Landslide Ahead

As the following article shows, Obama and Clinton received a total of about 26 million votes in the primary race through the first week of March. There are 19 primaries remaining. But the Pennsylvania race is the only race in a state with a large population. Long story short, white men are skipping the primaries. Come November, white men will vote. The unknown Democratic candidate will get the black vote, the majority of the female vote. But not the majority of the white male vote. That bloc is going for McCain. Landslide. The question becomes which of the two Democratic hopefuls is best prepared for a brutal loss?

Total Popular Vote in Primaries
Barack Obama Extends Lead over Hillary Clinton in Actual Votes

Mar 7, 2008

Obama received 50.26% of the popular vote in the 31 Democratic primaries conducted through March 11.

Both Democrats topped McCain by more than five million votes.........

U.S. Senator Barrack Obama's lopsided victory in the Mississippi Democratic primary extended his lead over Senator Hillary Clinton to 138,692 votes in the first 31 Democratic presidential primaries.

The unofficial state-by-state count maintained by CNN gives Obama 13,023,873, or 50.26 percent of the 25,909,054 votes cast for the two of them. Clinton received 12,885,181votes or 49.73 percent of their combined total through March 11.

By comparison, U.S. Senator John McCain received 6,964,951 votes in the 29 primaries conducted by the Republican party through March 11. He wrapped up the GOP nomination the previous week. His total surpassed all other Republican candidates by wide margins.
With 99% of the precincts reporting on March 11, Obama was ahead of Clinton in Mississippi by 98,589 votes.

Like the popular vote in the November 4 presidential election, the total votes in the primaries provide the candidates with little more than bragging rights. The numbers might be used as material for campaign ads, for fund raising or to give some indication of how the candidates will fare in the general election.

Total Popular Vote Mostly Ignored by Media

The total primary numbers have received little attention in the news media.

The counts do not include any caucus votes since some of the caucuses are not open to all voters and the number of eligible voters varies with each state.

Clinton led Obama by more than 200,000 votes in the primaries through Super Tuesday. But she fell behind as Obama scored a series of primary victories in the weeks that followed.

See Presidential Primary Popular Votes.

Here’s where the candidates registered their biggest numbers:

McCain: California 1,093,560; Texas 709,477; Florida 693,508; Ohio 636,256; Illinois 424,071.

Obama: California 1,890,026; Texas 1,358,785; Illinois 1,301,954; Ohio 979,025; Georgia 700,366.

Clinton: California 2,306,361; Texas 1,459,814; Ohio 1,207,806; New York 1,003,623; Florida 857,208

Obama's Biggest Win Was In Illinois; Clinton's in California

Clinton scored her biggest victory in California, beating Obama by 416,335 votes.

Obama's most decisive victory was in his adopted state of Illinois, beating Clinton by 639,109. She is a native of Illinois, but has since moved to Arkansas and later to New York.

In most states, the CNN results accounted for 99 or 100 percent of the precincts.
As in the general elections, the Republican and Democratic nominees for president are not chosen by popular vote, but by the number of delegates who vote for them at the party conventions in August and September.

The impact of the popular vote is also lessened by the manner in which states allocate their delegates. Some direct all their delegates to the candidate with the highest popular vote, regardless of the margin. That means a candidate can lose the popular election by only a few votes and come away from that state with no delegates at all. Other states distribute the delegates in proportion to the popular vote.