FiveThirtyEight: With All Eyes On Trump, Clinton Is Winning The Democratic Nomination

[brooklynite]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/south-carolina-primary-results-2016-democrat-clinton-sanders/

In South Carolina today, Hillary Clinton scored her biggest victory yet in the Democratic presidential primary. She beat Bernie Sanders by what looks to be nearly 50 percentage points thanks to overwhelming support from African-Americans. As the race heads into Super Tuesday, Clinton has clear momentum: She has big leads in many of the 12 contests that will take place, according to the polls.

According to the South Carolina exit poll, Sanders lost black voters 14 percent to 86 percent. That doomed him in a contest in which 61 percent of voters were black. If white voters were more supportive of his candidacy, Sanders might have been able to keep the race closer. But they split 54 percent for Clinton to 46 percent for Sanders. The split makes the results among white voters in New Hampshire look more like an outlier compared with South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada. Maybe the Vermont senator had more of a next-door-neighbor advantage in New Hampshire than we initially thought.

Perhaps the most worrisome sign for Sanders is that the momentum he had heading into the first three contests seems to have been halted in South Carolina. Sanders was down 25 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight South Carolina polling average a month ago, and it looks like he’s going to do even worse than that tonight.

...snip...

Indeed, South Carolina is even more of a setback for Sanders than it appears at first glance because it reverses the progress he had been making. If you look at my colleague Nate Silver’s estimates of how Sanders would do in each caucus or primary if the race were tied nationally (Sanders needs to beat these targets to have a shot at the nomination), we see that Sanders did 19 percentage points worse than the benchmark in Iowa, 10 percentage points worse in New Hampshire and 5 percentage points worse in Nevada. That is, Sanders did not hit the target in any of those contests, but he got closer to it as time went on. In South Carolina, it looks like Sanders will run nearly 30 percentage points worse than we would expect given a tie nationally, suggesting that the race has moved in Clinton’s direction since Nevada.

[MADem]

1. This is accurate...

Maybe the Vermont senator had more of a next-door-neighbor advantage in New Hampshire than we initially thought.

We're all so pushed together up this way, we watch each other's tv stations, we cross state lines routinely, if you live near a border you will commonly shop in a different state--hell, in the past two months I've been in RI, NH and ME for assorted reasons. It's just not that daunting--it is like a neighborhood.

Also, there is a large rural population in NH, like in (tiny, sparsely populated) VT. Lots of hunters, outdoor types, people who love snow, skiing, etc. The populations have a lot in common.

[thesquanderer]

2. That's the one part of the analysis I *don't* buy.

I don't think most people can even name the two senators of their neighboring states, much less have much of an impression of them. Yes, there's a general benefit of name recognition, but that's meaningless when the opposing candidate has more... which is not usually the case, but is definitely the case when the opposing candidate is named Hillary Clinton. Besides all that, the states are actually pretty different, with NH being much more conservative overall than VT.

[MADem]

3. I can--NH politics seeps down to MA all the time, and RI and--to a lesser extent CT-

seeps up. Plus, if you've got a cable provider (like XFINITY) they run a regional news channel that covers all the NE states. Keeps us up to speed. If you live in a state like TX or CA you don't get that kind of interaction.

http://www.necn.com/


VT has a conservative streak, too--they used to be a Republican stronghold. Jumpin' Jim Jeffords was an R before he jumped. And NH's delegation is split right now, but it's been more D in previous years--and may be again soon, who knows?

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

4. And despite the love affair for Howard Dean (before he was thrown under the bus), he too

was quite conservative. Much more conservative that DUers care to admit.

[MADem]

6. Yes, and Howard was running against Kerry--so there was a real

New England tug-o-war going on. In my own family, there were Deaniacs and Kerryites, but it was entirely civil; we were all happy to vote for either one and there wasn't any attempt to denigrate or undercut the other's choice. There just wasn't any acrimony like you see here on DU.

Howard came from wealthy NY stock. He was magnificently educated, and it shows--but no, he wasn't any firebrand liberal, he was a guy who is moderate in a lot of ways, but liberal in his application of fairness.

Elizabeth Warren is no fire-breathing liberal in many ways, either. You can't tell people this, they'll get up in your face, especially here-- but it's true. She has what some people see as a "liberal" economic message, but she's way more "business friendly" than the GOP initially thought she'd be, and she is very supportive of MIC industries in the state. She's finally stopped with the virulent opposition to mj legalization, and now has the position that she is "open" to it (this is a big change--I think she sees the handwriting on the wall).

Sanders has always said he is NOT a liberal, either. People don't believe him! I do, though. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/upshot/class-or-ideology-my-conversation-with-bernie-sanders.html?_r=1&referrer=&abt=0002&abg=0

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

7. "Elizabeth Warren is no fire-breathing liberal in many ways, either. You can't tell people this"

...and ^^^THIS^^^ fact befalls many of our friends here at DU. No political nuance at all.

If we held every Democrat to the "purity test," most of them would lose and that includes Elizabeth Warren and even Bernie Sanders. They don't want to listen, though. They're in love. Let them be in love. I think they'll come around when reality bites.

[Adrahil]

5. I think overall the analysis is spot on, but....

As Nate points out in the article he did on those targets, it's a bad idea to look at the individual state performances and draw any broad conclusion. The estimates they use for each state can be off significantly. What's important is the overall trend, and that looks grim for Sanders. He has lagged behind his benchmarks in every race so far. The more that happens, the less likely it is that he'll be able to make a miraculous recovery and overcome the delegate gap. Since the Dems don't have winner take all primaries, he can't hope to rapidly make up a delegate deficit with a string of victories. After Tuesday, Clinton could have a 160 delegate lead. That will be very difficult to overcome.

[Number23]

8. "makes the results among white voters in New Hampshire look more like an outlier"

At the very least.

[oasis]

9. It's a wrap.