There's an argument to be made that the winner of the popular vote has a more legitimate claim to the nomination. Indeed, Hillary Clinton is making this argument now. Whether or not you agree with her, she's getting the message out there, and the media is repeating her claim that she's ahead in the popular vote.
But there's a small problem here: if you cast the widest net of voters, she's not in the lead. And worse for her, by not casting the widest net, she invalidates her own argument.
By accepting the argument that the total will of the voters must be counted, the popular vote count must also include 173,664 Obama votes from Michigan, and 110,222 Obama votes from caucus state estimates. In the "widest net" scenario, Obama is winning by 109,839 votes.
She's making the case that voters matter more than rules. While we can go back and forth all day on what constitutes a legitimate election, in the end, the appearance of siding with voters is going to be a more compelling message than siding with rules. Put aside the fact that holding an illegitimate election disenfranchises voters and in no way reflects the will of the people. This is a technical argument with plenty of merit, but it's full of nuance and difficult to explain when placed side by side with "but Hillary has more votes".
So, the safer approach is to make sure Obama can win even by accepting the premise of her argument. Because, after all, if we accept her premise that the will of the voters is more important than rules and technicalities, then we are logically forced to acknowledge two simple facts:
(1) The four caucus states that didn't release vote totals still had voters show up.
(2) Obama had more than zero voters who showed up to the polls and wanted to vote for him in the only contest they had available to them.
We know that (1) is true because some number of voters showed up. If zero voters showed up, the caucuses would have been empty. So, we must include the caucus estimates.
We know that (2) is true because of exit polls. Uncommitted voters didn't vote to send uncommitted delegates to the convention; they showed up to vote for the candidate of their choice in the only contest available to them, but couldn't, through no fault of their own. The exit polls show that these uncommitted voters would have chosen Obama, Edwards, and Richardson.
Clinton can argue "but caucus states don't release vote totals and Obama wasn't on Michigan's ballot". Okay, fine, but she already agreed to throw out rules and technicalities. Either you must throw out all rules and technicalities and count all the votes, or you must accept that rules and technicalities are important, and throw out Florida and Michigan. You can't have it both ways.
So with that in mind, how do we get to a popular vote total of +109,839 Obama?
* We start with the
bottom line on the RCP popular vote total: Popular Vote (w/FL & MI) + Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA. This number is currently Clinton +63,825.
* Then we add in +173,664 Obama out of Michigan. Why 173,664? Chris Bowers
explains why. In a nutshell, you assign Hillary the votes in MI that she actually got, then estimate Obama's voter support based on the exit polls for Obama, Edwards and Richardson.
* The result: Clinton +63,825 (bottom line of RCP popular vote total) + Obama +173,664 (estimate out of Michigan) = +109,839 Obama.
He still wins the popular vote.
You may be asking, why does this exercise matter? Because if she pushes the argument that the will of the voters who showed up matters more than the rules, and if the media parrots back her popular vote total with no corrections, then she will continue to believe that she has a rationale to stay in the race. It's important that Obama wins not just by the actual, official rules, but also by any possible argument that the Clinton campaign can push to the media. And if the media insists on legitimizing her popular vote argument, then they should use the most accurate popular vote total possible.
(Maybe it's time for RCP to include a fourth set of numbers on their popular vote count page: a "widest net" count that includes caucus estimates and an estimate for Michigan. Michigan already gets an asterisk to explain the zero votes for Obama, and RCP is clearly open to including estimates. So why not a Michigan estimate too?)