This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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I mentioned yesterday that the delegate totals were provisional and the counting wasn’t done yet. The counting is complete now, and in addition there have been some clarifications to the delegate allocation rules.
First on the rules, the way in which rounding is done was clarified. Instead of just rounding at the end, the percentages are rounded to a whole number first, and then the delegates are rounded to whole numbers at the end. This is a bit of a silly way to do it, because you are introducing the rounding distortion twice instead of just once, but that’s how New Hampshire chose to do it.
Then a rule change that affects not just New Hampshire, but all subsequent states too. Frontloading HQ has the scoop. The bottom line is that national RNC party rules changes are overriding rules at the state level about what happens to the three “automatic delegates” in each state. These are the National Committeeman, the National Committeewoman, and the chairman of the state Republican Party who all get to be delegates “automatically” based on their positions. In some states they were bound by primary or caucus results. In some states they were required by the rules to stay neutral. But in others, they were free agents. In the past the ones that were free agents had been the Republican party’s equivalent of the Democratic superdelegates. But the RNC national rule change is requiring these three automatic delegates to always be “bound” by the same rules that cover at-large delegates in each state.
So, essentially, no more superdelegates on the Republican side. All delegates will be bound by primary or caucus results. (There is still an exception for delegates who are directly elected by their own name apparently, but that is rare.)
For New Hampshire, when you consider final vote totals, and both rule clarifications, this changes the results from the primary from:
11 Trump, 3 Kasich, 2 Bush, 2 Cruz, 2 Rubio, 3 TBD
to:
10 Trump, 4 Kasich, 3 Bush, 3 Cruz, 3 Rubio, 0 TBD
The updated raw delegate chart showing this change is here:
The net result here is Trump loses one delegate, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Bush all gain one.
Trump is still clearly in the lead, but it does change his New Hampshire results in an important way. 11 out of 20 delegates was a majority, and above the threshold he needed to improve his “% of remaining delegates needed to win” number. 10 out of 23 is not a majority, and was not enough to improve his position on that metric:
If you look at full movement from before New Hampshire to these updated results, you can see that ALL of the candidates now got worse, as none of them got the level of delegate support needed to be on track for an outright win. Trump specifically went from needing 50.37% of the remaining delegates, to now needing 50.43% of the remaining delegates. This is much less of a change than the others of course, but it still went up.
So the statement I made in yesterdays update that “if Trump continues to match New Hampshire, he wins” is no longer true. If Trump (and the rest) continue to match New Hampshire, we are in for a contested convention.
Of course, we won’t see New Hampshire cloned in the subsequent states. We will see continued developments in the campaigns, more candidates drop out, and a very dynamic race continue to play out.
And fundamentally, the one delegate difference in Trump’s total doesn’t change the over all picture all that much.
I won’t repeat the details of yesterday’s post walking through scenarios for South Carolina and Nevada. If you haven’t already, go read it.
The bottom line is that unless there is a major change before South Carolina, it is very plausible that Trump walks out of it with a significant delegate lead. Updating for the New Hampshire changes above, that could look something like:
67 Trump, 11 Cruz, 10 Rubio, 15 Others
Nevada is more proportional, but will still give Trump a further opportunity to increase his delegate lead. Absent a surprise loss in South Carolina, he will almost certainly have a majority of the delegates allocated by then.
At that point, only 5.4% of delegates will have been decided. Lots of delegates left to play with.
But that is when things speed up. If the non-Trumps are going to consolidate support by all but one or two dropping out, it really should happen by the end of February, because 25.8% of the delegates will get decided on March 1st. And then another 30% or so in the two weeks between that and March 15th. When we pass March 15th, 60% or so of the convention delegates will have been decided.
If the anti-Trumps consolidated before then, it is possible that one of them will be leading instead of Trump. If the anti-Trumps are still divided though, then if Trump has managed to get over 50%, he’s almost certainly going to be the nominee. If he is leading, but under 50%, then talk of a contested convention becomes real, not just news junkie fantasy.
Absent the oft-predicted but never realized Trump collapse, for any of the other Republicans to beat Trump, all but one (MAYBE two) need to drop out and drop out quickly, and then they need to focus all of their effort on Trump. But for the moment, all the anti-Trumps are still squabbling with each other, leaving Trump to consolidate a lead while they are for the most part continuing to ignore him.
