Post-South Carolina Report and SuperTuesday Preview
So, Steyer dropped out! The race competition narrows!
Yes, Steyer is a billionaire, but his thing is the environment. It is very possible a lot of his backers might now support Bernie because of that.
According to the NYT, it appears that in the end, Bernie will gain 14 or 15 delegates from SC and Biden will take 39 delegates. It looks as though Wikipedia is assuming a Bernie gain of 15 (one delegate is tentatively assigned to Steyer, but since he did not reach the 15% level, where that last delegate goes is under some question).
FiveThirtyEight estimated correctly that Bernie would get 15 delegates, but predicted only 32 for Biden, who really got 39. FiveThirtyEight's algorithms seem to not handle the 15% threshold for delegate acquisitions well--almost all of the other candidates who were expected to get minimal delegates instead had their delegates won by Biden in that race. That's going to introduce a lot of errors in FiveThirtyEight predictions going forward--both on the Sanders and Biden sides.
Sanders goes into SuperTuesday with a 4 to 6 delegate lead over Biden (Sanders: 60, Biden: 54 best case scenario).
Looking at FiveThirtyEight predictions today, it looks as though Sanders should be the delegate winner in 7 states, Biden the delegate winner in 5 states, Klobuchar the delegate winner in 1 state, and Sanders and Biden facing equal delegates in 1 state and 1 territory.
Sanders has lost some ground in California (although he still is leading by a very large amount), but has actually *risen* in Texas where he is now expected to win (yesterday, he and Biden were tied in the state).
Here are the numbers of delegates FiveThirtyEight expects folks to win on SuperTuesday:
Sanders: 540
Biden: 396
Bloomberg: 193
Warren: 132
Buttigieg: 50
Klobuchar: 30
Over the past week, Bloomberg, Warren, and Buttigieg have been decreasing expected delegates daily, and this trend seems to be accelerating after South Carolina. It might be that a number of the delegates expected to be won by those candidates will shift to Bernie or Biden in the next couple of days. For example, the Buttigieg campaign has already announced they are looking for paths forward (i.e., they might close up shop in the near future), and that probably is making some Buttigieg voters reconsider their vote.
Still, the expectation is for an overall 144 delegate victory for Bernie on SuperTuesday itself. As far as delegates, he is expected to come away with the most delegates in:
Maine
Vermont
Massachusetts
Texas
Colorado
Utah
California
and tie Biden for delegates in Virginia and American Samoa.
Klobuchar is expected to win in Minnesota (although Bernie is a very close second there, and Biden is a very distant third).
Biden is expected to take the most delegates in:
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Alabama
Tennessee
with Bernie taking second place in all of those.
We'll see how it all plays out! Two days away!
Comments
I guess establishment Dems don't realize how toxic Bloomberg is
I can't imagine how many people would NOT vote if he were the nominee so seeing him with that many delegates is vexing.
@Shahryar They don't even post his
They don't even post his votes in most stories. Hey, maybe a half billion more ads.
I'd also point out that all those states that will go to Biden won't vote Democratic in the general election. Hillary's big push on Super Tuesday was accomplished in large part below the Mason-Dixon.
Skewed view
Because these states are more conservative, the mainstream media will interpret these results and conclude that the Democratic party really is moderate, not progressive.
@karl pearson I'm waiting for the
I'm waiting for the op-eds. Better get them out before Tuesday.
@karl pearson I'm waiting for the
I'm waiting for the op-eds. Better get them out before Tuesday.
OK, boomer
So Bloomberg is expected to buy 200 delegates at about $2.5 million each.
And Biden is going to win 400 delegates without even showing up.
Warren, having amassed a staggering 8 delegates so far and who is poised to lose her home state is going to win 130 delegates.
Maybe so, but I'm thinking we should have an election and count the votes, just to be sure.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Lol, Indeed
I'm partly doing this to see how accurate 538 predictions really are, and partly to get a sense of where we *might* end up after SuperTuesday.
