Tag: New Jersey

Bernie’s Bad Night

There are still many Oregon votes left to count, with those voters literally mailing it in, but it looks like Bernie Sanders will win just 55% of the vote there. Hillary Clinton looks to have just edged Sanders in Kentucky on the strength of her showing in Louisville. Lexington barely went her way, and it could still come out that Sanders wins the delegate tie there.

So a tie and 55% of the vote is a bad night? Well, kind of. Our model had Kentucky about where it is (though we had guessed it might look more like West Virginia, where Sanders won handily), but predicted Oregon coming out closer to where Washington voted where Sanders won 73% of the vote and nearly 50 delegates more than Clinton. Our model had him winning 70-80% in Oregon.

It looks like he’ll get something closer to 55% of the vote there, instead.

On the whole, it looks like Sanders will pull in 20 delegates fewer than we predicted. None of that changes the outcome too much; we still have him heading into Philadelphia with a nearly 400 delegate deficit. It does, however, possibly suggest that Democratic voters are beginning to coalesce around Clinton as the nominee and it weakens Sanders’ narrative heading into the big June 7 contests – especially California.

Right now, we have Clinton winning California 54.3% to 45.7%, but polling is several weeks old at this point. We fully expect that to be the last real day of the nominating process. Clinton should both clinch a 350+ delegate lead and should be just 150 delegates short of the 2,383 she needs for the nomination. To pull to a tie, Sanders would need to convince upwards of 300 superdelegates who have already declared for Clinton to switch their vote, which is not going to happen.

Sanders Will Likely Win Through June

The story in the newspapers is that Sanders’ West Virginia victory means that the Democratic race will extend until July. This was always going to be true, as the Sanders camp has said since New York, regardless of the outcome in West Virginia.

The demographics in May 17 races suggest big wins for Sanders in Kentucky (similar to WV) and Oregon (similar to Washington, where he won in a landslide). Those wins should net him nearly 45 delegates, and he may come close to the 70+ percent of the delegates that he needs to stay on pace to tie.

Wins will help the public narrative on Sanders’ viability, as well as his chances on June 7 primaries in California, Montana, North Dakota, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Unfortunately for Sanders, polling in California and New Jersey shows Clinton with sizable leads there, and we project her heading into the convention with a 350-delegate lead and needing around 180 superdelegates to clinch the nomination.

Sanders will likely win through May, but polling in California and New Jersey portends the end for Sanders.

None of this, of course, speaks to core Sanders supporters. Running a projection in which Sanders wins 100 percent of all votes in states where there are no state-level polls (i.e. all but New Jersey and California), we still show her heading into the convention with a 180-delegate lead.

If Sanders wins 100 percent of all votes in states where there are no polls, he still comes up short.

Sanders will not be mathematically eliminated until June 8, and so does retain a chance of taking more delegates than Clinton into the convention. To do so, he needs to perform better than he did in Indiana and West Virginia, and will need Oregon-sized wins throughout. That would represent a nearly 50-point swing in California from current polling, and a 60-point swing in New Jersey. Winning 60% of the vote in those states and 70% in the remaining still leaves him 70-delegates short.

Bottom line: It’s not overly dismissive to say that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, but the news this week and next will suggest a closer race.

New York: Big Trump, Clinton wins don’t change Delegate Math

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had big nights in New York, both getting around 60% of the vote. They both needed the big wins, and they got them. Clinton won 139 of 247 delegates, and Trump will get around 90 of the 95 on the GOP side.

They didn’t, however, deviate too much from our projections (although, and we admit it, we went on the conservative side on both, the mid-point part of our model would have had us closer, at Clinton 105 and Trump 85. Oops.)

Republican Race

With Trump’s big win, we now estimate he will get 1,160 of the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock up the nomination on the first ballot.

New York handed Trump his biggest step up since March 15, but he still looks to finish short.

There are a lot of caveats to this analysis. Most importantly, there’s vanishing little polling in the upcoming states. While he should get 40% or so of the votes in Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island on April 26, the big outstanding tests are Indiana and California. Our model currently has Trump losing New Jersey. This is almost certainly wrong, and would hand him 51 delegates (or 1,211 of the 1,237 he needs), but is based on now 2-month-old polling.

Another caveat: one important outcome for the evening is that Ted Cruz held steady with 546 pledged delegates, by our count. With just 618 left on the board, he joins Kasich in becoming mathematically eliminated. However, Kasich’s reasonably strong performance in New York shows that’s not necessarily a killer, but our model has Cruz cleaning up in states like Montana (and winning Indiana), which could be more difficult if he’s having to wage a Kasich-like battle for relevancy.

