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FINAL PROJECTIONS: APRIL 26th DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES

/ Tyler Pedigo / 33 Comments

At the beginning of April, when I posted the April outlook, I had initially believed that Bernie Sanders would be able to make enough progress to at least secure two to three victories on April 26th. For whatever reason, it seems as though Hillary has been able to prevent much of this progress from being made in a majority of the states that have elections tomorrow. Bernie has picked up a few tenths of a point in both Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, while losing support in Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Here are my final projections:

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I am estimating a single Hillary loss in the state of Rhode Island, though with a margin of only 6.4%. This close margin leads me to believe that it could still be a toss up. The estimated margin of the Bernie loss in Connecticut is about the same, 6.2%, and the estimated margin of the Hillary victory in Pennsylvania is 9.4%. If these margins hold true, this will produce a sixty delegate surplus for Clinton. Furthermore, if Bernie loses four or five of these states, I suspect he may drop out of the race. An additional sixty delegate deficit tomorrow will only strengthen the perception that obtaining the nomination is essentially impossible for him at this point.

-Tyler

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY PREDICTIONS: ARIZONA, IDAHO, UTAH

/ Tyler Pedigo / 76 Comments

I know the numbers I am posting today will look especially suspicious to those who have accused me of manipulating my model for the sake of increasing Bernie’s projected vote share. For this reason, I will also be sharing a screenshot of the model fit to previous results to demonstrate that even after correcting for many different factors, even when the model has adjusted to fit last Tuesday’s results, it is still projecting Bernie wins on Tuesday.

There remains one lurking question in my mind, however, and that is the question of how Arizonan Hispanics will vote; and if they are inherently more likely to vote for one candidate over the other. BenchmarkPolitics believes that Hispanics are far more predisposed to voting for Clinton over Sanders, but as much as I have tried to prove this within all of my own data, I just cannot get this result. Clinton has won a few states with a large Hispanic population, yes, but after I control for other factors (primarily Facebook presence which is the primary driver of my model), there is no negative correlation whatsoever between Hispanics and Bernie vote share. I have tried and tried to prove myself wrong here, but the numbers just don’t agree with that assessment. There are a few reasonable arguments to be made why Bernie Sanders will win Arizona:

  • Arizona has one of the lowest African American populations of any state in the country, 4.1%, which is half that of Nevada (8.1%), and almost a third of Texas (11.8%).
  • AZ has ~3% more Non-Hispanic Whites (57.8%) than Nevada (54.1%), and 12% more than Texas (45.3%).
  • Bernie has 4% more of the Facebook likes among the Democratic candidates in Arizona (76.6%) than he did in Nevada (72.7%%), and 10% more than in Texas (66.6%). This is almost as much as he had in Kansas (78%) and also more than he had in Massachusetts (74.5%) and Oklahoma (75%).
  • Arizona is also a closed primary, just like Massachusetts and Oklahoma, which doesn’t help Hillary Clinton as much* as open primaries do (edit: for the reason outlined in my previous post that I made a few days ago).
  • Arizona is also a younger state, with a median age of 36.9, which is to Hillary’s detriment.
  • Bernie, at this time, has 1.8 the relative search interest on Google than Hillary (a three day average). This is among the highest relative interest measure he has ever achieved of all the states so far. It is greater than Colorado (1.79) and Minnesota (1.55), and far greater than Nevada (1.51), Texas (1.32), and many other states.

Regardless of all of this, Hispanics will decide the Arizona primary. I don’t know how they will vote, but after sifting through and testing all of this data over and over again, I have zero reason to believe they will inherently favor Hillary. If we assume that Hispanics will choose either Hillary or choose Bernie, rather than favoring one or the other right off the bat, here are the projections for Tuesday:

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I realize this seems ridiculous, but the regression model I have simply will not produce a Hillary victory in Arizona. I have spent a great deal of time trying to challenge this result in the data, but this is all I get. If you are dissatisfied with this, think I’m a Bernie shill, or believe that I am purposefully inducing this result; that’s not true, and I don’t know what else to tell you. Believe it or don’t. Unofficially, I don’t believe that Sanders will win by more than 10%, but I’m not going to throw a number to you folks based on a gut feeling.

