Clinton Delegate Lead Down to 194, Even as Dramatic Miscounting of Delegates

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So what's that new delegate count again?

1,299 to 1,105.

That's right: with 1,674 delegates left to be awarded, and possibly dozens of delegates left to be "re-awarded" following county- and state-level Democratic conventions across the nation, Clinton's delegate lead -- so insurmountable it's really only spoken of these days in euphemistic superlatives -- is no more than 1,299 to 1,105.

To put it in perspective, given the number of total pledged delegates on the Republican side (2,474) as compared to the Democratic side (4,051), Clinton's lead on Sanders is the equivalent of Donald Trump having a 118-delegate lead on Ted Cruz.

Trump's actual current lead over Cruz?

Not 118, but nearly twice that -- 215.

So why are most American news-watchers under the distinct impression that Ted Cruz has a much better chance of catching Trump in pledged delegates than Sanders does of catching Clinton?

I don't know -- ask Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com.

Or ask any of the other major mainstream-media institutions, who, instead of reporting that Clinton leads Sanders by only 194 delegates, have done the Secretary the enormous favor of making it look like she leads by 25 percent more than that -- having already done her the favor of reporting misleading super-delegate tallies for months, thereby falsely inflating Clinton's lead by hundreds of unpledged delegates.

Here's how big a favor the media is presently doing Mrs. Clinton -- who, again, leads Senator Sanders by just 194 delegates:

False Delegate Counts, By Media Institution

(from most inaccurate delegate count to least inaccurate count)

CBS: 695 *
Politico: 672 *
NBC: 664 *
ABC: 244
Fox News: 244
RealClearPolitics: 244
CNN: 229
New York Times: 220
FiveThirtyEight: 206

* Network falsely includes super-delegates in delegate count, against the express demand of the Democratic National Committee.

So, as New York residents prepare to head to the polls on Tuesday, with many of them -- particularly Sanders supporters -- wondering how much of a difference their vote can really make, the answer is: a very, very great deal.

For as we've already seen over the past two weeks, delegate leads can evaporate far faster than even the media intelligentsia can track. The actual delegate count is 1,299 to 1,105 today, but who knows what it'll be by mid-week, if Sanders supporters ignore the mainstream media's computational disabilities and turn out to vote?

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Seth Abramson is the author of several books: DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016); Metamericana (BlazeVOX, 2015); Thievery (University of Akron, 2013); Northerners (Western Michigan University, 2011); and The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009). (more...)