Of the votes that have been counted and tabulated independently, Clinton is up by 303,000 votes. Everything else is a guess, and you have to be very charitable to Obama in your guessing to give him the lead.

******************

The only way for Obama to be in the lead is if he gets the caucus estimates of 110,222 (which may be fair, although the unfairness overall of caucuses is well documented) plus ALL the MI uncommitted. In the exit polls, he got around 70% of the non-Clinton votes) so one were to give him anything for MI it would have to be 70% of the 238K of uncommitted (about 166K).

This leaves Hillary 27K ahead. After Montana and S Dakota this particular count will be almost tied, depending on turnout (probably 200K-400k combined) and margin.

Of course, as far as actual votes cast (which is how she usually expresses it) she is safely ahead. It's telling that the only way he can actch up is to be given votes he didn't receive.

Even 50-70% of Uncommitted in MI - which Obama supporters can argue is fair, is very generous. There were after all other candidates in the race at the time of the MI primary. I believe BTD has proposed such an adjustment. 75% of uncommitted is 178,626 votes and would make a difference by 60k. By that metric, Obama would be behind in that category as well, by about 15k votes.

Obama is only ahead if you give him the uncommitted in Michigan and count the above caucus states, and then it's by 44,605

If the MI uncommitted votes are apportioned between Obama, Edwards, and Richardson in accordance with the published exit polls, Obama's vote total drops by 64,504 votes.

With this correction/adjustment, Clinton leads by 19,899 votes under the scenario that includes FL/MI and the IA/NV/ME/WA estimates.

There are provisions in the Rules/Charter of the Democratic Party that it operate "in the sunshine".  

Yesterday, it was glaringly obvious that those provisions were violated with impunity.

Given the guesswork to come up with any  metric other than the delegate count... there is a large margin of error... and this race would be declared a tie by an unbiased observer. You'd need somebody not from earth though.

When it gets this complicated, you know you are in trouble.  Counting votes of those who did not vote is crazy.  Count the votes as voted.  If someone stayed home, so be it.  Others voted.  If someone withdraw his name from the ballot, then he needs to live with that choice.

This could be such a clear and clean perspective and really the only honest way to view it.  Leave the "uncommitted" as just that.  Let Obama contact them, if they support him, fine.  If they do not, then that is fine also.  

It's clear that Obama got a head start with some brilliant campaign strategies of storming the caucuses and mostly going after red states that are usually ignored. Quite clever. But when the real politics hit the road, he has failed. We see his limits. He can't compete in the contests that are the most important in a general election. And he can't withstand the scrutiny of his voting record, his personal circle of friends, or controversial things in his background. I'd wager that if there was vetting early on in the campaign, we would have seen every month be like the last four months.

If the results had been wildly at odds with the pledged delegates, Clinton would have a viable argument to bring to the convention.

But they are.

For argument sake lets not count Michigan one of three ways:
a) without caucus
b) with caucus
c) in states with caucus and primary using the primary results

"A" yields Obama +24,000 votes out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.1% Obama)

"B" yields Obama +134,000 votes out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.4% Obama)

"C" yields Obama +63,000 votes ("B" minus 50K for WA and minus 11K Nebraska) out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.3% Obama)

And yet in all scenarios out of 3346 pledged delegates, Obama leads by 120 delegates:
1709.5 Obama (51.1%)
1589.5 Clinton (47.5%)

So what is under the best scenario for Obama ("B") a 0.4% advantage in votes, is a 3.6% advantage in delegates.  Understand that's a DIFFERENCE BY NINE-FOLD!

If the allocation were equitable the delegate count would be the same as the popular vote and Obama would not have be up 51.1-47.5, he'd be up 49.5-49.1, in which case the breakdown would be:

1656 - Obama
1643 - Clinton

He'd be leading by 13 delegates instead of 120!  Again, a difference of 9-FOLD!

And with the guy losing every competitive contest since March, all the big states (except his own), all the swing states and performing poorly in major demographics and matching up worse in swing states against McCain vs. Clinton the Superdelegates would be just stupid to not compensate for the 13 vote pledged delegate advantage and nominate Clinton-Obama as the ticket.

No sane human being is going to believe what the Clinton campaign's numbers are asking them to believe: that Obama has no base of support in Michigan.

The point is - you can't count votes not counted.  It's like counting the disenfranchised voters who were scrubbed by Diebold as felons in Florida 2000 and claiming Gore victory on that basis.  Otherwise Edwards supporters could go to the convention and argue about how many votes and delegates he would have had he not dropped out before Super Tuesday.

Then the Kucinich supporters, Richardson, Biden and Dodd start making their claims.  Heck even the Draft Gore folk count the votes based on polling.  