I expect a large loss for Hillary in Idaho and Utah. As far as I know this is relatively non-controversial and other outlets are expecting the same. This is due in large part to the overwhelmingly large white populations, Bernie’s massive Facebook presence from users in those states, and the open caucus format which has hurt Hillary in the past.

To demonstrate that I got these results from the same model that (now) fits last Tuesday’s results, the following is the model fit to all previous results. This model has an r^2 of 0.9701. These ARE NOT projections that I posted here, this is what the model estimates retrospectively knowing what it knows now:

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Thanks for your support everyone, tweet at me or email me with any questions.

-Tyler

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY PROJECTIONS: SUPER TUESDAY 2

/ Tyler Pedigo / 40 Comments

There is a non-zero chance that Hillary Clinton will have a bad day tomorrow.

My model is estimating two Sanders wins on Tuesday, in Missouri and Illinois. However, Illinois and Ohio are both effectively coin flips with such thin margins between victory and defeat (if you recall, I put Bernie at 53.48% in Michigan and he won by less than 1%, though my model should be more accurate now). It is also estimating two wide victories for Hillary in North Carolina and Florida, which is and has been expected. Here are tomorrow’s projections:

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Only one Bernie win in Missouri will not likely lead to any permanent change in the perception of Hillary being the candidate that is destined to win the nomination. Two upsets will likely change the narrative of the presidential race, and bolster Bernie’s image as a threat to the prospect of Hillary being the Democratic nominee. Three upsets tomorrow will likely transform Bernie from “challenger” status to “probable nominee”status, and I say this because early numbers indicate to me that Bernie will win (at least) the next eight states in a row, all the way until April 19th. If Sanders wins three states tomorrow, this means that in mid-April he will be able to say that he has won eleven of the last thirteen state primaries. That’s some serious momentum.

I’ve also been putting together a GOP model over the past week. Though the model seems to fit previous elections extremely well, the GOP elections are just far too volatile for me to have much confidence in the numbers. Regardless, it is estimating at least two upsets tomorrow, in Florida and North Carolina. If it turns out to be acceptably accurate, I will begin posting projections for the GOP as well.

-Tyler

KANSAS, LOUISIANA, NEBRASKA, MAINE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY/CAUCUS PROJECTIONS

/ Tyler Pedigo / Leave a comment

After projecting one incorrect result on Super Tuesday, in the state of Minnesota, I was able to refine my forecasting models further. There does seem to be some variability in these outcomes that I am currently unable to account for, e.g. if the models predict a win in Minnesota, a win in Iowa also should have happened. Iowa could without a doubt be a special case for our purposes, as it was indeed the first state to hold a Democratic Caucus, both candidates had been campaigning there relentlessly for months, and so on. Therefore, it stands to reason that, looking backwards, perhaps it was Iowa that was the anomaly, and not Minnesota. Sanders outperformed my estimates in every state except Texas, Alabama, and Arkansas; with these states of course having in common the characteristic of being southern and having a larger minority population.

Fortunately, these next four states seem to be firmly in one or the other candidate’s favor. Here are the new projections:

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Hillary Clinton will win Louisiana by a significant margin, but the subtle and interesting characteristic of this estimate (as my colleague Matt pointed out to me) is that the estimated margin of victory seems to be smaller than other similar states. For instance, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are almost identical in demographic makeup as Louisiana, yet Clinton won all those states with greater than 70% of the vote. This could signal that Bernie Sanders is becoming increasingly more popular with the minority community.

Bernie Sanders is projected to win the other three states, Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine. Though these states have relatively few delegates up for grabs, this will still be a victory for his campaign insofar that it should create some positive momentum for his campaign after he lost the majority of the Super Tuesday states. Honestly, I expected the estimates for Kansas and Nebraska to signal a more hotly contested race, but the data from the past three days shows that the residents of these states are certainly feeling the Bern.

Special thanks to Andrew, Phil, and Matt for their collaboration and thoughts.

-Tyler