Whatever your politics, this year’s presidential primaries are a great lesson in how to focus on the wrong metrics. Because I’m hearing way too much chatter about how many states a candidate has won — a data point that’s all but meaningless.

Folks, Texas has 27 million people. Vermont has less than a million. “States” are not some sort of measurement unit that have the same value — especially with complicated delegate-selection rules that can let a “loser” earn as many delegates as a winner. Counting up “state wins” for a candidate would be like Amazon focusing on total number of customers instead of how much those customers buy and which sales are most profitable.

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