Category Archives: Bernie Sanders

Delegate Math: Week of April 25

By tmess2 | Published April 22, 2016

New York this past week was huge for the front runners in both parties.  For both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the results in New York essentially offset everything that has happened over the past several weeks.  On the Republican side, the race stands essentially where it stood on April 1 except for 223 more delegates allocated.  On the Democratic side, the race stands essentially where it stood on March 14 except for 1197 more delegates allocated.  In other words, the New York reset basically gave Trump a glimmer of hope that he can win enough delegates to get the nomination while it put Clinton back in control of the Democratic race.  This week’s primaries feature five states that comprise the rest of the Mid-Atlantic (Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania) and the last two New England states (Connecticut and Rhode Island).  For both Trump and Clinton, the hope is that this week will be mostly a repeat of New York.  For Trump that hope is a necessity because he still is behind where he needs to be on the delegate count and May is a little less friendly than this week.  Clinton also faces a potentially weaker performance in May, but she is fast approaching the point where it is mathematically impossible for Sanders to catchup on the pledged delegate count (much less the popular vote count).

Starting with the Republicans, the simplest state is Delaware — 16 delegates — winner-take-all.  There has not been much (if any polling) In Delaware.  Given the polls in neighboring states, Trump looks like the favorite to win in Delaware unless the supporters of Cruz and Kasich can unite to block him.

Maryland is only a little more complex — a winner-take-most state.  Maryland has eight congressional districts and the winner in each of those districts will take three delegates while the state-wide winner will take fourteen delegates.  Polling puts Trump near 40% with Cruz and Kasich tied for second.  There are potentially some districts that Cruz or Kasich could take.  Strategic voting would probably keep Trump from getting 12 or 15 delegates. Continue Reading...

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New York Primary Results

By Matt | Published April 19, 2016

New York has its say tonight. Polls close at 9PM EDT. We’ll have the results here.

9:40 PM Update: Trump wins big, Clinton wins (but not as big).

11:00 Trump wins about 90 of 95 delegates – but still not a lock to win on 1st ballot. Clinton estimated to go +29 in net delegates – and remains the odds-on favorite for the nomination. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math: New York

By tmess2 | Published April 13, 2016

For the first time since February, there is only one state holding a primary during a week.  It’s also one of the biggest states in the country — New York.  It also comes at a surprisingly crucial time during the campaign.  By mid-April, the norm is that the race is over.   The lack of money for trailing candidates has typically forced them to suspend their campaign and party leaders are pressing for unity behind the likely nominee.  This year, the race is different.  Bernie Sanders has enough money to keep running through the convention.  Republican leaders are definitely not pushing for unity behind Donald Trump.

On the Republican side, we have seen the rules that New York is using in earlier states.  Delegates are awarded “proportionately” by congressional district (three in each of the twenty-seven districts or eighty-one total) and statewide (fourteen delegates).  As in many states, it takes twenty percent to become eligible for delegates, and a district (or the statewide results) becomes winner-take-all at fifty percent.  As in many states, the congressional district is a 2-1 split between first and second place if two or more candidates qualify.  At the state level, the party rounds delegates to the nearest whole number.   If there are any delegates remaining, they go to the winner.  If there are too many delegates allocated, the additional delegates will be taken from the last-placed candidate.  (At most, the math should lead to one or two delegates being added or subtracted.)

Heading into the primary, Donald Trump seems to be flirting with fifty percent state-wide.  By mathematical necessity, if he gets over fifty percent state-wide, he will get over fifty percent in some districts.  Additionally, Ted Cruz has the small problem of having attacked “New York” values while he was running in other states.  He can probably convince upstate voters (and how you define upstate depends upon where in the state you live — for New York City, upstate includes Westchester and Rockland County, but for Albany and Syracuse voters, Westchester and Rockland County are part of the New York City area as is Long Island) that he meant New York City, not New York State.  But only nine districts are wholly upstate (by the narrow definition).  Perhaps, he can convince some New York City Republicans that he meant the values espoused by Democratic politicians, but Cruz is not likely to be competitive in the New York City districts. Continue Reading...

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Catching Up

By DocJess | Published April 8, 2016

I haven’t posted in several weeks as I ended up getting actual Influenza A (and yes, I took the vaccine). I’m not saying it was rough, but I didn’t even care that there were primaries and caucuses because I couldn’t raise my head. For those of you who know me personally, you’ll understand how low I was when I mention that for more than two weeks, I didn’t have even a sip of coffee.

There is so much to catch up on. First, Bernie is on a roll, and I have received a lot of emails and texts asking whether or not he can actually get the nomination. The answer is a full maybe. First off, those pledged delegates from the caucus states can move, as they did last Saturday as the process moves from election day to the county, district and state conventions. The split in Nevada has so far moved from 20 – 15 Clinton to 18 – 17 Clinton, but there are 8 additional delegates to allocate and the State convention in May. Maine is another state that could reallocate delegates. Will it be enough? Amazingly, it will depend on places like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and California which are normally non-starters in the primary race.

