The Next Two Weeks

We have just a little under two weeks before what is known as Super Tuesday in primary season (or as some are now calling it the SEC primaries, due to the number of southern states voting), but before that we have a couple of primaries and caucuses to discuss.

Today, Saturday February 20 Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have their showdown in the Nevada caucus, scheduled to begin at 12 pm mountain time. For the Republicans their showdown is in South Carolina. On Tuesday, February 23 the Republican train moves to Nevada for their caucus and then on Saturday, February 27 the Democrats take their shot at South Carolina.

Despite what some media outlets are reporting, today is not a potential turning point in the election. Neither is next week. Super Tuesday is going to be a turning point and we are going to see where everyone truly stands.

As with the general election in November the actual number of votes each candidate gets does not full factor into who wins. In order to win either the Republican or Democratic primary what a candidate needs is delegates.

Here is where everyone stands in delegate counts as we enter today's races. The delegate counts for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will look drastically different than you may have seen because I am not using the super delegate count. It is a simple reason, really. Super delegates are only pledged at this time and will not become official until the Democratic convention so those pledges can and will change as the season heats up. I will explain more on that further down.

Republicans: States won

Donald Trump - 17 New Hampshire

Ted Cruz - 11 Iowa

Marco Rubio - 10

John Kasich - 5

Jeb Bush - 4

Ben Carson - 3

Democrats:

Bernie Sanders - 36 New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton - 32 Iowa

Adding in the super delegate count Hillary leads Bernie 481 (or 483) to 55.

The super delegate is a relatively new construct on the Democratic side first coming into play in the 80s. Until the 1960s the party elites nominated a candidate After the protests in the 1968 when the party selected Hubert Humphrey to run as president and Edmund Munskie to run as vice president. The popular choices of the people were Robert Kennedy who had been assassinated on June 5 just two months before the convention and Eugene McCarthy. Both men had favored ending the Vietnam conflict but the leaders of the Democratic Party were in favor of continuing the conflict. As a result of the crushing defeat of Humphrey in the general election. The voting system was changed to allow voters to determine the nominee. The elites, however, having lost all of their power were able to broker the idea of the super delegate (which consists of Democratic members of Congress, governors, mayors, and other politicians selected by the state parties. The super delegates pledge their vote to a candidate but do not officially vote until the convention.

The issues with how the super delegates actually vote came in to play in the 2008 race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The race had been close but Obama held the lead as the primaries were coming to a close. It was discovered that super delegates were potentially planning to all vote for Hillary in an attempt to give her the nomination. Once this came out the majority of the super delegates pledged that whoever was in the lead would be who they would vote for. A similar case could happen this year. Despite an overwhelming win for Sanders in New Hampshire which provided him with a 15-9 delegate count once the super delegates were added it turned into a tie at 15-15.

Because the super delegates are only pledged at this time I will not count them in the totals.

There are 35 delegates up for grabs in Nevada today for the Democrats and 53 in South Carolina next Saturday. For the Republicans (who thankfully do not have to deal with the super delegates there are 50 up for grabs in South Carolina today and 30 in Nevada on Tuesday.

Here is where it gets tricky on the Republican side. Ted Cruz won Iowa and Donald Trump won New Hampshire. Trump is favored to win both South Carolina and Nevada. However, in order for Trump to secure the nomination he has to reach at least 45% of the vote in each state. He has not done that yet and is not favored to do that in either of the next two states. Unless a candidate begins to completely over take the race we could be headed for a brokered convention between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio (as it stands now).

Now for the predictions for today (I will post an update with my predictions for the other two primaries on the days they occur).

Nevada: Three polls have been released since New Hampshire for the Nevada Caucus, two showing Hillary with a lead of either one or six and one showing a tie. Here's the catch. The polling in Nevada has not been good at predicting an outcome. In 2008 the polls showed that Mitt Romney would come in third, not only did he win Nevada but he won it easily. The results here are going to depend on the turnout of Latinos. If they do not come out Bernie Sanders will win the state, if they do Hillary has a better chance of winning. Because the polling in Nevada is not a good predictor of who will win I will not state who will win the state but I will say that whoever wins will win by less than 5%. Because they reward delegates on a proportion and not on a winner take all I am not able to make a great prediction of the delegate count for either party.

