SUPER TUESDAY 2: PRELIMINARY DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY PROJECTIONS

/ Tyler Pedigo

I received countless emails from all over the world expressing support after my very questionable Michigan projection turned out to be the only one that was correct this past week. To all of you that I haven’t yet personally responded to, thank you so much for the interest.

There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding Super Tuesday 2. With three states having fairly even odds between Bernie and Hillary in the betting markets, it is not immediately clear who will emerge victorious in Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio. Today I am posting this to essentially echo that sentiment of uncertainty, because these are three remarkably close races. Florida and North Carolina will go to Hillary on Tuesday unless something catastrophic happens to her campaign.

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Illinois is, in my opinion, going to be the most interesting to watch. We know that politicians almost always get a bonus in their home state for obvious reasons, just as Bernie received in Vermont and Ted Cruz received in Texas. But what about Hillary? Where does she have the strongest ties? She grew up in Illinois, went to college and law school in Massachusetts and Connecticut, lived and served as First Lady in Arkansas, and was elected Senator for the state of New York. According to my calculations, she did get a bonus in Arkansas that can be attributed to her history with the state, but received no such bonus in Massachusetts. The question is, will she receive another “home state bonus” in the state of Illinois in addition to the bonus she already received in Arkansas? This is something that I genuinely don’t know, but if she does, I doubt it will be a significant number because of Bernie’s historical ties to Illinois. Furthermore, we are unable to even look to 2008 to make a better guess, because her most significant opponent was also from Illinois, Barack Obama.

If Bernie Sanders can maintain pressure in the state of Missouri, he should win it. He had one event in Springfield today, and has an event in St. Louis tomorrow and Monday, which will more than likely be enough to secure him a victory there.

Ohio is where Bernie must focus his energy if he wants to continue shifting the narrative of the presidential race (one win in Missouri won’t be enough) and build on his success from Michigan. This seems like what his campaign is trying to do, with events in different Ohioan cities over the next three days. Whether he will be able to get two points out of that remains to be seen, but if the outreach effort in that state is anything close to what happened in Michigan, and if Hillary focuses her efforts primarily in Illinois at the expense of Ohio, he may win.

-Tyler

22 thoughts on “SUPER TUESDAY 2: PRELIMINARY DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY PROJECTIONS”

  2. Hey Tyler, do you plan on updating your numbers today for tomorrow’s Primaries? Would love to see if your numbers for any of the states reflect the upward trend we saw leading up to Michigan? Thanks for all your work!

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  3. Could you give a good word for me on my blog, TVN™? I am currently doing the same predictions but currently not getting any views.

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  6. Tyler, thanks a lot for your hard work! Just wanted to say that I have a feeling (and hope) that Bernie will have a more positive upswing in data (online posts and google search data) after the debate in Ohio tonight as he’s been performing well recently in debates and town halls.

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  7. I think Sanders will win IL, OH, and MO and lose FL a few points than you have predicted and lose NC by a few more points than you have predicted but we know he will not win those two states. What is important is IL, OH, and MO. I think he will win OH for a few reasons. One is his fight to have 17-year-olds be allowed to vote in Ohio’s primary. Yes, his lawsuit wasn’t the one that was used by the Judge to allow 17-year-olds to vote but people will remember that Sanders was also fighting for them plus the youth like him over Hillary. Also just like MI, Ohio was hit by the TPP and NAFTA which many people know Sanders was against so that is another positive for him. I think he will win by 1-2 points, maybe more depending the number of people who come out to vote.

    For Illinois, I believe sanders will win because of two factors, one is teachers in Chicago have been facing layoffs and contract disputes and the CTU has endorsed Sanders because of his fight for better pay and treatment of teachers. The CTU has 30,000 members which most will most likely vote for Sanders on top of CTU supporters. The other factor is Rahm Emanuel and his ties to the Clintons. As you might know many many many people do not like Emanuel and what he did about suppression evidence. With those two factors I can see Sanders winning Illinois by up to five points.

    For Missouri like you have said, sanders needs to continue the pressure in the state and I can see him winning slightly over Clinton. I haven’t seen much data for Missouri but I think the demographics there lean more towards Sanders than Clinton. Like you said though, if Sanders wants to come win this Primary race he needs to hit Ohio hard and continue to hit on the talking points of linking Clinton to TPP and NAFTA. He also needs to do well in the town hall Sunday night and try to reach many people as possible not just in Ohio. This will help with his momentum going into the “2nd half” of the primary race.

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      • Sad he’s losing ground in FL, after the “Tenemos Familias” ad, I would have thought his numbers with Latinos would increase.

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  8. Hey Tyler, great analyses. Thanks for it. Couple of questions.

    1. Did the Michigan win give some visible bump to Bernie`s share or even Clinton’s?
    2. Do you see the %s change over the next 2-3 days based on the trends or did you already factor that into your calculations?

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    • 1. Absolutely. Michigan helped a ton.
      2. Future continuation of a current trend isn’t factored into what I’m doing. This means his numbers will likely continue to improve in the places they are currently improving in.

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      • That’s great to hear that future continuation of current trends weren’t factored into these numbers. Tyler, do you plan on updating any of the numbers before tmr? Really appreciate all your work, been fun keeping updated

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  9. Hi, tyler, could you comment soon about the effect the 75000 calls the sanders subreddit banked in over Friday and Saturday? The effort the sub made seemed to help in Michigan and there will likely be more calls over the next days. https://www.berniepb.com/

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      • Ah yeah I think they would just remove anything like this as we’re in activism mode at the moment so we’ve got a megathread for all of these types of submissions.

        If you’re right this time around we’ll have to make you an approved submitter and make sure you can always post though 😉

        Now, with regard to your results here, there’s just been 40,000 calls made today alone. Are you seeing that at all in your model, or have there been any trending changes at all over the last 3-day period?

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