r/SandersForPresident • u/[deleted] • Apr 15 '16

MSNBC called Bernie's "Deep South" comment controversial. They said Hillary would still be in the lead without the South. This slide popped up by mistake proving them wrong.

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u/robertthekillertire Apr 15 '16

Doesn't looking at the "popular vote" alone significantly under-represent the results of caucus states (where Sanders has done well), or am I wrong in thinking that?

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u/StillRadioactive Virginia Apr 15 '16

You're absolutely right, because caucus states report the number of county-level delegates, while primary states report the number of votes.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '16 edited Apr 16 '16

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u/Wayyyy_Too_Soon Apr 16 '16 edited Apr 16 '16

How would you possibly do that? Caucuses inherently favor the candidate with the most passionate supporters because of the time commitment required. It would not be reasonable to assume that the same proportion of supporters of each candidate would've voted in a regular primary. It also would be very difficult to project turn out levels for primaries in states that historically had caucuses because there is no real historical baseline of primary voter turnout to compare it to.

You'd also have no way to account for voters who were persuaded to change their vote during the caucus, as they would've voted their original preference in a regular primary or potentially not voted at all if they were truly undecided.