Popular Vote vs. Electors/Delegates -- Remember Florida 2000?

Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S. News and World Report, discusses the ever escalating war of words between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps.

The particular battlefield of which he speaks concerns the Clinton claim of having won primaries/caucuses in states that have more electoral votes in the general election.

"True," writes Barone. "By my count, Clinton has won 14 states with 219 electoral votes (16 states with 263 electoral votes if you include Florida and Michigan) while Obama has won 27 states (I'm counting the District of Columbia as a state, but not the territories) with 202 electoral votes. Eight states with 73 electoral votes have still to vote.

"In percentage terms," Barone continues, "Clinton has won states with 41% of the electoral votes (49% if you include Florida and Michigan), while Obama has won states with 38% of electoral votes. States with 14% of the electoral votes have yet to vote."

That information has some value for judging the relative strength of the candidates within the party, but Democrats won't be the only ones voting in November. Republicans and independents also will be voting. And John McCain also will be trying to attract the votes of centrists who feel the philosophies of both Clinton and Obama are too far to the left for them.

For example, Clinton's numbers include Texas. I live in Texas, but I don't think that Clinton will defeat McCain here in November -- if Clinton is the nominee. And Obama has been winning primaries in Southern states that haven't voted for a Democrat in more than three decades. Does anyone think Texas or states in the deep South, like Mississippi or South Carolina, will vote for a Democrat for the first time in 32 years?

So, yes, it's true that Clinton has won almost all of the large state primaries. Yes, it's also true that Obama has received more popular votes in the Democratic primaries than Clinton. But that isn't the whole story.

Remember 2000? Al Gore may very well have received more popular votes in Florida than George W. Bush did. But the Supreme Court halted the recount and allowed Bush to win Florida based on the votes that had been counted up to that point.

And that permitted Bush to win the vote in the Electoral College -- even though Gore won the popular vote.

Do you want a more recent example? How about Connecticut in 2006?

Democrats who were opposed to the Iraq War and wanted to end American involvement there as soon as possible voted to nominate Joe Lieberman's opponent in Lieberman's bid to be renominated for his Senate seat. After losing the primary, Lieberman decided to continue running for re-election as an independent.

Democrats thought the nomination of Ned Lamont, Lieberman's challenger in the primary, was all that was needed to remove Lieberman from office. But Lieberman, who lost the party primary by about 10,000 votes, won the general election by more than 100,000 votes.

In Connecticut, nearly 45% of the state's voters are affiliated with neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. That's largely because nearly half of Connecticut's voters consider themselves centrists and do not identify with the left-leaning policies of the Democrats or the right-leaning policies of the Republicans.

When the Democratic primary was held, most of the participants were left-leaning individuals, and 52% of them voted for the candidate who was perceived to be against the Iraq War. That was Lamont.

The centrists' voices were not heard in the primary, but they were certainly heard in the general election.

Nationally, of course, the independent voters do not represent a share of the vote that is as large as that. Nevertheless, independent voters and disgruntled voters in both parties will decide who wins in November.

It will not serve the Democratic nominee, whether it is Clinton or Obama, to assume that victory in a state's primary will mean victory there in the general election and that no additional effort is needed.