’m sure. Those are not connected to any voter choice.
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p>At-Large were those abominable and anti-democratic “special districts” set up for pre-selected constituencies on the Las Vegas Strip.
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p>As for the rest, these are not certain numbers, but estimates. As I said upthread, the estimates rely on a very staid and predictable outcome at the county and state conventions, something that recent experience tells us in not assured.
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p>Regarding the disconnect between number of votes and districts won, the Nevada Dems made the choice to reward land rather than people. District 1 (Reno and environs) and District 3 (Las Vegas) have far fewer delegates per voter than the rural District 2. Similar to the Electoral College. Obama does better in such independent and Republican-heavy areas, while Hillary succeeds in urban areas particularly among Hispanics and lower-middle class Democrats concentrated in cities. This has been a pattern in every contested state thus far.
Personally I think all the delegates of a state should be done state-wide proportional, so it doesn’t have these weird distortions. When you have an even delegate district, the winner needs to have >75% to win 2 of 2, >62.5% to win 3 of 4, or > ~58% to win 4 of 6.
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p>Obama won the odd-delegate districts, and they split the even delegates.
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p>Of course, there are more electoral distortions created at the caucus site level by the state delegates there…
that needs to be put out of its (and our) misery immediately.
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p>Clinton won Nevada because more people voted for her than for anyone else. Any other interpretation only denigrates the efforts of the Nevadans who showed up. Let’s honor them by respecting what they had to say.
but even if these were done as a real primary using the same districts, if the vote proportions were the same, you’d still have more delegates going to Obama even though he got less votes.
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p>Some one was telling me that even if Clinton wins California by 6%, Obama could still get 2 more delegates (I might have those numbers backwards, I haven’t checked it out myself). But basically in terms of demographics and geographically broad-based support, Obama does have a delegate-count advantage