Obama Inching Up In Popular Vote Tally As Votes Continue To Be Counted

by Todd Beeton [courtesy of MyDD]

After watching Meet The Press this morning, it's become clear that a new conventional wisdom has developed around the superdelegate controversy: that the Clinton campaign has the better side of the argument, namely that superdelegates by their very nature and the rules they were established under are free to vote for whomever they choose, but that it will be a cold day in hell when the superdelegates hand the nomination to the candidate who has both a significant pledged delegate and popular vote lead. It's just not going to happen. The definition of "significant" is what's tricky here, of course, sort of a "you know it when you see it" sort of thing I guess, but what's clear is, as I wrote on Friday, that if Clinton can't close the pledged delegate gap, she's going to greatly benefit from a popular vote lead in order to prevent superdelegates from abandoning ship or breaking for Obama. So the news out of New York and California of Obama increasing his vote tallies there, almost 2 weeks since Super Tuesday, can't be encouraging.

First, this disturbing report from some messed up voting machines in New York City (umm, why do we still use those things again?)

...A review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among [New York] city's 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly -- and unofficially -- on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn -- where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton -- she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

As kos writes, Clinton got zero votes in some districts as well, so it's not entirely clear who will have a net gain here -- votes are still being counted and verified -- but it certainly looks like Obama will.

And here in California, David Dayen at calitics updates us on the tightening popular vote, which once gave Clinton a 10+% lead, now that's down to 9.2%. Again, it's premature to jump to conclusions about the final vote tally, but the movement since election day has been entirely in Obama's direction and may even result in an extra pledged delegate for him.

In CA-53 in San Diego, additional votes have given Barack Obama a 443-vote lead in a district he trailed in.  This being a 5-delegate district, he would get a 3-2 split there now if counting ended today.  He's creeping up in CA-50 as well, within 556 votes.

Clinton aide Harold Ickes on a conference call yesterday said, in the LA Times's words, Clinton "would nearly catch Obama in the delegate race" were she to win Ohio and Texas on March 4th. But this analysis factors superdelegates into the equation, which is problematic since, again by their nature, they are fluid and unpledged. I'd be curious to hear their estimates as for what sort of popular vote lead they expect Obama to have after March 4th. According to NBC News's most recent count (which was the same count used on Meet The Press today,) Obama is currently up by approximately 700,000 votes.