Finally media picking up on it: "Clinton's 'double-digit' win? Not exactly "

[mystieus]

Posted April 23, 2008 8:29 AM

By Paul West

Newspaper readers and network TV viewers awoke this morning to word of Hillary Clinton's 10-percentage point victory in Pennsylvania. An obsession with her precise margin, part of the buildup by her campaign and the news media, dominated election-night coverage and was regarded as an important indicator of her resilience and Barack Obama's failure to close the sale.

Before the votes were counted in Pennsylvania, a Clinton victory in the mid single digits would be seen as good, not great, some said. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, her leading supporter in the state, said that high single digits would be significant. But double digits was something else. A 10-point win would be "extraordinary," said Rendell.

Getting to double digits would match her primary victory in next-door Ohio last month, which she won by 10 points, and signal Obama's inability to make substantial progress despite heavy spending and six weeks of in-person campaigning.

It also sounds more impressive.

Based on nearly complete returns, however, it doesn't appear that Clinton quite got there. According to the latest Associated Press tally, with less than one percent of precincts yet to be counted (50 of 9,218 precincts), Clinton is leading Obama by 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent. That works out to a winning margin of 9.4 percent.

The elections division of the Pennsylvania Secretary of State's office, which also has more than 99 percent of the districts in (9,177 of 9,263) gives Clinton 54.3 percent and Obama 45.8 percent, a Clinton advantage of 8.5 percent.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/clintons_doubledigit_win_not_e.html

[underpants]

1. Keep this handy Hillary supporters

http://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/ncarolinasites.html

[blogslut]

2. Yep

Except, it's now 8.6%

http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/ElectionsInformation.aspx?FunctionID=12&ElectionID=27

But most definitely not double digits.

[Tarc]

3. The only people "obsessed" with percentage points are the O-Bots

9 or 10 or eve 8 is stil la resounding victory. Pathetic Obamaniacs are trying to spin this any ways they can, and have resorted to fractional dithering.

[zulchzulu]

8. Tell me, Einstein. Is 9 a "double digit" in your World?

If the lead is 8.5 or even 9.4, is that a "double-digit" lead? Yes or no...

[Tarc]

16. What I'll tell you, O-Bot, It is close enough that it really doesn't matter

"distinction without a difference", as the saying goes. Your boy lost last night. Suck it up and move on.

[shraby]

28. Wrong! It does matter..in the amount of

money she can raise, the amount of delegates she won, the perceptions the super-delegates will have of her chances, and even tho popular vote numbers doesn't count in the primaries, Obama is still in the lead. In fact he leads period.

[dchill]

33. Is it your privilege as a "winner" that makes you so...

insulting, or a deeper knowledge that a 9% or 10% "victory" is really nothing of the sort. Your "girl" needed more than double the exaggerated "double digit" win she pulled out last night to even think about winning even a shot at superdelegate support or some irrelevant "popular vote" psychological victory. So, aside from crap claims or derogatory racial insinuations, whattya really got, Tarc? Nada.

[zulchzulu]

35. So you are willing to let a LIE be the "truth" in your petty World?

Is the number 9 the same as the number 10?

I see why you support The Monster.

[Tarc]

48. You really are kinda dim, aren't you?

They predicted 10, they got 9.4 or so. Seeing you kool-aid sippers try to spin that as a massive defeat is abso-fucking-lutely hilarious. :rofl:

[Major Hogwash]

44. Go tell your boss that when he gives you a paycheck for 39.5 hours worked this week.

Getting shorted once is not such a big deal, but it all adds up in the end.

Getting shorted by only half an hour a week is 26 hours in 1 year.

[Tarc]

47. Ever take a course in elementary logic, kiddo?

If so, please sue your university, as you were seriously shortchanged in your education.

[Major Hogwash]

49. Hahahaha! Sonny, if you think you got the nads, give it your best shot!

Seriously.

[zulchzulu]

36. BREAKING: The number 9 is now the same as the number 10!

Wow. Who woulda thunk....

:crazy:

[futureliveshere]

9. That would be true if it was not a 20points gap a month ago. Obama reduced the gap by more than 1/2.

[irish.lambchop]

17. I'm with Harry Truman on this. If you can't stand the heat . . .

get out of the kitchen.

[mmonk]

18. Because the "hillbots" were and their cheerleaders in the media.

Clinton is further away than before the Penn. primary because the road shortened. She really needed a bigger win.

[redqueen]

30. Resounding victory? When she was up by 20 points?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5623151

[Triana]

4. This is probably the first and last you'll see/hear of it.

The lamestream press isn't known for its forthrightness and accuracy. It has its own agenda.

[SunsetDreams]

5. It's a Media/Clinton Spin! K&R

[4themind]

6. we'll see how it plays out

but it seems often, that by the time full math which helps obama comes out, the MSM is already running their old meme on things.

[BlooInBloo]

7. TPM finally got it right...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/190799.php

AP's current numbers, which most media sites (including TPM) are showing is ...

Clinton 1,258,245 54.69%
Obama 1,042,297 45.31%

So according to TPM numbers wizard Eric Kleefeld, that's actually a 9.39 point spread, not 10. I trust this has acquitted us of our mathematical responsibilities for the day.

[mod mom]

10. I wrote Josh this am asking why his site was using numbers different from PA SOS

and linked to it. I also asked if he could find out the # of provisional ballots cast (which will probably favor Obama.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Doesn't matter who it favors. The only thing that matters is the truth.

