Unbiased Republican Party and Media? Virgin Islands Caucus Results:

First of all I should say that I hadn't even heard that the Virgin Islands had held their caucus.  Well they did.  U.S. territories get to participate in the election process just like the states.  I guess there really wasn't that much to report since our man Mitt Romney won there.  Let's look at the mainstream media's reports.  The Associated Press, aka. AP, reported the results two days ago:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNbv47075JA8AyZYEK_X71TXjOww?docId=ac12385cdd4545d28a42cbd82a830e18

Mitt Romney won 7 delegates and Ron Paul won 1.  How about the New York Times?  Same result.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/virgin-islands

I want you to notice something about this page here at the NYT.  Apparently there were only 6 voters.  Romney got 4 votes, Paul got 1 vote, and one person was undecided.  How are there less voters than delegates?  Because.  Romney got 4 delegates, 2 were assigned by the party, and the undecided finally decided on Mitt.  So those numbers represent the delegate count, not votes.  Now, check this out.  I click on "Primaries" to look up another state's results.  I'll pick Oklahoma just for random's sake.  Here are those results:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/oklahoma

Almost 100,000 votes are reported for Santorum alone, and he only got 14 delegates awarded for it.  So in this state, they reported actual votes.  Maybe it's a fluke.  How about Idaho:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/idaho

Mitt Romney got all 32 delegates, and it shows 27,000 votes.  Ok, so why did they not show actual votes in The Virgin Islands results?  And why can't I find a link to the Virgin Island results under that "Primaries" button?  Well, I guess we might have to go to another source to find the actual vote count, because you won't find it here.  I also looked all over MSNBC.com and FoxNews.com and I didn't find a single mention of the Virgin Islands anywhere.  Let's look at the Huffington Post.  They have an article with a seemingly positive headline:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/ron-paul-virgin-islands-caucus-results_n_1339944.html

Here they're reporting that Ron Paul "won the popular vote."  I've been following this election, and I've never seen the media distinguish between winning a state and winning the popular vote until now.  Ron Paul has repeatedly said that what really matters is the delegates, with which he is generally doing very well.  But until now, the media has always marginalized that statement by saying Paul would need to win a state (vote) to get the nomination.  Now he has won a state (or territory, rather), and suddenly it's not the vote that matters, but the delegates.  If you read on in the Huffington Post article, or the Washington Post article they borrowed their information from, they are quick to point out that Ron really hasn't won anything, and that he just can't seem to get delegates, even when he wins the vote. 

Why all the effort by the media to avoid reporting Ron's win?  The delegates are what really matters, but remember, the delegate totals they've published all along have largely been estimates, since no one can know how the delegates will vote until the convention, except in winner-take-all states.  So the media has been perfectly content to base each state's victories on the popular vote until now.

I can understand the Republican Party having a strong bias, but what's the media's excuse?  And if they're both so afraid of Ron Paul gaining momentum, what else are they willing to do to mute him?