That is just a formula to anoint Trump. At some point people will drop out, and the race will narrow. The question is does it happen in time for whoever is the surviving anti-Trump to have a real chance.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
[Edit 2016-02-14 06:18 UTC to add end note.]
New Hampshire’s delegate rules are such that the winner gets a big bonus. (The details of how this works were discussed here last week.) So Trump’s approximately 36% of the vote turns into 55% of the delegates. Counting isn’t actually done yet, but if current trends hold, the delegate haul out of New Hampshire will be:
Trump 11, Kasich 3, Bush 2, Cruz 2, Rubio 2.
Adding these to the previous results in Iowa, and we have these new totals: Trump 18, Cruz 10, Rubio 9, Kasich 4, Bush 3, Carson 3, Fiorina 1, Huckabee 1, Paul 1.
In the form of a graph of the total delegates, we see this:
Some groupings look apparent on this chart.
Trump is out by himself in the lead.
Cruz and Rubio make up a second tier, at about half of Trump’s level.
Kasich, Bush and Carson are the third tier. Way behind, but at least with multiple delegates.
Then finally Fiorina, Huckabee and Paul bringing up the rear with one delegate each. Two of these three have already dropped out. It will be surprising if the third does not do so soon.
How does this match what we’re hearing in the spin out of New Hampshire? Well, there is wide acknowledgment that Trump did have a nice win. But the majority of the attention still seems to have been on the race for second, and how that positions the anti-Trumps going forward.
Within that, relatively little attention was paid to Cruz, and he is still in 2nd. Rubio is being dismissed because he did badly in New Hampshire, but he is still in 3rd over all. Meanwhile lots of attention given to Kasich and Bush, but they are still stuck in the third tier with Carson with less than a handful of delegates.
Time to flip this and look at this in terms of my favorite metric, the “% of remaining needed to win”:
Trump exceeded the 50.37% of the delegates he needed to get to improve his position. Going forward he needs 50.33% of delegates to be on a pace to win. That is a relatively small change. With almost 98% of delegates still to be determined, there is a huge amount of flexibility available here to all the candidates.
Given that Trump got 55% of the delegates in New Hampshire, that means however that NONE of the other candidates got what they needed, or even close. Essentially, every one of the non-Trump candidates fell further behind today.
Now, Trump still doesn’t have a majority of delegates. To be on a pace to actually win, rather than just to have the most delegates going into the convention, he needs to do better than he has so far. But he is far closer to that mark than any of the other candidates. And if he continues matching his New Hampshire results, he will win.
The story here continues to be that while Trump hasn’t managed a majority in any contest so far, the opposition is so divided that Trump still easily wins (New Hampshire) or at the very least comes very close (Iowa). Does this continue? Does it get worse?
Time to look at the next contest on the Republican side, South Carolina.
There have not been any South Carolina polls since before Iowa, so new polls are eagerly anticipated, but at the moment the RCP average has Trump at 36.0%, Cruz at 19.7%, Rubio at 12.7%, Bush at 10.0% and then everybody else.
Now, that may change. Specifically if either Rubio or Bush drop out that will scramble things a bit. But that may not happen. There is a case to be made for both of them sticking in at least through South Carolina.
Trump probably wins this. But by how much? Time to look at the delegate rules in South Carolina.
From Greenpapers:
- 21 district delegates are to be allocated to presidential contenders based on the primary results in each of the state’s 7 congressional districts: each congressional district is assigned 3 National Convention delegates and the presidential contender receiving the greatest number of votes in that district will receive all 3 of that district’s National Convention delegates. [Rule 11(b)(4)]
- 26 (10 base at-large delegates plus 16 bonus delegates) at-large delegates are to be allocated to the presidential contender receiving the greatest number of votes in the primary statewide. [Rule 11(b)(5)]
- 3 party leaders, the National Committeeman, the National Committeewoman, and the chairman of the South Carolina’s Republican Party are pledged to the presidential contender receiving the greatest number of votes in the primary statewide.
If Trump wins by any margin, no matter how small, he gets 29 of the 50 delegates right up front. That already would give him 47 of the 100 delegates that would have been allocated in Iowa + New Hampshire + South Carolina.