Democratic Race

With California at the end (well, DC) of the calendar and 714 super delegates able to change allegiances through the convention, Sanders will never face mathematical elimination. New York, as expected, made his case much more difficult.

Clinton's win in New York all but assures her of the nomination, but the race stays tight through the convention, where she'll need superdelegates. — Clinton’s win in New York all but assures her of the nomination, but the race stays tight through the convention, where she’ll need superdelegates.

Like Trump, Clinton now enters a slate of states that should be favorable. Our model has her picking up between 20-30 delegates over Sanders in next week’s primaries, which look a lot like New York in terms of polling (10-20 in Maryland and 10 in Pennsylvania). It’s not enough to clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone.

The Democratic race should stay close, but Sanders should remain around 300 delegates behind Clinton.

For Sanders, we show him getting around 48% of the remaining delegates. He needs 59% of the 1,400 remaining delegates to work this to a tie.

His campaign is sending mixed messages on his way forward. Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told MSNBC that Sanders would “absolutely” try to flip superdelegates if he remained behind in the popular vote and delegate count. They would need to win 500+ of the 714 superdelegates to do so.

At the same time, campaign strategist Tad Devine left open an exit, telling the AP that the campaign planned to “sit back and assess” the campaign’s chances after next week’s contests.

Sanders’ Magic Number: 70

We were going to start doing a state-by-state countdown to make it clearer when it was mathematically impossible for Donald Trump to clear the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch or where Bernie Sanders might overtake Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates. Turns out, Ted Cruz is right: “California will decide“. There’s simply too many delegates there; as unlikely as it might be, if Trump or Sanders win 100% of the vote there, they win.

A lot of folks are talking about how Sanders needs to win 57% or more of the remaining delegates to tie. That number doesn’t incorporate the polling that shows her with 10-point leads in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and California (there is polling for New Jersey, but it’s really old).

Using a very simple model that assumes a Clinton “ceiling” (i.e. all undecideds go to Bernie, so if Clinton is polling under 50 percent as she is in California, Sanders actually wins) using the current poll averages, Sanders would need to pull in 70 percent of the vote in all other jurisdictions to pull ahead of Clinton by June 14.

Based on past results, that seems doable in Oregon, but unlikely in, say, Puerto Rico (which has basically the same number of delegates).

Later this week, we’ll add calculations to show how much of each vote the candidates need in each state to hit their targets, but with the states with polling representing around 70 percent of the outstanding delegates, Sanders must lower Clinton’s ceiling substantially in New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to have a realistic shot of catching her.

Brokered Convention Math: Not Trump Needs Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio

Prior to Super Tuesday, we thought there were no scenarios in which Donald Trump didn’t go on to get the 1,237 delegates needed to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. Trump had a slightly weaker than expected delegate haul than we expected, and there are a few glimmers of hope for the #NeverTrump crowd.

It turns out that Mitt Romney is probably right: the most likely way for Trump to not win is for Marco Rubio and John Kasich voters to vote strategically. Our latest projections, which include Trump taking the big winner-take-all states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois shows Trump taking the majority in after April 26. This is mostly on the strength of a huge March 15 haul for the candidate, where we see him picking up over 500 delegates to reach 881 of the 1,237 needed.

If Trump wins the big winner-take-all states, he should wrap it up before May 1.

There is no world in which the non-Trumps get block his first-ballot nomination without a Rubio victory to claim Florida’s 99 delegates. Trump leads leads Kasich in Ohio 30.2% to 26.6%. There’s no polling for Puerto Rico’s 23 winner-take-all delegates, but we’ll assume for the sake of argument that Trump doesn’t win that one. Move those to the other side, and Trump’s victory moves all the way to the final day, but he still wins.

So what’s the most-likely non-Trump path? Polling beyond March is spotty, but if Trump loses Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Puerto Rico, and California, you’ve got a contested convention. He currently holds double-digit leads in PA (April 26) and NJ (June 7), and Cruz may be within a few points in California, but there haven’t been any good polls there forever (probably because most normal nomination contests would be wrapped up by the final day.

Trump just misses assuming he loses Florida, Ohio, California, Puerto Rico, and New Jersey...all winner-take-all contests. — Trump just misses assuming he loses Florida, Ohio, California, Puerto Rico, and New Jersey…all winner-take-all contests.

A simpler take is this: If Trump wins Florida and Ohio, there is virtually no option to stop him. If he loses those, there’s a possibility to block him. If he also loses Illinois on March 15, that would suggest the numbers we’re using to project are too high, and Trump may fall several hundred delegates short.

Of course, all of this assumes that Trump loses a contested convention; it’s hard to imagine what policy concessions the other candidates can offer true Trump delegates. Trump has between 250 million and 10 billion (depending on your source) convincing reasons to persuade other delegates to break camp if he needs to.