I could easily see Warren's delegates, Buttigieg's delegates and Bloomberg's delegates being far less than those shown by the predictions. For example, although 538 shows Warren gaining delegates in all SuperTuesday states, it seems she only gains significant delegates (above 10) in Massachusetts, Texas, Colorado, and California. I suspect in the other 10 states, she won't reach the 15% level to actually gain any delegates, and so those extra 30 delegates she is expected to gain will be redistributed to either Biden or Bernie (the top vote getters).
I think this will benefit the winners of states more than the second-place finishers. Considering Sanders is expected to win more states than Biden, I expect this error in 538's methodology to benefit Sanders more than Biden overall.
In 2016 and with a degree of accuracy,
I could project the shifts in GOP voters as their preferred candidate dropped out. Thus, for months while other liberals continued to spout that Trump had no chance for the nomination, I was seeing a realistic path for Trump. Other liberals thought I was nuts.
Does that give me a leg up in projecting '20 Democratic shifts? If only. Perhaps I'm too close to get an sufficiently objective perspective. Yet, I didn't struggle to identify the basic appeal of each of the GOP candidates and the characteristics and preference of their supporters and potential voters. Also, supporters of any one candidate didn't move as a bloc when that candidate dropped out. Plus, Trump took care not to alienate the supporters of several lower tier candidates.
I have no clue as to what Steyer voters heard and responded to. 11+% of SC voters were moved by environmentalism to vote for a no hope candidate? That doesn't compute for me. Similarly, what the hell are Mayo Pete's voters responding to? Empty rhetoric and hackneyed platitudes?
Looking at the polling on second choice for the candidates has so far not offered any insight. 2nd choice for Biden and Warren supporters have been strong for Sanders. Yet, as those two dropped in IA and NH, there wasn't a corresponding and sufficient increase for Sanders. NV and SC weren't polled frequently enough last fall to track any shifts.
Steyer's poll numbers in the upcoming ST are too small to bother digging into and I suspect his SC performance was an anomaly. My guess -- a rich guy funding his own campaign. That's appealing to a not insignificant number of voters in both parties and independents because they construe that as meaning the candidate can't be bought. Perot, Forbes, and Trump used that ploy, but none as authentically and with as much money as Bloomberg is bringing to his campaign because he's not taking any donations. That suggests that most of Steyer's SC voters would have shifted to Bloomberg if he'd been on the ballot, and on policy they aren't that different from each other.
I'm at the sit back and enjoy or cringe as the show goes on point.
This is indeed an important consideration when voting
So by voting for candidates who did not reach the 15% threshold, those votes overwhelmingly benefitted Biden in SC, not Bernie. The opposite might happen in states where Bernie similarly blows out Biden and others but given such a large field (and the demographics of SC and other southern states), it's not going to be easy to match what Biden got delegate-wise in SC in states favorable to Bernie and will result in an even greater delegate deficit in states not so favorable to Bernie's chances.
My understanding
My understanding is that the delegates are proportionally allotted.
Typically, that will benefit the leader the most.
For example, in Vermont, 538 shows Bernie gaining 13 of the state's 16 delegates, which is 81%. Although it is not a direct comparison to popular vote, it probably isn't so far off. The question then becomes, will second-place Warren reach 15% or not, especially because Buttigieg is a very close 3rd place to Warren. If neither reaches 15%, then Bernie walks away with 16 delegates instead of 13 delegates.
It's always the leader who will benefit the most. So, I'm seeing Bernie benefiting from this in the states he is expected to win (California, Vermont, Maine, Colorado, Utah, Massachusetts, and perhaps Texas), whereas Biden will benefit in the states he is expected to win (Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina). Who benefits the most? Probably the person winning the most states, and the person winning the states by the largest margins. Both are Bernie for SuperTuesday.
The latest California poll from Suffolk University. Only two candidates are shown to poll higher than 15%: Sanders (at 34%) and Bloomberg (at 16%, less than half). Biden only makes 14%, Warren only makes 12%, and Buttigieg is less than that. So if that is the result, Biden's 115 expected delegates, and Warren's 51 expected delegates, and Buttigieg's 9 expected delegates from 538's California projections would be redistributed between Sanders and Bloomberg proportionally. That's 175 extra delegates for the top two, with Sanders getting about two-thirds of those.
