My Head Hurts

From USA Today:

Checking Clinton's claim to be ahead: "More people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate," says the headline at The Fact Hub website run by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign. That's not true, says Sen. Barack Obama's Know the Facts webpage.
As the Associated Press writes, the truth "depends on how the votes are counted. And even using Clinton's method, she may not stay ahead for long."

Real Clear Politics has a chart that helps make sense of the competing claims. It shows:
• Clinton's claim to be ahead works if the vote totals from Michigan (where Obama was not on the ballot) and Florida (where none of the Democrats campaigned) are included. The results of both states' primaries are not counted by the Democratic National Committee because the votes in those states were held earlier than party rules allowed.

• Clinton's claim to be ahead also relies in part on not counting votes from the caucuses held in Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine. Obama won all those but Nevada. The rationale for not counting those caucuses: They weren't "one man, one vote" contests with traditionally reported vote counts.
• Without the votes from Florida and Michigan in the totals, Obama leads by 500,353 votes. Add the four caucus states to the totals and his advantage grows to an estimated 610,575.
• The math begins to work in Clinton's favor as Florida and Michigan get included. An equation that includes the caucus states and Florida (because Obama at least was on the ballot there), shrinks Obama's lead to 315,803 votes.
• When Michigan (where Obama was not on the ballot) is put into the mix as well, Clinton moves ahead by 12,506 votes.
• The combination that the Clinton campaign likes best takes the popular vote from all the states except Iowa, Maine, Nevada and Washington, adds in the votes from Florida and Michigan, and puts her ahead by 122,728 votes.
• Any way you look at it, neither candidate has a large lead in terms of percentage of votes cast.

By the measure that works most in his favor, Obama is ahead by 2.1%. By the measure that works most in her favor, Clinton is ahead by 0.4%.

I'll buy the caucuses aren't the same a primary contest. And I don't even mind her making her case in every way. But, you can't tell me that she honestly thinks it's ok to count votes in a state where Obama was not even on the ballot. By that argument, she has more popular votes than I do.