CNN's missing votes

by: FearItself

Wed May 07, 2008 at 07:22

According to the CNN web site, with 99% of the precincts reporting, Obama has 56% of the Democratic primary vote in North Carolina, with 890,695 votes out of a total of 1,571,337 votes cast. Check with your calculator, though; that's 56.68% of the vote, which rounds to 57%, not 56%.

It's not that they don't know how to round; they correctly rounded Clinton's 41.87% (657,920 votes) up to 42%, after all.

The result is that Obama's 14.8% victory margin should round to 15%, not 14%. It's not just on the main primary page where this mistake happens; CNN.com writers refer to Obama's "14-point win" here, for example.

Weirdly, CNN did round Clinton's percentage up from 54.64% to 55% in Pennsylvania, although they then made a similar math error when they used already rounded numbers to calculate her margin of victory at 10 percentage points instead of 9.

I'm not suggesting they are in the tank for Clinton. I'm saying they are doing every little thing they can to stretch the Democratic nomination out as long as possible. Given the Republican bias of the mainstream news media, this is no surprise. We should expect (but not forgive) that they cherry-pick and spin the facts in order to promote that agenda. But this is MATH.

Also, since this math is all likely being done through automatic calculations on a spreadsheet, somebody at CNN must stepping in to replace the accurate numbers with inaccurate ones--purposefully lying to their audience. Yes, it's a small lie. But its such an obvious one that I'm left bewildered.

update:
Yes, I know that popular vote count is largely beside the point in the Democratic primary; it's delegates that matter. But the MSM, through a combination of venality, stupidity, and laziness, insists on covering the primary as if it followed exactly the same rules as the general election. If they're going to do that, they could at least do it correctly. I guess my point is that this small error is a very clear proof of their bias.

What Would it Take in NC to Erase Clinton's PA Pop Vote?

by: PocketNines

Mon May 05, 2008 at 14:40

The popular vote is a fallacy, as I've written before.  A brief recap:  1) Candidates would camp out in large urban areas like LA and Brooklyn and never spend so many millions trying to split 200,000 votes in the whole state of NH; 2) No state would rationally hold a caucus, thereby disenfranchising its say in the nomination selection; and 3) unlike the general election concept of one person, one vote, allowing independents or Republicans to vote in some states but not others badly skews the simplistic moral argument underpinning popular vote.

Tuesday night, I am watching two numbers.  First, if Obama takes down a combined 98 pledged delegates then pledged delegate checkmate can officially be declared, with the remaining 37 proportional races guaranteed to give Obama at least a minimum 1 vote and thus put him over the top on the minimum viability alone.

Second, I want to see Obama erase Clinton's PA popular vote gain, which would finally drive a stake into that argument.

This diary is a straightforward analysis of what it will take to regain 214,224 votes.

How We Changed a Delegate Slot from Clinton to Obama (check the math!)

by: howardpark

Sat Apr 05, 2008 at 11:26

This is the season for add-on delegates and PLEO delegate slots, many of which will be picked by state democratic parties.  Virtually every Democratic state & jurisdiction will allocate PLEO's & add on delegates.  Last Thursday, April 3, the District of Columbia, home of taxation without representation, became one of the first "states" to allocate delegates in the second tier delegate selection process and the members of the DC State Committee elected 2 pledged "PLEO" delegates (Party Leaders and Elected Officials).  PLEO's are different from Superdelegates, but it's the same idea -- the notion that any elected bigwig will be left behind when all the fun is had in Denver is deeply offensive to the politicians who write the rules.