closed primary

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY PROJECTIONS: KENTUCKY AND OREGON

/ Tyler Pedigo / 19 Comments
As you all know, I’m just a graduate student with no income. If you would like to support my work and want me to be able to afford Top Ramen (or maybe even Mellow Mushroom pizza if you all are extraordinarily generous) while I’m working on these statistics, please click this link to donate to Tyler’s Food & Rent Fund!


 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:

Screen Shot 2016-05-16 at 6.47.10 PM

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.

Screen Shot 2016-05-16 at 7.32.23 PM

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.

Screen Shot 2016-05-16 at 7.33.22 PM

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

FINAL PROJECTION: NEW YORK DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

/ Tyler Pedigo / 76 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted an outlook for all of the April Democratic primaries. This outlook included my initial estimate for the New York primary, showing Bernie Sanders at 38.8% in the Empire State. We are all aware that both candidates have been campaigning relentlessly in New York, and for that reason I didn’t believe that the needle would really move much from the initial estimate. This assumption of mine is based on the concept of “dynamic equilibrium” that I learned about in my Political Science senior seminar during my undergrad, from a book called The Gamble that covered the 2012 general election. The idea is that, if both candidates are campaigning with approximately the same vigor and intensity in a state, they will both likely get about the same amount of media coverage there, capture the same number of votes in that time frame, etc. It’s a useful way to think about elections. Anyways, it does appear that Hillary Clinton has lost a very small amount of ground compared to my original estimate. Here are my final numbers for New York:

Screen Shot 2016-04-18 at 6.22.46 PM

I am expecting Bernie to do a couple of points better than the original outlook for a couple of reasons. First, his Facebook presence has become barely more favorable than it was, settling out at 70.00% of Democrat likes. This is similar to Virginia (70.37%), Florida (69.56%), and Iowa (71.87%). Secondly, his relative search interest on Google is decent; with the three day relative average coming in at about 2.05-2.1. This is in the ballpark of Illinois (2.05), Oklahoma (1.98), and Nebraska (2.02). The demographic makeup of the state, as well as the closed primary contest format still remain the greatest hurdle to any good Sanders performance in New York.

I am somewhat inclined to believe that New York’s unique primary rules will alter the results of tomorrow’s primary more in favor of Hillary. To vote in the Democratic primary, voters had to have been registered a Democrat by the end of 2015. My belief is that this will most certainly disproportionately affect Sanders supporters. A good friend of mine refers to the New York primary as the most closed primary of the season, and it will be interesting to see if that setup produces results that vary widely from the above projection. Thanks for reading.

-Tyler