Wisconsin

WISCONSIN PRIMARY: FINAL FORECAST

/ Tyler Pedigo / 32 Comments

Hello everyone,

Bernie Sanders seems to have maintained about the same projected lead as indicated in my previous post. Recent polling, the Benchmark Politics’ benchmark, and the FiveThirtyEight projection seem to corroborate this. Here is my final estimate:

Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 6.21.48 PM

This is a particularly strong number, because Hillary Clinton has generally done much better in the open primary format, with the exception of Vermont and Michigan (though Michigan may as well have been a tie). Still, the demographics of Wisconsin favor Bernie more than Hillary, with an 83.3% non-Hispanic White, and 6.3% Black population. If the above numbers are accurate, this would produce a delegate allocation of 35 for Clinton, and 51 for Sanders.

However, it has been reported that there has been a record breaking number of early voting in the last two weeks in Wisconsin. This has strongly favored Hillary in previous contests, and it stands to reason that it will likely hold true in Wisconsin as well. For this reason I expect Hillary’s vote share to be slightly higher than the above number (10:11 PM edit: A recent Emerson poll shows Clinton trailing Sanders in early voting 38% to 52% which seems to indicate the opposite is true).

-Tyler

APRIL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES: OUTLOOK

/ Tyler Pedigo / 36 Comments

Hello everyone. I’ve been receiving a lot of requests to publish some early numbers for the April states, so I’ve put some preliminary numbers together for you.

I will continue updating this post as new data comes in.

Here are the current projections:

Screen Shot 2016-03-30 at 7.56.02 PM

Producing the following delegate allocation:

Screen Shot 2016-03-30 at 7.55.26 PM

  • Wisconsin: Bernie should do well here, though I’m not sure that he will do as well as the above numbers indicate. He has a significant presence on social media, and the demographics favor him. Wisconsin is an open primary, however, and the crossover anti-Trump votes by Democrats or Independents that would have otherwise supported him will be damaging. This effect is accounted for in the above numbers, though.
  • Wyoming: Bernie will win Wyoming by a margin somewhere between 25-60 points. Wyoming is a caucus and is only 0.8% African American.
  • New York: Hillary will do very well here. She has a massive social media presence among New Yorkers, and the state has a slightly larger than average percentage of African Americans. New York also has a closed primary.
  • Connecticut: This state is a toss up at the moment. Sanders has a fair social media presence here, but Connecticut has a closed primary. He has lost every fully closed primary (not semi-closed) thus far.
  • Delaware: Hillary should win Delaware by 10-40 points. This is because of the closed primary format, as well as the 21.4% African American population.
  • Maryland: Hillary will, more than likely, win Maryland by the biggest margin of any of the April primaries. This is because of the 29.8% African American population (more than Alabama, and effectively the same as Louisiana) and the closed primary format.
  • Pennsylvania: Because it is still several weeks until Pennsylvania votes, I can still see this one going either way, though it is clearly leaning Hillary. Pennsylvania has a closed primary as well, though Bernie has a decent social media presence in the state.
  • Rhode Island: It will be a while before Rhode Islanders vote, but it is currently leaning Bernie. Rhode Island has a semi-closed primary, which Sanders has done relatively well in so far (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, North Carolina) compared to closed primaries. Rhode Island is 5.7% African American, but Bernie has only an average social media presence in the state. I would classify Rhode Island as a toss up.

As you can see, even if Bernie does remarkably well in Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Rhode Island, the delegate deficit he will pick up in Maryland alone will more than cover those surpluses. Hopefully the Sanders campaign campaigns intensively in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland to try to control the damage. Bernie’s campaign may, in fact, be mathematically better off forgetting Wyoming and Rhode Island altogether if (for example) a couple of points of over-performance in New York means that he offsets twenty delegates worth of deficit he would have otherwise incurred; though outright wins are without a doubt important.

As always, thank you everyone for the interest. I am truly honored that so many people enjoy and look forward to my work.

-Tyler