Hillary won 8 states with 1,125,125 total votes(659,512 more than Obama):

1. Ohio (by 228,781 votes) ;
   
2. Rhode Island (by 33,635 votes);
   
3. Texas (by 95,731 votes, reduced by 5,298 caucus votes won by Obama);
   
4. Pennsylvania (by 214,224 votes);
   
5. West Virginia (by 147,551 votes);
   
6. Indiana (by 14,195 votes);
   
7. Kentucky (by 249,346 votes); and
   
8. Puerto Rico (by 141,662 votes).

1. North Carolina (by 222,859 votes);
   
2. Oregon (by 108,458 votes);
   
3. Mississippi (by 100,123 votes);
   
4. Wyoming; (by 2,066 caucus votes);
   
5. Guam (by 7 caucus votes) and
   
6. Vermont (by 32,100 votes).

a) Counts the Washington caucus vs. Washington primary: a 50K vote advantage for Obama

b) Nebraska caucus vs. Nebraska primary: a 11K vote advantage for Obama

People here are posting their own numbers and thinking "My god, why can't these idiots on the other side understand my position which is so obviously and completely correct! Maybe if I post one more time..."

Example:
Well, in my personal opinion, Michigan is completely uncountable from a popular vote perspective because it's a one-person ballot that distorts the true will of Michigan beyond all recognition. I'm not asking you to argue back about Obama taking his name off or why it's not their fault the DNC punished them or how it's a democracy and so every vote should count no matter what and even if turnout there was absolutely terrible compared to everywhere else this year. I'm saying to you, something that you think is obviously true, is obviously untrue to me, and it's not because either one of us is insane.

1. Obama has an insurmountable lead of 116 pledged delegates with only 31 more to be apportioned;
   
2. Obama has growing lead of 40 among committed superdelegates;
   
3. Obama only needs 46 more delegates to secure the nomination among the 234 left to be apportioned -- about 22%;
   
4. Clinton needs 202 of the remaining 234 remaining delegates -- about 85%;
   
5. Obama has built a small donor fundraising operation of unparalled success. He will have no trouble raising money for his campaign and his party in November.
   
6. The Clinton campaign is deep in debt and would be declared insolvent were it not for the candidate's own contributions.
   
7. Obama currently leads John McCain in the RCP national poll index by .7% Clinton leads McCain in the same index by 1.8%, an inconsequential difference in early June.
   
8. Conclusion: Obama is close to having the nomination wrapped up; will bring a significant fundraising capacity to the race and is equally -- if not more -- electable in November. The race should be wrapped up ASAP and the party's focus must shift to beating McCain and the Republicans in November.

1. count all the votes in Florida. all candidates were on the ballot, and no one campaigned.
   
2. In Michigan count HRC's votes, and attribute to BHO a fair share of the vote for the "uncommitted" slate.
   
3. Include the estimates for the "vote" in the 4 caucus states which do not release raw vote totals
   
4. Unfortunately there's no way to estimate the intentions of potential primary voters in MI and FLA who didn't vote because of expectations that the results would not count. But this concern should not nullify votes that were actually cast. (For what its worth, its was widely reported at the time that the DNC expected to eventually find a way to include representatives of both stats, once the outcome of the contest was decided, as had in fact now happened).

With all votes in FLA, HRC votes in MI, no votes attributed to BHO from "uncommitted, including PR results today:

 BHO   17,389,116     HRC   17,692,901      
HRC margin   +303,785

Add estimates of  "popular vote" in IA, NV, ME, WA*

 BHO   17,723,200     HRC    17,916,763      
HRC margin   +193,563

In Michigan the "uncommitted"  slate was promoted  by BHO's supporters (not directly by his campaign, which honored the DNC rules) . It received 238,168 votes. How much of this represented support for BHO?  At that  point (January 15) Edwards and other candidates (Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, Richardson, Gravel) were still competing.  One way to estimate is to use the results the week before in New Hampshire. The total non-HRC votes in NH  (January 8)  was 171,283. Of these, BHO received the bulk: 104,815, or  about 62%.

If we attribute the same percentage of the uncommitted votes in MI to BHO we get:

238168  X   .62    =  147664   attribute to BHO for MI

 This produces totals for each candidate, including FL, MI as estimated, and the 4 caucus states that do not report vote totals

BHO                17,870,864

HRC                17,916,763

HRC Margin           45,899                

For these calculations to produce a margin for BHO, one would have to attribute to him at least 81.3% of the "uncommitted" votes in Michigan  (i.e. 193,563/238,168   ). On the other hand, the results in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday may well restore the lead for BHO. On yet another hand, as the note from RCP below points out, WA had both a binding caucus (which BHO won) AND a non-binding "beauty contest" primary, which HRC won. If the RCP estimates for the WA caucus were replaced by the actual votes in the WA primary, HRC would add about 50,000 votes.  

If the Yankees play the Cubs in the World Series and win the win the first three games by scores of 8-0, 13-3, and 12-2 and then lose the next three games by the scores of 3-2, 4-3 and 3-0 the the Series is TIED.

The winner of game 7 wins because the contest is to see which teams wins 4 games.

I don't know how often the winner of the World Series scores fewer runs.  I don't think it really makes any difference.  I do know which team won 4 games.