In the recent Nevada caucuses for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has widely been pronounced the winner. There's only one problem. Barack Obama won.

Did Obama get the most votes? No. And in that sense, Hillary won. But he got the most votes in the right precincts, meaning that he comes out of Nevada with 13 delegates for the national convention and Hillary has 12. Let me repeat that... when it comes to delegates, which is the actual important number that will determine who gets the nomination, Obama came out with one more than Clinton.

Yet in various articles, Hillary is proclaimed as the winner in Nevada. Excuse me? Were all these reporters who proclaim Nevada a win for Hillary still unborn twinkles in their parents' eyes back in 2000 when it was forcefully demonstrated to this entire nation that the overall popular vote is basically meaningless?

In an election where the electorate is broken up into smaller groups worth one or more "electors" or "delegates", the measure of success is not what percentage of the total vote you win, but what percentage of the groups you win. You could win 12 out of 25 groups with a huge margin, but lose the other 13 by a close vote. You come out with more votes, but less groups... and you lose. That's how Gore lost to Bush in 2000. That's how Hillary lost to Obama in Nevada.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not invested in Hillary or Obama's wins or losses right now. But I am invested in calling "shennanigans" when the media either applies or buys spin that tries to make things look different than they really are.

When you talk about who won in Nevada, by the measure that matters... delegates... Obama did. End of story.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Politics & Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.