That'd be an extra 116 delegates for Bernie in California (on top of the 199 he was expected to win) for a total of 315! Biden, who was expected to get 115, instead gets zero.
I'm not saying that will happen (it's only one poll of many), but it *could* break that way. As I said in another essay, if the establishment candidates all keep each other under 15%, Sanders *in theory* could walk away with all 415 delegates. Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Warren, and Biden are all about equally popular here in California. They could essentially end up neutralizing each other.
The BIG ? is if the other candidates will fall below 15%
The centrist candidates now dropping out of the race benefits Biden, Klobuchar with her endorsement of Biden even more so.
Biden and Warren are polling over 15% in CA right now. If they reach the 15% threshold, they will get some delegates of candidates who don't, even if they get proportionately less than Bernie.
But there is also the matter of optics moving forward.
Bernie has to fight for every single delegate and every single vote right now.
If he gets the nomination, I will certainly write him to ensure that Tulsi gets a major spot in his administration, hopefully one that will impact on matters of war and peace. I think Bernie will definitely ensure a vital role for Tulsi in a Bernie administration. A lot better that than nothing.
Hang in there. Again, I thank you for your polling posts and all your even keeled efforts in behalf of Tulsi.
What is the Biden Institute?
Who is in the Biden Institute? They play war games?
I leave that up to you. It sounds like there are some things in it that are new to insiders?
[video:https://youtu.be/nHEzFIrVQ1Y]
Gosh, the fact that I can't understand and I have no clue who are all the people Webb mentioned by him, makes me want to say, WTH.
You tell me, it is meaningful?
Buttigieg Dropping Out ...
Seems like the lead post is now a bit out of date with the recent news that Booty (to the surprise of many) is actually suspending his campaign even before Super Tuesday results are known. Now, there was another post on this that I tried to comment on that somehow got deleted (hope it was a self-delete and not the kind of censorship that drove me to here and away from DK). Anyway, some have questioned why Booty and now Steyer didn't wait a few days until after Super Tuesday, and here's my .02 (especially as it applies to Booty, not so much Steyer who wasn't polling as well in states after NV and SC).
My sense is that they took notice of a late Feb. CNN poll that showed Bernie well ahead and everyone else below the 15% needed for "viability." Now, I may be wrong, but if that happened, would it not mean all 400+ delegates might go to Bernie, leaving him with an almost unassailable delegate lead? If that were the case, that could be a reason for these guys (especially Booty, who went after Sanders as well as Bloomberg in recent debates) to drop out now, assuring Biden gets a major chunk of the CAL delegates that might otherwise go to Bernie.
Despite the fact that this appears to be an anti-Bernie move, at least I can take some comfort in the fact that my favorite (Tulsi) is still in the field after my two least favorite "top tier" candidates (Harris and now Booty) have dropped out.
Anyway, what will be interesting is what Warren does, assuming (as some polls indicate) she loses in her home state to Bernie.
Shit happens.
My post of a few minutes ago is already out of date. News clip that Klobuchar is dropping out and endorsing Biden. So, the anti-Bernie surge is on full force.
Even more significant to see what Warren does -- does she do as she did in 2016 and fall in line with the Dem establishment, or does she stay true to her so-called "progressive" stripes and back Bernie. Frankly, I'm expecting the former and hoping for the later.
Warren doesn't have to
fall in line with the conservadems; she's one with them except for her opposition to screwing middle class people in bankruptcy.
Probably do more harm than good for the DP PTB to have her drop out before ST. Her campaign is broke, but keeping her around for one more debate to attack Sanders, which she hasn't effectively done so far, and Bloomberg, on whom she landed more punches. It also gives all the "gotta have a woman president" voters a home for a few more primary elections.
Female President
"Gotta have a woman President" voters still have Tulsi even if Warren drops out.
Tulsi polls poorly with women
she performs much better with men. When Warren drops out, the "I want a woman" voters are more likely not to vote than vote for Tulsi.