or Why the Pledged Delegate Count Is the 'Real' Popular Vote

When confronted with the facts of Obama's now large and insurmountable lead in pledged delegates or his victories in the vast majority of contests, Clinton supporters and even (especially?) news commentators often point to the relatively close popular vote totals as an important justification why Clinton should stay in the race. More importantly, the closeness of the popular vote is being used to encourage superdelegates to commit their vote to her. And indeed, whereas Obama is winning the pledged delegate count 52% to 46%, the stated popular vote on the RCP page still shows a fairly tight race with Obama ahead just 49.5% to 46.9%.

But is the popular vote really a useful indicator of overall candidate preference in the Democratic nomination process?

No, it is not.

The reason is simple:  the nomination is a heterogeneous amalgam of various selection methods by the different states. Caucuses, due to the far greater time commitment involved, are never going to enjoy the kind of participation that primaries do. The states select delegates for this very reason, so that whatever system each state uses, their voting results are given the proper weight in proportion to their relative number of Democratic voters.

The delegate totals are actually the "popular" vote, or at least as close as we're ever going to get.

So if Clinton is down by 6% in the popular vote, why is she still around?