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I am estimating that Bernie Sanders will win both primaries tomorrow, in Kentucky and Oregon. Using my metrics, Oregon seems poised to be a blowout Sanders victory, while Kentucky stands to be a hard-fought battle between both candidates for a win. I have put together an entirely new framework over the past week to account for votes going to other candidates, which is where my West Virginia projection fell most short. It is a more comprehensive model, and should be more accurate. For anyone concerned, my old model is generating very similar estimates for tomorrow. Here they are:
KENTUCKY
The demographics of Kentucky favor Bernie Sanders. It is a white state with only a 7.8% African American population, similar to that of Kansas (5.9%), Wisconsin (6.3%), and Indiana (9.4%), all states that he has previously won. 7.8% is approximately at one standard deviation from the mean Black population percentage (4.2%) of the states that Bernie has won, meaning that it is not too far out of the ballpark for a Sanders victory. Bernie has also done quite well with campaign contributions in Kentucky, with the logged value of the relative number of <$200 contributions being 0.337. This is slightly under the average of states that he has won, 0.366, but far higher than the average of the states that he has lost, -0.07. These reasons are the primary drivers of my estimated Sanders victory.
Bernie’s Facebook presence in the state is poor, 73.91%, which is lower than any state he has won at this point. Bernie’s relative search interest in Kentucky is poor as well, with the three-day average currently at 0.927. The mean three-day average for all the states that he has won is 2.167, though just last week he won West Virginia at a relative search interest value of 0.94.
Lastly, Kentucky has a closed primary electoral format, which Bernie has never won before. Regardless of who actually wins the Kentucky primary tomorrow, I believe it will be a very close race.
OREGON
Oregon is Bernie’s best state with the exception of Vermont when it comes to Facebook data. He has 84.314% of Democrat Facebook Likes, similar to Idaho (84.0%), Maine (84.09%), and Alaska (83.87%) (Vermont was 95.00%). Demographically, Oregon is about as good as it gets for Bernie. The African American population is only 1.8%, similar to Hawaii (1.6%), Utah (1.1%), and Alaska (3.3%). Only in Vermont and Alaska did Bernie outpace Hillary to a greater extent than in Oregon in the relative number of <$200 campaign contributions. These are the primary drivers of the massive margin of victory that I am projecting. It is difficult to reconcile the one and only poll (that showed Hillary with a 15% lead… but also had 19% undecided… and was also conducted well after ballots had already been received and presumably had already been mailed off by many voters) conducted in Oregon with this projection, but I refuse to arbitrarily tack on extra points because I have a hunch about something.
Oregon is entirely vote by mail. Clinton has traditionally dominated early voting, but Oregon’s format is unique to all the states that have already voted, so it is difficult to predict how much of an effect this will have. Personally, I doubt it will be significant due to practically every metric being overwhelmingly in Bernie’s favor (imagine Vermont was only vote-by-mail, would that have really changed the result?). Also, the party registration deadline was recent, April 26th. Bernie’s current relative search interest is quite low, but Oregonians began receiving their ballots two-three weeks ago. If we go back in the Google Trends data to April 26th (around the day voters began receiving ballots), Bernie’s relative search interest for the next week and a half was around 1.45; not bad. The average for all the states he has won is 2.167, but the standard deviation is 0.61, so 1.45 is not indicative of anything particularly remarkable.
Lastly, Oregon is also a closed primary, which Bernie Sanders has never won before.
If the above estimates are correct, this should give Hillary Clinton a ~24 delegate deficit tomorrow. Good luck to both candidates, and happy voting to all you Oregonians and Kentuckians!
-Tyler
Tyler Pedigo 
Yes, this happened in a Republican county with a hotly contested State Senate election on the ballot, so not sure how you can pin this on David Brock. (Did you actually read the link?)
Bernie is expected to win the Oregon primary, but it must be comforting to have a handy excuse (240 mail-in ballots misplaced in a rural GOP stronghold) just in case he doesn’t.
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Interesting metrics. Do you have a breakdown of your final prediction before an election compares with the actual?
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Doesn’t matter. HRC will be the Democratic nominee. She is ahead in votes, pledged delegates and superdelegates. Bernie needs to bow out gracefully on 6/8/16.
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@Cindymoser #neverHillary We will not stop. This revolution has started and will will demand accountability to the DNC and the corrupt system that is anti-democratic. Election by popular vote must be implemented in the U.S. Both sides (DNC, GOP) have violated our human rights and we will NOT back down.
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Can you give an early prediction for California? I am from Oregon and I think Bernie is going to kick butt tomorrow! Hoping the same for California!!
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according to the following link, the oregon poll is unreliable, one reason is because the millennial demographic was under-represented
https://johnlaurits.com/2016/05/11/psa-pay-no-attention-to-articles-claiming-clinton-leads-in-oregon/
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Agree! Oregon is strongly for Bernie.
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I think you might have overdone Sanders number in Oregon a bit and underdone them in Kentucky but we shall see 🙂
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I know this might be an insane request but could you do a very early projection for Puerto Rico? I don’t think there’s going to be any polls and we Sanders supporters want to prevent a blowout Clinton win just like it happened in 2008
Also early numbers for the June 7th primaries would be great
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hi Purple, I am Hispanic and am phonebanking for Puerto Rico. Sadly, lots of telephone respondents are clueless (on ALL candidates). The young university crowd, as well as those who have worked in social justice campaigns are all PRO Bernie. If you’re a native fluency Spanish speaker, please phone bank for Puerto Rico, necesitamos la ayuda 😉 or pas along, thanks.
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Do we know if Sanders low Facebook presence and low search index have anything to do with the primary season coming to a wrap and people have made up their minds by now or that Kentucky is ranked the 42nd most connected state according this site (http://broadbandnow.com/Kentucky)?
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Good to see you keep up on new polls. I think Nate Silver should already be out of business.
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im guessing you are not aware he stole his data from Nate Silver and forgot to give him credit…
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What are you claiming Tyler stole from Nate Silver?
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It’s funny how that one poll for Oregon was so far in Clinton’s favor. Interesting to follow that pollster and see how the rest of their projections go.
Since Bernie is in Puerto Rico tonight, maybe he felt confident enough about his chances of winning Kentucky that he didn’t campaign there today. Hope he wasn’t wrong.
Good luck to you as well and your polling future.
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Bernie has spent a lot of time in KY. Something like 6 or 7 rallies since April 1st with 2 of them being this past weekend not to mention dozens of small events he did around the state during this time also. I do not think he is confident enough about winning KY which is why he is in Puerto Rico but he knows there only so much you can do to win a state that at a certain point spending any more time and money is “pointless”
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That OR poll looked to have a sampling that wasn’t indicative of anything. The conspiracy theorist in me says that it was put out there and hyped up by benchmark (a Brock owned website) as a prelude to shenanigans; if he loses OR I am 100% sure foul play is involved. But we shall see
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While the numbers seem a little off (no one believes that Clinton will win the OR primary by 15%), the poll’s provenance is unimpeachable (Oregon Public Broadcasting and KPTV), so you can throw your conspiracy theories out the window. I’m pretty sure that benchmarkpolitics.com doesn’t control Portland’s PBS or Fox affiliates.
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Yeah, so this happened in Oregon http://www.bendbulletin.com/home/4330172-151/klamath-county-ballot-box-broken-into
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