[beachmom]

25. There is a problem with the SoS PA site, which is frankly quite maddening.

Apparently there is a discrepancy of 13K votes in Lancaster Co. The AP has better numbers.

[mystieus]

11. tpm got it right

[rox63]

12. Check the official PA election results page

Link is upthread. The gap is now down to 8.6%.

[blogslut]

29. Refresh the page

It's gone to 9.2

There are 52 districts left.

Regardless, it ain't no double digits and even if it were, it doesn't mean much in the overall. The numbers have been against her for months. She's not going to win this nomination.

[Coexist]

24. yup

[City Lights]

14. The talking bobble heads on teevee already have their narrative and

have no intention of letting facts get in the way. They've been keeping her afloat for awhile and are part of the problem. If her name was Hillary Jones, she would have been laughed out of the race a long time ago. And if their pledged delegate counts were switched, he would have been laughed out long ago.

[nichomachus]

15. Not to worry

It really doesn't matter what the media says. The people who matter at this point -- superdelegates and the people who donate huge chunks of money -- are political animals. They look at the real numbers and they can calculate the percentages in their heads down to five decimal points. They don't rely on the newspapers or the teevee to tell them what to think.

[4themind]

19. It's double digits

if you consider 9.4 as having two digits.

[mystieus]

21. Yup

[RobertSeattle]

20. Hey - in binary, it is TRIPLE DIGIT!!!

:evilgrin:

[dchill]

34. But in real terms, it's NOT ENOUGH!!!

:shrug:

[RobertSeattle]

37. Depends on the imaginary vector

See, The HRC Campaign is using the imaginary numbers that are in the formt A + Bi so if the B component is big, the their imaginary number will be "longer" than the Obama number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number

[dchill]

39. I'm all about that, as long as it's observed that...

the imaginary number's "squared value is a real number not greater than zero." Rules are rules.
:)

[Emit]

22. Well, 8.5 does have two digits

[indimuse]

23. Hey..

Obamacans,

YOu LOST!! BIG FAIL!!! Obama is LOSER! He can't WIN!! 3x's the amount Hillary spent...ha! Obamam can't fix shit!! Bad bad investment! I don't think he'll give you your money back...sorry!

[beachmom]

26. Hillary's support is eroding. Her numbers went down in nearly

every white demographic in PA compared to OH.

The truth is Hillary won PA, AS EXPECTED. That does not make Obama loser. Or do you want me to write a similar message when Obama trounces Clinton in NC, AS EXPECTED, and then you write another message when she trounces him in KY & WV, AS EXPECTED? And then I throw it back at you when Obama trounces her in OR, AS EXPECTED?

You get my drift. Indiana will mean bragging rights, though, for whoever wins it.

[Inuca]

31. What a lovely muse you are

truly inspiring.

And as a side thought: I wonder why he was able to spend so much.... any inspiring thoughts on this?

[EnviroBat]

43. Please, just please....

[jobycom]

27. People around here act like this is their first election.

This is all standard. The votes are still being counted. CNN and the "official" states' election returns never match completely. When ballots are counted at the local level, the numbers are reported to a variety of sources, and sometimes they are just posted in a central location. The media uses a source who reports these results to them, and the states get the numbers through some official reporting system. As with any human endeavor, things don't go perfectly. Numbers are reported at different speeds, sometimes precincts post numbers wrong (transposed numbers and such)... imagine all the typos that you've ever posted, and realize that the people counting the votes make the same mistakes. And then there is the "official" unofficial results pages, which post the states numbers, sometimes slower than the media gets them, sometimes faster.

There is rarely complete agreement until the final tally.

The media sites are reporting a higher vote total for both candidates than the PA SOS page, too, which might mean PA is slower at posting numbers, or it might mean that the media's reporting service (they usually all use the same one) got something wrong. We'll see. But the media's numbers calculate out to 54.7 (which by every rounding system is rounded to 55) to 45.3 (which by every rounding system is rounded to 45). CNN's web page was reporting that Clinton won "by around 10%." The rounding is normal (I'm sure one could find Obama results given the same advantage somewhere). That's why polls don't always add to 100%, for instance.

According to the PA SOS page, Obama's lead calculates out to a .9% higher total than the media service. So that's almost 1%, but now the numbers can be rounded to 54% to 46%, and that .9% gain gets rounded to a 2% gain. Numbers are fun.

There's nothing necessarily sinister in all this, just normal procedure. We've all seen it a million times, if we've watched a million elections closely enough to compare SOS pages to media returns. Some of us do that. Usually in a big win, no one follows the results to within a fraction of one point, but this election is different, so people notice.

[RBInMaine]

32. Email PA Sec. of State to release TRUTH about the numbers.

[uponit7771]

38. THANK YOU!!

[Scurrilous]

40. K & R

:thumbsup:

[helderheid]

41. Have I welcomed you to DU yet?

:hi:

[FrenchieCat]

42. 8.5 is not 10!

Glad someone knows math.

[JMDEM]

45. There was an error on the PA state website, which has been corrected

They gave Obama way too many votes in Lancaster county. It has been corrected.

With the late votes trickling in from Philly and surrounding areas, the ACCURATE totals are now that Hillary has a 9.2% lead. IMHO, the remaining votes, from heavily Obama-oriented precincts, will drive that down to 9%.

9% is not double digits.

Even with the current figures of 9.2%, this does NOT round off to 10%. We need to write all the MSM outlets and tell them loudly that their figures are wrong.

[jenmito]

46. I emailed the MSM outlets and hope everyone else does, too!

:hi: