Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton claimed last week after her victory in PA that after doing some “new math” she is now in the lead of the popular vote.

What’s the significance of winning the popular vote? Well currently Senator Clinton is behind Senator Obama in the number of pledged delegates, though she leads in the number of super-delegates.

So by leading the popular vote Clinton can strengthen her argument that she should be the next Democratic Nominee because she has the will of the people.

There’s a catch of course, Clinton is including the vote counts from Michigan and Florida, results from which the Democratic National Committee has not recognized because of rule violations regarding the date of the primaries.

So how do these numbers break down? There’s a nice chart over on Real Clear Politics which can be helpful.

So basically the problem is that today the popular vote estimate has Obama in the lead by about 500 thousand votes. Now that’s not even taking into account the results from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington as those states have not released their popular vote totals.

According to the estimate by RCP the votes from those four states would increase Obama’s lead to about 610k votes.

Okay, then Michigan and Florida held their primary contests earlier, violating the Democratic Party rules on the matter. According to the DNC, both states were warned in advance and support was offered in holding another primary.

Both states refused to change their dates and then later decided it would be infeasible to hold another primary. The DNC asked the candidates to not campaign in those two states, and in Michigan all the major candidates, except Hillary Clinton, did not appear on the ballot. This race resulted in 330k votes for Clinton and 240k votes for “Not Clinton” by way of the uncommitted vote.

Okay, so if the DNC allows anything (which is up for a heavy debate) it should only allow Florida, a state where all the candidates were on the ballot and relatively equal since none “campaigned.”

So add in Florida:

Without IA, NV, ME and WA: Obama up by 200K
With IA, NV, ME and WA: Obama up by 315k

So enough said?

Let’s entertain the idea that the DNC allows both Florida and the very one-sided and pretty much unfair Michigan.

Without IA, NV, ME and WA: Clinton up by 120k
With IA, NV, ME and WA: Clinton up by 12k

Moral of the story? If you are Clinton and fighting to get Michigan in there, don’t discount the votes of four other states, it seems a little shady to “interpret” things in your favor when making a case that you should be the next President of the United States of America.