By most counts, Sen. Hillary Clinton trails Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination by more than 100 delegates.

Yet she argues that she’s the nominee by virtue of leading in key states: “I don’t think anyone doubts that a Democrat has to have the big states anchored to put together the electoral votes needed to win,” she said.

This comment and theory are based on Clinton’s showing in the eight biggest U.S. states by population: She’s won six primaries and is leading in Pennsylvania.

But there are several holes in the “big state” theory…

• Texas’ hybrid primary-caucus system made that state a toss-up, in which Obama actually won more Democratic delegates than Clinton.
• The primaries in Florida and Michigan did not count.
• There’s no way Barack Obama wouldn’t take New York (and Massachusetts, another big Clinton primary win) comfortably in a general election.

Essentially, Hillary Clinton holds a delegate lead in just three of the eight big states, and while she is the stronger Democratic candidate in California and Ohio, Obama makes up for this shortcoming with broader national appeal.

Middle-tier states, no matter what the former First Lady says, are crucial as well and Barack Obama has been stronger there. Significantly stronger.

A map of the U.S. Electoral College system, with votes allocated by state. 

There’s also no historical indication that primary results - of either political party - translate into a presidential candidate’s general election viability.

In fact, big states are slightly underrepresented in the Electoral College system because each state starts with three votes, regardless of size.

The 10 biggest states hold 53.4 percent of our country’s residents, but a somewhat lesser amount (48 percent) of the 538 electoral votes.

George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 despite winning just 81 electoral votes from the eight biggest states, carrying just Texas, Florida and Ohio each time.

But Bush won most of the next 17 biggest states by population, and thus more than 70 percent of the electoral votes, making the biggest 25 states a wash.

In that next tier of states, Clinton has been weak. Among the states ranked 9-30 in population, Hillary is leading in delegates in just four of them (Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arizona and Oklahoma), with four still to be decided.

Because of this, Barack Obama wins a hypothetical electoral vote race over Clinton right now, 196-176, not counting Texas (see above).

Regardless, applying primary results to the November election against the GOP is a bold task wrought with speculation and conjecture.

Only one of the two Dems gets to go up against, and be compared to, John McCain and as-yet-unnamed Vice President - and while Hillary Clinton also argues that she’s better equipped in that regard, the data doesn’t back her up.

Both Clinton and Obama are within one percent of McCain in national polls. Try as she might, Hillary is running out of ways to spin this thing.