While everyone (including DCW) looks at the full delegate total, including Super Delegates, my math is a little different. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math: Weeks of April 4 and April 11

By tmess2 | Published March 31, 2016

The key contest for both sides during the week of April 4 is the Wisconsin Primary on April 5.  Additionally, Colorado Republicans will hold their congressional district conventions on April 8 and their state convention on April 9.  Democrats will hold county caucuses in Wyoming on April 9.  The Republicans will hold the second part of their delegate selection in Wyoming at the state convention on April 16 in the only contest scheduled for the week of April 11.

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Sanders wins Democrats Abroad

By Matt | Published March 21, 2016

34,570 voters cast their ballots from over 170 countries all around the world, through in person voting, by fax, email, and post, and the results are as follows:

Bernie Sanders received 69% of the vote in the Democrats Abroad’s Global Presidential Primary, Hillary Clinton 31%.

Sanders picks up 9 pledged delegates as a result of the primary, while Clinton secures an additional 4 delegates. –DA Continue Reading...

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Utah really, really does not like Donald Trump

By Matt | Published March 20, 2016

Could Utah turn purple or blue if Trump runs?

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.
…
While Clinton was only slightly ahead of Trump — 38 percent to 36 percent — Sanders, a self-declared Democratic socialist, holds a substantial lead — 48 percent to 37 percent over the billionaire businessman and reality TV star among likely Utah voters.

Cruz is up 60-32 on Clinton, and 52-39 on Sanders.

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Delegate Math — March 21 through April 3

By tmess2 | Published March 20, 2016

After three weeks of multiple primaries in large and medium-large states, there is one last week of multiple events before the process takes a bit of a breather.  After this week, there is a half contest during the week of March 28; one and a half contests during the week of April 4; one quarter contest during the week of April 11; and one contest during the week of April 18 (albeit the very big New York primary).  The pace will only pick back up starting the week of April 25.   In practical terms that means that the candidates will be spending the next month concentrating on a very few states and determining if it is worth continuing with the campaign.

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The Ides of Tuesday, or something like that

By Matt | Published March 15, 2016

This could be a deciding day in the 2016 race:

Update 12:20: Trump wins Northern Marianas, Florida, North Carolina and Illinois. Rubio Out. Kasich wins Ohio. Clinton wins Florida, NC, Ohio and Illinois. Early estimates showing her gaining 90 net delegates on Sanders.

On the Democratic side, if Clinton dominates in FL and NC, and battles to a draw in MO, IL and OH (even if she loses all 3 states), it will be clear to all that she will be the nominee, even if Sanders continues to the last primary, which he is certainly entitled to. If she sweeps all 5 states, Sanders will be under major pressure to lay off Clinton going forward, should he choose to continue in the race. Continue Reading...

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Iowa-County Conventions

By tmess2 | Published March 14, 2016

Saturday were the county conventions in Iowa.  On the Republican side,  the national convention delegates were allocated by the preference vote in the precinct delegates; so the county convention is merely about who will go to the state and congressional district conventions to choose the actual delegates (which might matter if the Republicans end up with a deadlocked convention).  On the Democratic side, the results of the precinct meetings (as reported to the media) are an estimate of what will happen at the county meeting, and the county meetings can change things.  While there appear to have been some changes at the county level, it appears that the bottom line has not changed.

Last week, I looked at the results of the precinct conventions and identified fourteen counties in which (primarily due to O’Malley and uncommitted delegates), the final delegate count was ambiguous.  Based on the results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party, in addition to these fourteen counties, there appear to have been nine other counties that gave a reminder on Saturday that delegates are technically free to change their preferences between each round of the process.  (By my original estimate, a total of eighteen projected delegates changed hands, but it is possible that my counts of the delegates to the county convention included some mathematical errors.)The most interesting of these nine counties was Mills County.

In Mills County, after the precinct meetings, Clinton had twenty-three delegates to the county convention and Bernie Sanders had twenty-two delegates.   With the county convention electing five delegates to the state convention, the projected split was three Clinton delegates to two Sanders delegates.  However, after the county convention, Clinton emerged with two delegates, Sanders with one, and Martin O’Malley and uncommitted also got one delegate each.  It would be interesting to hear news reports out of Mills County on how this happened.  Given that it takes seven delegates to be viable, it is theoretically possible that the Sanders delegates decided to split up 8-7-7 to “steal” a state convention delegate.  There is also the possibility that in some of the precincts, O’Malley or uncommitted voters “got” a county convention delegate in exchange for joining one of the other candidates when the O’Malley/uncommitted groups were too small to be viable. and reverted to their original preference (but it is hard seeing that many delegates having secret preferences). Continue Reading...

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