Of course, in order to win the whole state, he would have had to have won some of the congressional districts too. Probably most of them. And so far in Iowa and New Hampshire, it doesn’t seem like there has been a lot of geographic lumpiness to Trump’s support. So he may well win ALL of the congressional districts. In that case Trump would walk out of South Carolina with all 50 of the available delegates. This is very possible.
In that scenario, after South Carolina, the overall delegate count would look like: Trump 68, Cruz 10, Rubio 9, Others 13
Trump would have a huge delegate lead. Even if he doesn’t win all 50, he will still have a very large delegate lead.
Nevada is three days after South Carolina. It is proportional, not semi-winner-take-all like South Carolina, but the latest polls still have Trump with a nice lead in Nevada. Those polls are old and out of date, but does anybody think two straight wins would hurt Trump’s position?
To “stop Trump” things have to move very quickly to a one on one with Trump vs Somebody. Maybe a three way race could do it, but might just be a recipe for a contested convention. But as long as we’re still looking at four or five candidates splitting the non-Trump vote, Trump wins.
But the non-Trumps still seem to be in a locked battle with each other for that anti-Trump one on one slot. And in doing so, they just let Trump win. The race will of course consolidate further. More candidates will drop out. Some may drop out before South Carolina. But it is unclear if that will be enough to let one of the others actually win in South Carolina.
Trump won New Hampshire. Trump looks like he will probably win the next two states. Things get more complicated once we get into March, but Trump would get there with a substantial lead.
Things are by no means settled yet. There is a long way to go. Even after we get past both South Carolina and Nevada 94.6% of delegates will still be up for grabs. There will still be time for the non-Trumps.
But if we only get consolidation down to 2 or three candidates after the March 1st contests, when 25.8% of the total delegates will be decided, the non-Trumps that are left may have a really tough uphill fight to catch up.
If consolidation doesn’t happen until after March 15th, 60% of the delegates will already have been decided, and it may just be too late. (Although if several non-Trumps are still strong at that point and Trump has the lead but not a majority, we’re looking at a contested convention, and that starts getting into completely different scenarios.)
But if the non-Trumps want to actually win, they have to stop fighting each other, some of them have to drop out, and they have to actually act like Trump is the frontrunner, and that their priority has to be bringing him down rather than each other. Otherwise they are done, and Trump ends up walking away with this.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
Most attention right now continues to be on the primary races, as we are in the days between Iowa and New Hampshire, and things are still very unsettled and exciting. But there have been a handful of new general election polls. The latest change to mention is in the matchup between the delegate frontrunners in both parties.
Clinton vs Cruz
For a few short weeks, some favorable polls for Cruz moved New Hampshire from “Strong Clinton” to “Weak Clinton”, meaning that the poll average showed a Clinton lead of less than 5%, so we considered the state “possible” for Cruz and included it in Cruz’s best case.
In this update Clinton’s lead in the New Hampshire poll average against Cruz is back up to 6.0%, so New Hampshire seems like it is off the table for Cruz again.
This moves Cruz’s best case from losing to Clinton by 76 electoral votes to losing by 84 electoral votes. The “Expected” case where each candidate wins all of the states they are ahead in the poll average, with no states flipping, still has Cruz losing by 96 electoral votes.
Cruz is well behind Clinton in these electoral college estimates. (Popular vote polling is more positive to him though.). But his best case, worst case, and expected case have all been improving over the last year. Today’s change is the first one in which his position has gotten worse since August 2014, which frankly was before there were enough polls to give a reliable picture.
The question is of course if this is a sign of additional movement to come. Is this the best that Cruz can do against Clinton? The popular vote numbers I pointed to earlier indicate that Cruz probably can indeed do better than this, and perhaps we’re not seeing it in the electoral college numbers just because we don’t have enough recent polling in enough states. Or maybe we really do have a popular vote / electoral college disconnect. It is possible.
In any case, it would be premature to think that Cruz has topped against Clinton. We have a very long way to go. If Cruz continues to be the Republican delegate frontrunner, or even close, we’ll continue to get more polling and a better picture of how a Clinton vs Cruz race would go, and of course things will look different once the general election campaign starts in earnest.
