It's the delegates, stupid! Why talk of "who won NH" is fundamentally RETARDED [View All]

[theredpen]

"Hillary wins New Hampshire" — that's the headline isn't it? She got 39% of the votes and Barack got 37% of the vote. He came in second, we're told. But...

In the context of "delegates won," then Clinton and Obama tied for first place with 9 delegates each.

So what if there was some problem tallying the votes, and the results should have been more like the Suffolk University pre-election poll predicted? Then Obama would have gotten 39% votes and Clinton 34%. Today's news cycle and online discussion would be filled with continued talk about Hillary's demise and breathless predictions of how "unstoppable" Barack Obama's campaign is proving. But...

If the Suffolk U. polls had proven accurate, Clinton and Obama would have tied for first place with 9 delegates each.

Several polls showed Obama with a wider lead over Clinton; had those proven accurate, Obama would have, once again, "trounced" Clinton by one — maybe two — delegates.

What I haven't seen mentioned anywhere are the superdelegates, of which New Hampshire has five. Three of them were already pledged to Obama and two to Clinton, so really, Obama did win New Hampshire (unless the superdelegates change their votes, which they can do). As others have also pointed out: the real winner of the night was the Democratic party, which attracted a much greater turnout and many, many, first-time voters; it the Republicans look like they'll lose NH's electoral votes and that's the most important thing.

If there were problems with the Diebold machines miscounting votes, then by all means those should be brought to light.

But this rancor over who won — or should have one — the New Hampshire primary is nothing but Creeping Freeperism. Seriously, I can find nearly identical threads on both DU and FR alleging improprieties in the voting process. I ask: to what end? In order to change the delegate outcome, you'd have to have suppressed Obama's vote, or elevated Clinton's, by thousands more votes. I haven't seen any estimates of how different the votes tallies "should" have been, but unless Obama was shorted by more than 20,000 votes, or Clinton was shorted more than 10,000 votes, the number of delegates won would be the same as it is now. Given the magnitude of the total vote, this kind of miscount would be HUGH!!!1!!

As it is, the data regarding hand and automatic counts that I've seen would change nothing. The only difference would be the crowing over and spinning of the difference in vote percentages.

And the vote percentages don't matter at the convention: delegates matter.

Get a fucking grip everyone.

Update:
Of course it's about "perception" — if it was about the actual process of nominating the candidate, we'd hear about delegates, not vote percentages. Who's "perception" of "momentum" are some people desperately squabbling over? Are the Democratic base, or the Dem-leaning independents really that shallow and stupid? God damn, I hope not. Anyone who claims that the big issue is "perception" and not "reality" is part of the problem.

Look at where "perception" has gotten us in 7 years.