A while back Rasmussen showed the same thing.

The numbers are so overwhelming that I don't see that they can be turned around by any amount of spin.

Superdelegates had better take notice. Obama supporters might as well throw in the towel on trying to get their way based only on pledged delegates.

Most Americans - I'm not talking about us political obsessives - believe that the legitimate winner of an election is the person who received the most votes when all votes are counted.  Given how close this election is, it's going to be very hard for the party to nominate the candidate who got fewer votes.  

Or, put another way, imagine Al Gore or Howard Dean going on television and explaining why the party elders went with Candidate X over Candidate Y.  The easiest answer, the one that leads to the least room for extended criticism is "[S]he got the most votes."  Sure, the other candidate's supporters will whine about electability or the Super Delegates not voting their consciences, but that won't have any real traction, with most voters or the media.  

Treating a primary vote the same as attending a caucus "disenfranchises" States of their rightful weighting in the overall process since there are many people who didn't attend caucuses that would have voted in a primary.  If your favored candidate is winning leading up to either an election or a caucus, you don't have as much reason to make the time commitment (especially in a caucus).  Being told after the fact that those votes were going to count for something other than delegate selection, ha ha, you should have known that the rules were going to change, now that's disenfranchisement.  Non-voters in Florida made a choice; changing the consequences of that choice after the fact doesn't remedy the flaws in the process, it just replaces one flaw with another.

If closed primaries are better than open primaries because then only committed, registered Democrats can participate, why shouldn't caucuses be considered better than primaries?

Obama's desire to count only pledged delegates is silly, that wasn't the set up at the beginning of the process.  Clinton's desire to have the popular vote count for something is equally silly.  The caucus States deserve their share of influence over the choice of nominee, and the superdelegates can decide if the caucus process skews things so much that their intervention is necessary.

(1) dilutes the selection power of states who caucused, because far fewer people caucus than vote in a primary;

(2) does not reflect electability any better than the pledged delegate system, and probably reflects it less accurately, because the president is elected by the electoral college and not by popular vote; and

(3) unreasonably constrains them should they believe that a candidate who earns fewer delegates and fewer popular votes is for important, fundamental reasons more electable.

I feel fairly confident that the vast majority of those people (46%) who believed that the popular vote should be dispositive are unaware that this result dilutes the selection force of the caucus states so significantly.

The delegates have discretion for a reason.  They are not ministerial (unless perhaps state law says otherwise).

That's the only problem here - popular count is reflecting two states where the candidates didn't compete - one of which whose name was not on the ballot, and caucus states counts that drastically undercounts, and thus dis-enfranchises - those states.

So by "popular vote" - is really a matter of which popular vote count you accept.

The ones that, officially, don't include FL and MI?
The ones that include FL, but not MI?
The ones that give some estimates for popular votes, in the caucus states?
The caucus states as if there were primary votes?

At any rate, the super-delegates understand these issues, and understand that the popular vote count is, at best, a range.

Within that range, the count is going to be close - within the Margin Of Error, so to speak, unless there is a drastic turn away from demographics, at this point.

So the other factors will come into play - who is ahead in pledged delegates, who has the ability to draw in the most number of new people, who is the most charismatic, who has won the most states -

basically, all of these resolve to the final answer - who does that super-delegate think is "best".

1.  There is a range of how to count popular votes.
   
2. Based on the methods of counting popular votes, it is likely, at the end of the primaries, the popular vote difference between the two candidates will be smaller than the range. (Example - right now, in 6 of the 7 ways to count popular vote, Obama is ahead.)
   
3. This Margin Of Error is greater than the popular vote range totals, at the end of all primaries.
   
4. Popular vote will need to be discounted, or acknowledged as essentially tied, unless one or the other candidate is ahead in almost all ways of counting votes.
   
5. Other factors will matter more.

shouldn't people ask the states to release the numbers and see before we start saying the popular vote will decide?

if the state says no what can we do? I am pretty sure punishing voters because of what the state does was decried as a bad idea, so if even 1 state won't release it then we can't use popular vote.

And I think we should push for that to happen in 2012.

But what's done is done in 2008 and we shouldn't change the rules when the data is wrong.

Problem is that so many have already committed, some against the will of their state (are you listening Kerry and Edwards?) that I don't see how this is workable.

The candidates are both great and terrible in their own ways, but both better than McCain, so whichever is chosen, so be it.  I obviously prefer Obama for my own reasons, but if Clinton gets it, thats that.

I have, in an attempt to think in the fairest and most un-biased manner I can, tried to come up with 'the formula' for which super delegates should use for making their choice.  And you know what Ive come down to?  Nothing.

There is no 'one' factor or weight that is 'completely right'.  In the end if the super likes the breed of the dog the candidate has and thats why they choose them, whatevs.

My personal rationale would be, if there is a sizeable pledged delegate leader (factoring Florida with a penalty and nothing for Michigan barring revote) and there is no appreciable offsetting popular vote lead for the non pledged delegate leader and the pledged delegate leader has not cratered completely in the last contests, I would go with the pledged delegate leader.  Barring those facts, who knows.

But, the system was set up as is and the supers can do as they wish.  Ive come to the conclusion that no matter their decision, it will not please half the voters so no matter what they do half of us will be offended because they didnt follow 'our' rationale (or more accurately, they didnt choose our candidate).