In an article posted to the New York Daily News, Activist and writer Shaun King made a startling revelation which could change the way we view the entire Democratic primary race.
Since the tide has turned in the direction of Hillary Clinton, the candidate has put much emphasis on her apparent lead in the popular vote. According to Hillary Clinton, she leads Sanders by more than 3 million votes nationwide. This is the number that we hear cited commonly at events and in corporate media. This number helps to give legitimacy to Clinton’s campaign in the face of Sanders’ populist message. Though Sanders may complain about how the system is rigged and wonder why Superdelegates aren’t more loyal to their constituency, Clinton has always had the power of the popular vote behind her.
But what King revealed in his groundbreaking article is that the 3 million vote advantage Clinton holds is a lie.
This is due to the fact that primary races don’t just feature voters going out and casting a ballot. Instead, several states opt to hold caucuses where a group of representatives vouch for their candidate. The candidate with the most representatives in the room wins in that district, and the candidate which wins the most districts is the winner of the state.
One interesting feature of this alternate method of primary choosing is that actual individual votes are not gathered, thus, no votes go to the winning candidate. Bernie Sanders has tended to win most caucusing states. Though Sanders may sweep a state, sometimes taking more than 70 percent of the caucus vote, these numbers do not translate to individual popular votes, thus adding nothing to the overall tally. These are states with millions of Sanders supporters, who, due to the system in their state, are not counted among the millions in competition with Clinton’s big number advantage.
For instance, @BernieSanders won 81% in Alaska.
Not a single of those votes are included in the popular vote tallies.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 19, 2016
Washington State has 7.2 million people. @BernieSanders won 71% of the votes. NONE of those votes count in the “popular vote totals”.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 19, 2016
The American people have been mislead by this number of popular votes for months now, and the truth is that it is just a small portion of the nation who are making up this demographic.
Make no mistake that Clinton is still leading, and holds a significant advantage. But as King points out, this race will absolutely come down to the Superdelegate vote. For that vote to be based on an incorrect score of national voters would be ignoring the reality of the Democratic demographic. Superdelegates need to weigh their decision carefully, and we need to begin to see this race for what it is: a close and competitive race that is nowhere close to being over.
