Rick Hertzberg clears the whole thing up:

We’re awash in numbers from yesterday’s primaries, but there’s one number that nobody ever seems to crunch: how many votes did the candidates get?

I don’t mean how many delegates, or how many states, or the margin in this or that state. I mean: across the nation, which is to say in all 23 states that held Democratic primaries or caucuses yesterday (I’m focussing on the Dems for the moment), how many human beings voted for Clinton and how many for Obama?

I just spent some time with a calculator and the latest CNN state-by-state totals, and here’s what I came up with:

* Hillary Clinton: 7,347,477 (48.8%)
* Barack Obama: 7,293,887 (48.5%)
* John Edwards: 408,622 (2.7%)

One way to look at this: Clinton crushes Obama by more than fifty thousand votes!

A second way: Despite trailing Clinton by five to seven points in national polls on the morning of the primaries, Obama finishes within half a percentage point!

A third way: A majority of Democrats voted against Clinton.

A fourth way: A majority of Democrats voted against Obama.

A fifth way: If Edwards’s votes split 57-43 for Obama, Obama wins.

Then there’s my way, which is also the high way:

It was a tie.