pffft, its not about counting EVERYONE's vote, its only about counting Hillary's vote,

what if those people wouldn't have voted for Hillary? nope sorry thats not fair, only the people who voted in Big Blue State Primaries won by Hillary, (or red state primaries but they have to be won by Hillary) count.

everyone else doesn't even need a president.

Right.  Going by the popular vote is a veiled way of saying that caucuses don't count.

The absurdity of the position is going to be in full view when Hillary Clinton (mostly likely) nets several hundred thousand in the upcoming primary in Puerto Rico.  

That will mean, by implication, that Puerto Rico, which doesn't even vote in the general election, is more important that Maine, Nebraska, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Washingon, and Minnesota combined.

There's already a mechanism for measuring popular sentiment: elected delegates.

You should crosspost this on Kos.

This is simply another distraction. There's already a number of outlets reporting estimates from caucus states included in their popular vote totals, not least of which is Realclearpolitics.com:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/ 2008/president/democratic_vote_count.htm l

Popular Vote Total: 13,355,209   
49.5%-46.9%   12,638,123   Obama + 2.6%

Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA*: 13,689,293   
49.6%-46.6%   12,861,985   Obama + 3.0%

Popular Vote (w/FL): 13,931,423   
48.5%-47.1%   13,509,109   Obama + 1.4%

Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA*: 14,265,507   
48.6%-46.8%   13,732,971   Obama + 1.8%

I've heard it all now.

People are now arguing what votes a candidate would have received.

Jeez.  If only Kerry could haved argued that "if every registered Democrat in Ohio and Florida had voted, I would have won!"

If the caucus states had held primaries Obama would've received more votes?

Hello! Hillary would've received more votes too! And probably many more than Obama. Obama's supporters tend to be those that CAN caucus... students, the more well off, white collar workers that can get off early if they need to.

Hillarys are those who CAN'T, the elderly, shift workers who can NEVER get off early, those of lower income.

Thus, if caucus states had held primaries, I submit that Hillary's vote totals would've grown by more than Obama's and the difference would actually be a NET LOSS for Obama.

Though it is hilarious the straws some will grasp at in order to declare the people's votes don't count.

This analysis is just crackpot.

It "concludes" that in the caucus states Obama would have won ON AVERAGE by 16 points in primaries, and would have won in CO by 40 points, no less, and won WA by 25 points (this despite the fact that in the actual primary that followed the caucus in WA, Obama won by only 5%).

And if you look at the "demographics" it bases its conclusions on, comparing the caucus states with the primary states, it's just laughable that the small edge Obama has in the primaries states (a couple of  percentage points) could possibly translate into a 16 point advantage. Essentially, the only sizable difference in demographics is that in caucus states, the percentage of blacks is only 3.9 as opposed to 14.3 in primary states, and the percentage of Hispanics is 11.9 as opposed to 17.3. It's just inconceivable that those demographic shifts don't on balance favor Clinton: 90% of the black vote went to Obama, and only about 70% at most of the Hispanic vote went to Hillary, and there are more black votes lost than Hispanic votes, so that doing the multiplication Hillary might actually win over 5% overall of the vote balancing the two out.

I can only think that the thing that might possibly make up for this in their "model" is some absurd amount of weight placed on the "smallness" of the states -- as if that might be a critical variable.

How in general the AVERAGE of the caucus states of 16% might be as high as the very best result Obama had anywhere (outside of IL and WI, perhaps) in the primaries is beyond understanding.

What is completely inexcusable about this paper is that it gives no details about how it could justify these extreme results based on the information it presents.

Obviously, these people knew what they wanted to conclude, and cooked up a method to "validate" their result.

so now there's whining about caucuses not be truly representative of the voters? what? fewer numbers of people vote in them, so then why do they get so much weight when it comes to delegates? seems that if you're admitting they represent fewer voters, then the delegate numbers should reflect that.

If they would have had primaries in all the caucus states - -
The nomination race would be over.
Hillary would have clinched it long ago.

I think Texas is a clear enough example of how much the caucus process has favored Obama.  
Switch all the caucuses to primaries and Obama would have been done long ago.

Washington had both a caucus and a non-binding primary.

Unfortunately, most people who voted in the primary probably thought that their vote counted for something - whether they voted for Obama or Clinton.  It didn't.  The primary was just a beauty contest.  Kinda like Florida's - but let's not go there.

Caucus results -
Obama - 67.6
Clinton - 31.2

Primary results -
Obama - 51.2
Clinton - 45.6

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state .php?year=2008&fips=53&f=1&o ff=0&elect=1

What that tells me is that this "study" referenced by the diarists is pure assumption decked out in academic banter and bunting.

Anyone else having trouble opening the study (I use Acrobat 6.0 and can open other pdf files just fine)?

"When we forecast the likely outcome of hypothetical primaries in caucus states by using their demographic profiles to project vote outcomes based on national demographic voting patterns..."

that's a bogus assumption as he would not have carried as many states had they not been caucuses.   He's a master at somehow getting 1,000 to 10,000 more people to show up for him in caucuses, but to win a primary election you need 1-2 orders of magnitude more people to show up for you (100,000 - 1,000,000), and he's not that impressive in this department.