Republicans:

The polling in South Carolina has gotten a bit wonky in the days leading up to today.

Overall it does appear that Trump should win the state. With the averages of the polls he is up 34-19 over Ted Cruz. Having said that the last poll that came out had Trump with a 27-24 lead over Marco Rubio. This is significant for two reasons. First, the margin of error for the poll was +/- 3.5% which places this poll as a virtual dead heat between to the two candidates. Secondly, the last poll done by this team had Trump easily in front with at 36-15% lead over Ted Cruz. It feels like this poll is an outlier and not truly indicative of how the race will end up. I am going to stick with Trump winning, Ted Cruz coming in second, and Marco Rubio coming in third. I am also going to say that Kasich will come in fourth, Bush fifth and Carson in sixth.

This outcome should bring an end to the Carson run despite what he has been saying recently and I feel that Bush will probably drop out either after Nevada or after Super Tuesday. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Trump will secure 30% of the vote and Cruz will get around 20% and Rubio probably around 18%. As the day goes on and before the polls close I may update these numbers.

Here's to another great day of politics.

UPDATE 1:

Just watching the early coverage today. If the vote is close in Nevada we may not know the true victor in Nevada until very late tonight though the caucuses are happening right now. Here is the reason. There will be two different stories that can come out today the person who wins the most counties and the person who wins the most delegates. Nevada doles out their delegates based on the congressional districts. In 2008 Clinton won 51% of the counties but because of how the districts were laid out Obama actually ended up winning the delegate count by one. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2:

Though no results have come in the entrance polls are showing that liberal to very liberal ideology is accounting for 70% of those caucusing in Nevada. In 2008, when Hillary won the vote count in Nevada the ideology was 55% moderate to conservative. How much that much of difference plays into the results today remain to be seen.

UPDATE 3:

Nearing the half way point in the Nevada Caucus Hillary is currently up by 4%. The important number to note is that in Clark County (Las Vegas) Hillary is up by 10%. Clark County represents roughly 70% of the population. If she maintains that lead she will win Nevada.

UPDATE 4:

Hillary Clinton is now projected to be the winner in Nevada. The projected delegate gain looks to be Clinton 9, Sanders 8 for the time being with many more delegates to be handed out at another time. This will push the delegate count to Sanders 44, Clinton 41.

UPDATE 5:

The first casualty of the South Carolina Republican primary is Jeb Bush who announced that he was suspending his campaign. With his dismal performance tonight it is not that much of a surprise. They had thought that after Trump specifically went after his brother and Jeb was quick to respond that it would help them tonight. It did not. It looks like the only race left tonight is for second place between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

UPDATE 6:

Now that the vast majority of numbers are in we can look at tonight's results. As always if the numbers need to be changed I will update.

Nevada: Hillary faired right in the middle of what the polling was showing leading up to the caucus (which is a huge surprise due to previous years)

With roughly 90% of precincts reporting Hillary is up 53-47% on Bernie which is above the 4% of one poll but below the 7% of another poll. As far as the delegates are concerned Hillary picked up 22 to Bernie's 16 with one outstanding delegate. That will put Hillary in the overall lead of delegates 54-52. Still a very competitive race with South Carolina next Saturday.

South Carolina: Trump won as expected but Marco Rubio surprised with a second place showing and Cruz coming in at 3rd. This is a three person race between those three as the three other candidates in the race all finished below 10% each.

The final numbers with 99% reporting have Trump at 33%, Rubio at 23%, Cruz at 22%, Bush and Kasich at 8% and Carson at 7%. The delegate count from tonight's race has Trump with 44 of the 50 delegates with six outstanding. Overall, Trump now has 61, Cruz at 11, and Rubio at 10.

Right now there should be alarms going off in the GOP because in the two primaries that have occurred the majority of the people voting have voted against Trump. In New Hampshire 65% voted for someone other than Trump and tonight 67% voted against him. To avoid a brokered convention one of the top three candidates is going to need to start winning the majority of the total votes cast and not just win the most votes. This will not happen until either Rubio or Cruz exit the race.

This may happen sooner rather than later as a judge is set to hear a case that could determine if Cruz is even eligible to run.

Stay tuned for more.

FINAL SATURDAY UPDATE:

Both the Nevada Caucus and South Carolina Primary are within a percentage point of being fully reported. In Nevada there is still a committed delegate out. This will be decided when the state convention meets and the final vote is counted.

In South Carolina all 50 delegates in the state went to Donald Trump. So the updated delegate standings are below:

Trump - 67

Cruz - 11

Rubio - 10

Kasich - 5

Carson - 3

Where we stand in the Nevada Republican Caucus:

The last poll in Nevada was finished roughly a week ago. With the South Carolina Primary on Saturday and the Caucus on Tuesday there just is not enough time for a new poll that will result in much change. Having said that I would not be surprised to see a poll released today.

The last poll was released by Gravis and had Trump leading Cruz 39-23% with Rubio coming in third at 19. The overall average has Trump leading Cruz 42-21 with Rubio at 19, Kasich at 7 and Carson at 6.

We should expect a much closer outcome with Rubio possible coming in at second or even a surprise first (don't necessarily see that happening though).

The surprise poll was performed by CNN showing Trump leading Rubio and Cruz 45-19-17%. If the results end up like this it will show that potentially Republicans are beginning to turn to Trump.

My predication for the Nevada caucus will come in tomorrow.

Nevada Republican Caucus Prediction:

As there are not a whole lot of polls in this race I am going to go strictly by what the averages are showing. Remember that polls heading into a caucus can often be entirely incorrect:

Trump - 42%

Cruz - 21%

Rubio - 19%

Kasich - 7%

Carson 6%

I do realize that this does not equal 100% certain percentages were deleted off the averages as they dropped out of the race. I would not be surprised if Rubio is able to get 2nd place again and make a run at Trump. If Rubio secures second place again start looking for a lot of pressure on Cruz to drop out and for Rubio to start campaigning for Cruz's supporters.

Nevada Results:

The polls mostly got this one right, but it did miss on Rubio who is beginning to rise.

Trump - 46%

Rubio - 24%

Cruz - 21%

Carson - 5%

Kasich - 4%

All but one of the delegates have been claimed so the updated count there is:

Trump - 81

Cruz - 17

Rubio - 17

Kasich - 6

Carson - 4

All others - 6

Next up for the Republicans is Super Tuesday with primaries and caucuses in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming.

SOUTH CAROLINA UPDATE:

The Democratic Primary is set to finish tomorrow and it looks like all the polls are finished. Clemson University released a head scratcher of a poll today showing Clinton ahead of Sanders by a margin of 64-14. Another pollster Emerson College has come under fire because the only people they poll are registered Democratic voters who have voted in the last two presidential elections leaving a huge swath of the population out of the equation. Even with the outlier polls taken out it is very much looking like an easy victory for Hillary as she is winning the average currently at 58-40%. I imagine it will be closer (between 10-15%) but this depends on who has voted early and who has shown up at the poll.

Once the exit polls are released we will have a much better view of what South Carolina will offer.

South Carolina Final Results:

Hillary Clinton absolutely decimated Bernie Sanders in South Carolina. While I was very far off with my prediction (and Clemson turned out to be the only pollster in range) I did state the how the state would go would be determined by the amount of people that showed up early to vote. Over 71% of early voters were African American and considering that African Americans over 65 supported Clinton at a 97-3% clip it is not a surprise that she won so easily.

Clinton won South Carolina 74-26% gaining 39 delegates to Bernie Sanders' 13. Putting the delegate count at 96-65.

Now we move to Super Tuesday. If Hillary Clinton again wins the super majority of the delegates (roughly 2-1) the Democratic race could all but be over after Tuesday's results are in.

The same can not be said on the Republican side. Trump could take every state (which he is not favored to do according to the polls) and still have a clear path to the nomination. I will write more tomorrow on my SEC Primary Eve post.