leifw

Go look at the headlines tonight. They proclaim that on the Democratic side Clinton won Nevada. Look a little closer. You'll see Clinton won the count of state delegates with better than 50%. Unfortunately, Presidential candidates are not nominated based on the count of state delegates; they're nominated based on the number of delegates to the national convention. By that metric Obama got 13 and Clinton received 12. Who won? Who won the 2000 Presidential election? It wasn't the candidate who received the most votes.

On the Republican ballot in South Carolina, the media declares it a close contest with McCain garnering 33% of the vote and Huckabee 30%. However, on the metric that actually matters, convention delegates, McCain got 19 delegates and Huckabee only 5. What appears at first to be a 10% difference is nearly a 300% difference.

Yes, it's easy to snipe at the media. Yes, I'm going to do it anyway.

Journalists: lazily reporting elections for at least half a century.