Of course, if Cruz falls behind in the delegate race, polling involving him will dry up in favor of whoever is leading in his place. And nobody will miss it. :-)
275.1 days until general election polls start to close!
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
We made it past Iowa! We have Iowa results! We have brand new speculation about New Hampshire and beyond! Yes, of course, the bulk of this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast is Sam and Ivan discussing where the presidential race sits in this week between Iowa and New Hampshire. We go over all of the results so far, then discuss how candidates, the media and the public are reacting to those results, and what that means for the rest of the contest. Plus, for the first time in a little while, we do a lightning round as well, covering bluetooth audio issues, Iran, the Flint water crisis, tech earnings results, and more!
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-02-04
Length this week – 2:12:09
 1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
 View Podcast in iTunes
 View Raw Podcast Feed
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Show Details:
- (0:00:10-0:05:11) Intro
- Pi O’Clock Again
- Agenda
- Talking Politics
- (0:06:00-0:29:42) Republicans in Iowa
- Loser.com
- Headlines
- Delegate Totals
- Spin
- Polling Wrong?
- People Dropping Out
- Carson/Cruz blow up
- Speeches
- (0:30:45-0:43:55) Democrats in Iowa
- Close Race
- Not a Surprise
- Delegate Totals
- Spin
- Demographic Split
- (0:44:33-1:24:33) Republicans in New Hampshire and beyond
- Delegate Rules
- Delegate Hypothetical
- Will we get good New Hampshire polls?
- Contest Calendar
- Trump reacts to losing
- How will New Hampshire react to Iowa?
- Divided anti-Trump vote
- Trump Strategy
- Bush done?
- Big last minute moves?
- Gilmore
- post-New Hampshire
- Predictions
- (1:25:53-1:42:08) Democrats in New Hampshire and beyond
- Sanders will win New Hampshire
- post-New Hampshire
- Delegate Allocation
- How will Clinton react to losing?
- No Clinton Backup
- Clinton emails
- Clinton collapse scenarios
- (1:43:24-2:11:49) Lightning Round
- Car Bluetooth Audio
- Movie: Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000)
- Iran Deal Implementation
- Flint Water Crisis
- Oregon Militia Standoff Ended
- Apple Earnings
- Alphabet Market Cap
- Feedback on Performance Reviews
- Feedback on Sam’s Writing
- Growing Show
Yesterday’s update was preliminary, and I ended up using the delegate estimates provided by the AP which were used at the New York Times, Washington Post, and other places. My favorite source, Green Papers, had a different set of numbers. When I tried to calculate delegate numbers myself, I came up with yet another set of numbers. I ended up going with the AP numbers.
A little more than a day later and Green Papers updated, now matching what I had calculated myself. So I’m updating the estimates accordingly.
This moves us from:
8 Cruz, 7 Trump, 7 Rubio, 3 Carson, 1 Bush, 1 Paul
to
7 Cruz, 7 Trump, 6 Rubio, 3 Carson, 1 Bush, 1 Fiorina, 1 Kasich, 1 Paul.
The main change here is one less delegate each to Cruz and Rubio, with those delegates picked up at the bottom end by Fiorina and Kasich.
But wait! There is more! The Washington Post and Politico both add two additional delegates. The 27 allocated by the caucus results were already accounted for, so these would be two of the three “party leaders” who end up as automatic delegates. No indication of which party leader did what, but they add one additional delegate each to Cruz and Rubio.
The new Iowa totals become:
8 Cruz, 7 Rubio, 7 Trump, 3 Carson, 1 Bush, 1 Fiorina, 1 Kasich, 1 Paul.
Between these two changes, the net is simply adding the delegates for Fiorina and Kasich. This means 29 of the 30 Iowa delegates are now accounted for.
Note that even though Paul has “suspended his campaign”, he keeps his delegate unless he explicitly releases it.
The raw delegate count chart now looks like this:
Just a little uptick at the end for Fiorina and Kasich to join Bush and Paul at the 1 delegate mark.
Flipping this over to look at “% of remaining needed to win”:
On this chart, lower is better. When you get down to 0% you win. If you get to 100% you are eliminated. Everybody is still heading upward, not downward, but it is still very early. The whole field here ranges from needing 50.31% of the remaining delegates, to needing 50.59% of the remaining delegates.
