January 19-25th 2008
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Editorial: Which Democrat really won Nevada?

Truman_Dewey

Which Democrat really won Nevada?

As the photo on the left shows, sometimes the winners of elections are also wrongly reported.

But the half-story reported about this recent Nevada Democratic primary has no such excuse as inaccurate polling or inaccurate reporting of initial voting. This half-story seems to indicate the media either doesn't understand the real-world political process or they are unable to report or explain the news properly.

Presidential elections are not decided by popular votes. Some think this should be changed but the fact is that this is not only how it is, how it has been since the nation was founded but also a notable and often discussed aspect of recent elections: Al Gore, for example, clearly won the most number of popular votes but wasn't elected president (and some say he actually won the most number of delegates but that's another story).

In fact: Barack Obama won more delegates in Nevada than Hillary Clinton.
 And the second, even bigger fact is that it's the number of delegates that count not the percentage of popular vote.

To be totally accurate it could be said: Barack Obama won the most number of delegates and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. But to say Hillary won is being oblivious to our political process.

Dewey didn't beat Truman. Truman beat Dewey. You'd hope the media would understand that by now.

Perhaps, too, the fact that Barack Obama got a significant number of Republican votes should ring a few bells.