This year, 30 states have held presidential primaries (counting D.C. as a state). As noted in an earlier post, the cumulative vote totals for the leading major party presidential candidates are: Hillary Clinton 13,920,268; Barack Obama 13,855,412; John McCain 7,613,865.
Although 12 more presidential primaries are yet to occur, one can imagine that McCain’s vote total will never catch up to the vote totals for the two leading Democrats. If the U.S. used the “top-two” system that Washington state will be using this year, the general election would be between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; no one else would be allowed on the November ballot.
The 12 presential primaries that lie in the future are: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Not all of those primaries will choose delegates.
I understand your point BUT… given a choice of Obama and Clinton or Obama and McCain or Clinton and McCain… it really doesn’t matter!
I’d be fine with Obama or McCain, actually. But it’s beginning to look like old George McGovern is right: Hillary can’t win as long as she is a woman. Here’s a good thread on the topic:
http://digits.hrblock.com/ssDigits/digits.php?rType=1&sPath=1839&sNode=1839&uId=289
That is very misleading, as most States have close primaries, and in some of the States th Republican Party nomination was already “decided”. Meaning that some people who would have voted, stayed home.
While looking for some other stuff, I came across an amendment proposed by Sen. Charles Sumner for popular election of the President via a Top-3 process. The first round would have been held in April, and if it failed to produce a majority winner, the 2nd round would have been held in October among the top 3 from the 1st round. It would have abolished the vice presidency.
This may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on the Internet, and that’s saying something. Shows a complete lack of understanding as to the reason why there are primaries AND caucuses, which are party mechanisms to select candidates for a general election. If you want to change to a candidate rather than party driven system, you have to eliminate the parties. Using a party-run primary system to provide insight to direct elections requires a logical non sequitur–the results of primaries can in no way be used as a predictor or indicator of what direct balloting results would look like.
Also, I don’t know where those numbers are coming from, certainly not Reality-land.
Anybody who wants to see a state-by-state breakdown of the Dem presidential primary vote (for the top 8 candidates) and a similar chart for the Rep (also for the top 8) can see the paper issue of Ballot Access News for April 1. If you don’t subscribe, tell me your postal address and I’ll send you a copy.
22 of the 30 jurisdictions that already had a presidential primary let independents vote in the party of their choice, and that doesn’t include California among the 22 (in Calif., independents could vote in the Dem primary but not the Republican one). The only states that have had a presidential primary so far this year that wouldn’t independents vote in either major party primary have been Arizona, Delaware, DC, Florida, Maryland, New York, and Oklahoma (and I’m not sure about Louisiana, but I think independents could vote in the Dem primary but not the Rep one).
If the general election were a top two runoff, all parties would still find a way to chose one candidate each — perhaps by retaining the current state-run primaries in many states. So if Clinton and Obama were both candidates, one or the other would be running as an independent or the candidate of an as-yet-unnamed new party.
More generally, the electoral formula really does matter. You can’t infer people’s votes under system B from the way they voted under system A.
NONPARTISAN Approval Voting NOW — for executive and judicial offices — pending MAJOR public education about YES/NO with Number Voting (1, 2, etc.)
Vote for 1 or more, highest wins.
Way too difficult for control freak party hacks.
Suppose this article used real numbers!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
Popular Vote Total Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA
Obama-13,689,521 / Clinton- 12,862,037 Obama +827,484 +3.0%
The Real Clear Politics web page is excellent, for what it does. But (as it makes clear) it combines caucuses and primaries. Also it omits the Washington primary results (as it again makes clear).
Also, it relies on not quite complete totals from Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee, and Delaware.
All the Ballot Access News state totals are final and official. And the Ballot Access News compilation is just primaries, not caucuses. The original point was to pretend that “top-two” was in effect in the whole USA, so to make the comparison as meaningful as possible (and there are lots of problems with the comparison), Ballot Access News just used primaries, not caucuses.
“Suppose this article used real numbers!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
Popular Vote Total Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA
Obama-13,689,521 / Clinton- 12,862,037 Obama +827,484 +3.0%”
These numbers exclude Florida and Michigan, and Obama hopes that the final numbers will exclude them as well. His surrogates tried to get the media to run HRC out of the race before Ohio and Texas, because they were afraid she would win there. They want her to drop out now, because they’re afraid that she will win Pennsylvania. Obama is trying to block revotes in Florida and Michigan, because he’s afraid that winning in Pennsylvania will give her momentum and victories in these states as well.
For all of this “new politics” of “hope” and “change”, there seems to be an awful lot of fear of the will of the voters! I’m saying all of this in spite of the fact that I can’t stand Hillary Clinton.
When you include the votes from the caucuses, Obama has the lead.
Jim R #4: What if there had been no majority winner in the second round? Would there have been a third round? (Since it was a “top three” system, I assume not.)
Consider all the possible final choices in a “top two” 2008 presidential election: McCain v. Obama; McCain v. Clinton; McCain v. Huckabee; McCain v. Romney; Obama v. Clinton; Obama v. Edwards; Clinton v. Edwards; McCain v. Edwards; Kucinich v. Paul, etc., etc.
Steve Rankin #13: The candidate with the most votes would have been elected.