Looking specifically at New Hampshire, there are 20 delegates at stake. We are so early, and the % needed numbers so close, that this is easy. The number needed to be on track to win is 11 delegates. Anything less, and the candidate is actually going to be in a harder position in the next contest rather than an easier one.
Let’s game out New Hampshire based on the current RCP averages. Yes, yes, this is based on polling before New Hampshire. Things will change in the next six days. But this is just to model how it works.
The rules via The Green Papers:
- 20 National Convention delegates are to be bound proportionally to presidential contenders based on the primary vote statewide.
- A 10% threshold is required in order for a presidential contender to be allocated National Convention delegates.
- Allocate delegates based on the 20 Г— candidate’s vote Г· total statewide vote. Round to the nearest whole number.
- Any delegate positions that remain open are awarded to the candidate with the highest statewide vote total.
Assume each candidate gets exactly their poll average today. Only the candidates over 10% matter, so with RCP as of right now that is:
33.4% Trump, 12.2% Cruz, 10.8% Rubio, 10.4% Kasich
Converting this to delegates with the rounding rules above, you get:
7 Trump, 2 Cruz, 2 Kasich, 2 Rubio
This is only 13, so there are 7 delegates left. According to the last rule, these all go to the leader, so we end up with:
14 Trump, 2 Cruz, 2 Kasich, 2 Rubio
And therefore Trump would get 70% of the delegates despite only getting 33.7% of the vote. Trump’s line on the “% needed to win” would go down, while everybody else would go up.
After this hypothetical New Hampshire result, the overall race would be:
21 Trump, 10 Cruz, 9 Rubio, 3 Carson, 3 Kasich, 1 Bush, 1 Paul, 1 Fiorina.
Trump would still only have 42.9% of the delegates, which is not a majority, but Cruz would be way back at 20.4% and you’d have Trump starting to pull away from the pack. Still only 1.98% of delegates allocated at that point though, with lots of room for further changes.
The RCP average on February 3rd is NOT going to look like the actual results on Primary night. This is just an example.
The points to take away:
- The detailed delegate rules matter, you don’t necessarily have to win a popular vote majority to win a delegate majority.
- We’re still so very early, one contest can have a major effect on the delegate totals, and each state is very different, so don’t put much stock in extrapolating Iowa to future contests.
Of course New Hampshire will be here soon enough, and we’ll do this with the real results.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans didn’t have years of superdelegates endorsing one candidate or another, so Iowa really was a clean slate. The very first delegates earned in the race for the 2016 Republican nomination. The headlines are of course that Trump underperformed the poll-based expectations letting Cruz slide to a win, while Rubio outperformed his expectations, coming in a close third. This is all true.
But it is also true that only a tiny fraction of the delegates have been allocated so far. None of the candidates got a majority in Iowa either. So nobody is actually yet on a track to overall victory. Cruz may be slightly ahead, but Trump and Rubio are right at his heels. Cruz is not in a dominating position. It really is a three person race.
Looking at the raw delegate graph quickly…
…you immediately notice that we just have a really boring graph with a few straight lines. And Rubio’s line and Trump’s line completely overlap too. As do Bush and Paul’s lines. That’s because this is our first real data point after everyone was just at zero.
All of the graphs are like this. So just this once, lets skip the graphs and look at the summary table instead:
I’ll note here that Green Papers has slightly different numbers. But the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN all agree with the estimates above, so for the moment that is what we’ll go with here.
It is clear that Cruz/Rubio/Trump are in a separate class here than Carson/Bush/Paul. But even these three would need to nearly double their performance to actually be on a track to win, because, well, you have to be getting more than half of the delegates to win outright. 25% to 30% won’t get you there. So at some point, somebody has to start going over the 50% mark if there is going to be a winner.
There is plenty of time for that of course. Nobody is predicting a contested convention quite yet, as much fun as that would be.
We probably won’t see anyone over 50% after New Hampshire either, but how close we get may depend on the viability thresholds. In New Hampshire on the Republican side you need to get 10% of the popular vote to be eligible for delegates. Although this will definitely change in response to the Iowa results, at the moment RCP has Trump at 33.2%, Cruz at 11.5%, Kasich at 11.5%, Bush at 10.3%, and Rubio at 9.5%. The rest are pretty far from 10%. But that is four candidates all within a couple percent of 10%.
Depending on which of those ends up right above or right below the 10% threshold, you could see very different delegate results coming out of New Hampshire. Most likely, we’ll have three or four candidates over 10% and a mix of delegates, but in the extreme case, if all but Trump drops under 10%, then Trump gets all the delegates. So a wide range of things is possible based on really small movements from the current positions in the polls.
Final points here though to the people saying Iowa proves that Trump is done…
- Trump was pretty close in Iowa. A one delegate difference means almost nothing.
- Although the Iowa results may diminish it, Trump starts with a big lead in New Hampshire.
- Only 1.09% of the Republican delegates have been determined so far.
We have a three way race right now. It is not inconceivable that a 4th candidate could do well enough in New Hampshire to join that group. Things are just as up in the air and chaotic on the Republican side as they were before Iowa. Anything could still happen.
Stay tuned.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
Iowa is coming. Did everyone know the Iowa Caucuses are coming very soon? This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan discuss the state of the presidential race in the lead up to the Iowa Caucuses. On the Republican side, they discuss attacks on Trump finally starting, while the rest of the candidates attack each other, as well as details of delegate allocation in Iowa, and some talk about Trump supporters commenting on Sam’s election site. On the Democratic side, it is delegate allocations again, and just how hard a path it would be for Sanders to catch up and win given Clinton’s superdelegate lead and other factors. Oh yeah, and at the start, Sam complains a bit about company annual reviews.
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-01-29
Length this week – 1:13:26
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
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Show Details:
- (0:00:10-0:10:22) But First
- (0:11:42-0:54:20) Election 2016 – Republicans
- Finally Iowa
- Attacking Trump
- Last Week Shifts
- Circular Firing Squad
- Conservatism vs Trumpism
- Trump skipping debate
- Trump shooting people
- Trump commenters on Election Graphs
- Republican Delegates in Iowa
- Trump Insults
- Iowa predictions
- (0:55:04-1:13:06) Election 2016 – Democrats
- Clinton will win in the end
- Democratic Delegates in Iowa
- ElectionGraphs.com Delegate Tracker
- Clinton’s big superdelegate lead
- What Sanders needs to “really” win
- Feedback – Palin Poetry
- Wrap Up
With just a few days until Iowa, the concentration is naturally on the delegate races, but general election polling continues as well. Until we have actual delegate counts, we’re still following changes for the five best polled candidate combination. With the newest batch of polls, we have two of the Republicans strengthening their position against Clinton in Minnesota.
Clinton vs Rubio
There hasn’t been a lot of polling in Minnesota, but what there is has been tilted further toward the Republicans than the five election average I use as a starting point for my poll averages. With the latest poll, the average moves to a Clinton lead of only 1.5%. This makes Minnesota start looking like a pretty close state. It makes Minnesota a possible pick up for Rubio, and therefore improves his “best case” against Clinton:
What’s remarkable looking at Clinton vs Rubio at this point is the huge number of close states. There are 146 electoral votes in the “up for grabs” category, where the polling margin is under 5% and it would be very easy to imagine the state going either way. Add to that that the tipping point is only a 0.2% Clinton lead, and Clinton vs Rubio is the most evenly matched of the five best polled candidate combinations by a decent margin. The race is very close, and the “best cases” for the two candidates are relatively close to being symmetric.
If the Republican race was about picking the candidate most likely to beat Clinton, Rubio would be way ahead. But it isn’t, and he isn’t.
Clinton vs Cruz
Cruz improved in Minnesota from being behind Clinton by 8.8%, to only being behind by 6.3%. This did not result in a category change, but it did move the tipping point… the state that puts the winning candidate over the edge if you put the states in order. We go from the tipping point being Virginia with a 7.6% Clinton lead, to being Florida with a 6.6% Clinton lead. This still means Cruz is very far behind. He is clearly losing to Clinton. It isn’t particularly close. But it is closer than it was. Cruz has been consistently improving on this metric since June. If Cruz stays in contention in the primaries, watch this number to see if this trend continues and Cruz starts making it an actually competitive race, or if Clinton vs Cruz continues to look like an easy Clinton win.
Clinton vs Trump
OK, technically Clinton vs Trump is #6 in terms of how well polled the candidate combination is, which means by my rules I wouldn’t be talking about it right now. But given Trump’s position in the polls, I’ll mention it anyway. New Clinton vs Trump polling in Michigan (not in Minnesota like the other two) increases Clinton’s lead from 2.4% to 3.0%. This does not move Michigan to a new category, but it does move the tipping point. In this case the tipping state was and still is Michigan, so the tipping margin just moves from 2.4% to 3.0%. There isn’t enough here to declare a real trend. And both 2.4% and 3.0% are “close”. So either way, a Clinton vs Trump race is one with a small Clinton advantage, but still a race that could go either way.
In just a few more days, we’ll have actual delegate leaders in both parties. Things are moving fast.
284.6 days until polls start to close on Election Day 2016.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.
On Curmudgeon’s Corner this week, Sam and Ivan talk about, what else, the presidential race. On the Republican side: What is up with Sarah Palin? Does Trump really represent conservatism? That Cruz eligibility thing. And more. On the Democratic side: Does Sanders have a chance? Will Clinton’s negativity backfire? The Idealism vs Pragmatism conflict. And more. Then a sharp turn away from politics and for some reason they talk about Star Wars for 15 minutes. Shrug. Oh yeah, and WiFi sucks.
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-01-22
Length this week – 1:25:39
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:
- (0:00:10-0:03:41) Intro
- Agenda
- Listener Request
- Boring Lives
- (0:04:21-0:42:31) Election 2016 – Republicans
- Sarah Palin
- WiFi Sucks
- Sarah Palin again
- Trumpism and Palinism vs Conservatism
- Establishment coming around to Trump?
- Dynamics approaching Iowa
- Will anybody stop Trump?
- Cruz eligibility
- Trump foreign policy
- (0:43:34-1:07:13) Election 2016 – Democrats
- Clinton will win…
- …unless she screws it up
- Negativity backlash?
- Base vs Centrist divide
- Embracing Obama
- Iowa and New Hampshire
- Hillary in trouble freakout
- How might Clinton blow it?
- Sanders vs Trump?
- National Review’s anti-Trump issue
- (1:08:23-1:25:19) Star Wars Lightning Round
- Movie: Star Wars – The Force Awakens (2015)
- Lucas Sour Grapes
- What was wrong with the prequels?
- Where is Rey?
- Kylo Ren
- Feedback
My primary race delegate tracking for both parties will be out very soon… promise. In the mean time, rather than just looking at the delegate leaders on each side against each other, we continue to concentrate on the five best polled candidate combinations.
With a batch of new polls added in North Carolina, Florida, and New Hampshire, it starts to look like the long trend of Clinton getting weaker and weaker against a wide variety of Republican rivals may have ended. Maybe. For now. A little bit. Things will change before we are done. Polls like these aren’t predictive of the general election until after the conventions. Caveat caveat caveat.
Lets look at each category change by state:
Florida (29 EV)
Of the best five polled candidate combinations, two Republicans have their positions deteriorate against Clinton in this update, Bush and Rubio:
Both candidates seemed to peak in late September or early October, and since then have been weakening. With the latest set of poll updates, both states move from being weakly on the Republican side of the line, to being Weak Clinton. The “weak” here should be emphasized. Clinton’s lead over Bush in the average is only 0.5%, and over Rubio it is only 0.2%. This is about as close as you can get. Since for the analysis here any lead under 5% is considered as one that could easily disappear overnight, at these even smaller margins, this is essentially a tie. But for the last few months, the movement has been in Clinton’s direction.
North Carolina (15 EV)
In North Carolina, once again Bush and Rubio lose ground to Clinton. Although technically with the current update Clinton vs Trump dropped to the 6th best polled candidate combination, I know the Trumpets will want to hear about how he is doing, so I’ll mention that Trump also weakens in North Carolina. Yes, yes, I know that any such indications are just propaganda from the vast establishment conspiracy of which I am a part. But anyway… looking at the charts:
In this case the averages for Bush and Trump against Clinton move from Weak Republican to Weak Clinton, but once again the “weak” is the key here. Clinton leads Bush by 0.1% and Trump by 0.3%. So again, super close. A move from just barely on one side of the line to just barely on the other side of the line isn’t really too meaningful except if it seems part of a larger movement. In the case of Bush, the average seems to have been moving toward Clinton for several months. In the case of Trump, it is more bouncing around in a range over the past few months.
Rubio does a bit better here. North Carolina had actually been in the “Strong Rubio” category for a few months, with the poll average showing a Rubio lead of over 5%. With the latest update, Rubio’s lead slips under 5% to 4.2%, which means I once again consider North Carolina a state that could go either way in this matchup, but Rubio still has a lead.
New Hampshire [4 EV]
New Hampshire is the one state that has good news for the Republicans in this update. No category changes for Bush, Rubio, or Trump… but this time Cruz jumps into a new category.
Cruz’s recent movement in New Hampshire is the opposite of the trends we were looking at for the other candidates in the other states. Cruz is gaining on Clinton in New Hampshire. For the first time, the state starts to look competitive in this match up. Clinton is still up 4.2% in the average, but now it is conceivably within reach for Cruz.
National Ranges
So with all these various changes, what do things look like nationally for all these candidate pairs? Here we go:
With Florida and North Carolina back out of his column, the result if everybody just wins the states they are ahead in now sits at Bush losing by 144 electoral votes. If he manages to flip the states where Clinton is ahead by less than 5% he could still win by up to 104 electoral votes though, so while Bush is behind, this is still a race.
Before this update, Clinton vs Rubio was actually expected to be a narrow 10 electoral vote Rubio win. But if you take Florida away, that changes into a 48 electoral vote loss. With North Carolina also now considered a possibility for Clinton, Clinton’s “best case” improves to a 156 electoral vote win. Rubio’s best case is still a 116 electoral vote win though, so this matchup is also a real race that could go either way.
On the other hand… making New Hampshire possible brings Cruz’s best case… where he wins every state he is ahead in, plus all the states where Clinton’s lead is less than 5%… to Cruz losing by 76 electoral votes. This is better than it was. Cruz has been improving since last spring. But he is still not yet in a place that would make a Clinton vs Cruz race even competitive. Right now that matchup looks like an easy Clinton win.
Now, the Real Clear Politics average for Clinton vs Cruz actually shows Cruz ahead of Clinton right now. (Rubio too.) How does this mesh? First thing to note is that the state level polling that the estimates on this site are based on are still not happening quickly enough to show national movement that happens on timeframes less than a few months. So it is quite possible there has been a recent move just isn’t reflected in the state numbers yet. If so, if Cruz ends up the nominee, there will be a lot more polling, and we’ll see the state level analysis move toward the national numbers as more data becomes available. It is of course also possible that Cruz’s support is distributed between states in such a way that gives him a popular vote advantage while still leaving him behind in the electoral college. To be frank though, that is less likely.
Given that, it is reasonable to think that perhaps the gains Cruz showed in the New Hampshire update today are quite likely happening in other states as well, there just isn’t the polling available yet to show it on a state by state basis. So Cruz may be stronger than he appears on this chart.
There really wasn’t polling on Trump before this summer, so most if not all of the movement seen here is not real movement, but just the process of getting enough polls to have a reasonable picture of how Trump is doing. The “expected” case doesn’t show a real trend, it has just bounced around a bit. Trump’s best case kept improving as more polls became available. At the moment, the state poll averages show a Clinton vs Trump race could reasonably be anywhere from a 156 electoral vote Clinton win to a 102 electoral vote Trump win, with the “expected case” being an 80 electoral vote win by Clinton. But this matchup DOES look like a real race, not a Clinton rout. Trump does better against Clinton than either Cruz or Bush. Of these four, only Rubio does better.
Or course, I should repeat all the usual caveats again. See the top of this post. There is still lots of time. Everything can and will change over the next few months.
291.9 days until the polls start to close. 11 days until the Iowa caucuses.
This whole thing is going to start moving very quickly very soon.
PS for Sanders fans: Although no match up vs Sanders has been polled enough to talk about in detail here, with today’s updates Sanders strengthened vs Rubio in North Carolina, while weakening against both Rubio and Cruz in Florida.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them. And like Election Graphs on Facebook!
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