This model estimates that holding caucuses instead of primaries is a massive advantage for Sanders. The model considers each 2016 contest and controls for (i) the black and Hispanic share of the Democratic vote in that state in the 2008 general election, (ii) whether that primary or caucus is "open" to independent voters unaffiliated with a political party, and (iii) the margin in national primary polls at the time the contest is held. Fortunately, because the vote in the Democratic primary has largely broken down along demographic lines, we can use statistical models to approximate what would happen if states that held caucuses had held primaries instead.At various times, we've tried using demographics to model the vote in the Democratic nomination contest so far. Of course, one could argue that because no delegates were up for grabs in those states' primaries, the campaigns didn't really compete for residents' votes and therefore those contests aren't representative of what a truly competitive primary would look like there. We can look to Nebraska and Washington as two examples of the disparity. Still, these differences don't come close to explaining the differences in results between the caucuses and primaries so far. Caucus states in 2016 are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly rural compared with primary states. That's about 49 percent of the total number of votes Obama got in the 2012 election in these states.Now, it is fair to point out that the caucuses have taken place in states that are demographically different than the primary states. The turnout in these contests has been far higher than in the caucuses, with a little more than 24 million votes cast. Clinton earned 1,576 elected delegates, compared with Sanders's 1,158, for a margin of 418. Counting just primaries, including Tuesday's in Washington, Sanders has won only 42 percent of the vote, 42 percent of delegates and 10 of the 34 statewide contests. As a point of comparison, turnout in the caucuses has been only about 13 percent of the total number of votes President Obama got in the 2012 presidential election in these states.Sanders has done far worse in the states that have held primaries. These caucuses have had approximately 1.1 million participants. In doing so, he has earned 341 elected delegates, compared with Clinton's 195 delegates, for a margin of 146 delegates. Here are the delegate and vote totals by contest, including caucuses and primaries, so far:Counting only caucuses, Sanders has won 63 percent of the vote, 64 percent of the delegates and 11 of the 16 contests. Indeed, if all the caucuses were primaries, Clinton would be winning the Democratic nomination by an even wider margin than she is now.Let's start out with the real-world numbers. As Sanders fans claim that the Democratic primary system is rigged against their candidate and that Sanders wins when turnout is higher, they fail to point out that Sanders has benefited tremendously from low-turnout caucuses. Something similar happened in Nebraska, where Clinton lost the early March caucuses by 14 percentage points and won the early May primary, in which no delegates were awarded, by 7 points.Nebraska and Washington are part of a pattern. Sanders won the Washington caucuses, which had 230,000 participants, by 46 percentage points.So, turnout was much higher in the Washington primary than in the caucuses, and Clinton did much better. (The Associated Press has declared Hillary Clinton the winner.) The results are still being finalized, but Clinton leads by about 6 percentage points with more than 700,000 votes counted. Well, a funny thing happened in Washington on Tuesday: The state held a mail-in, beauty-contest primary - so voting was easy, but no delegates were at stake. This story originally appeared on FiveThirtyEight and is reprinted with permission.A week ago, New York Daily News columnist and Bernie Sanders supporter Shaun King tweeted the following about the Democratic caucuses in Washington, which took place in late March:733354162105294848" /]Whether King intended it or not, he implied that caucuses - which often require hours of participation and mean lower turnout - are representative of what would happen if a larger electorate had its say.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |