Mar.06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

What Do Vermont and American Samoa Have in Common?

The answer to that question, obviously, is "not a whole lot." However, those two places are going to be mentioned in a lot of headlines today because each of them gave a victory yesterday to someone other than the presumptive presidential nominees.

Vermont's the bigger one, we suppose, so we'll start there. With >95% of the votes in, Nikki Haley edged out Donald Trump 50.2% to 45.9%. Depending on whether she stays above 50%, she'll either net 17 delegates (17 to 0) or she'll net just one (9 to 8), but either way, a win is a win. It also means she's the first woman ever to win a Republican state primary. Now that she's 40% of the way to the five wins she needs for a slot at the Republican National Convention, might that motivate her to stay in the race? It's certainly possible, though she'd need at least three states where the Republican voter base is small and wonky and not very Trumpy. Rhode Island, Hawaii and Delaware, maybe?

Meanwhile, the people of American Samoa are not allowed to vote in the general election, but they are allowed to vote in primaries. While the Republican caucuses there are on Friday, the Democratic caucuses were last night. And 91 hardy souls showed up to register their preference, which is that the party's presidential candidate be... Jason Palmer. "Who?," you might be asking. Yeah, we had never heard of him, either. He's a very moderate Democrat (some would say DINO) from Maryland whose website emphasizes that he is: (1) a Quaker, and (2) an entrepreneur. Michael Bloomberg won in American Samoa 4 years ago, which suggests to us that either the people of that territory really like entrepreneurs, or that there's some way to effectively "buy" a win (say, by paying for people's transportation to the caucus sites). Anyhow, Palmer got 51 votes to 40 for Joe Biden. That means that 0.2% of the population of American Samoa cast ballots in the caucus, and that .019% of the population gave Palmer his margin of victory. Undoubtedly, The New York Times will have a story today about how this speaks to serious cracks in the façade of the Biden campaign. Still, despite Palmer being a "winner" and Biden a "loser," they are both going to get the same number of delegates from the territory.

Moving along, here's a rundown of the results in the Republican presidential contests. They are not very interesting, since you already know who won each of them. So, we're also going to include the FiveThirtyEight weighted polling average for each race, when available, to see if the trend of Donald Trump underperforming his polls continues:

The Utah GOP channeled their inner Iowans and screwed up the running of their caucuses. So, results are not in, and may not be in for a day or two.

In the 14 states where results ARE known, there are four without polls, one where Trump significantly overperformed his polls, one where Trump slightly overperformed his polls, three where he slightly underperformed his polls, and six where he significantly underperformed his polls. We do not detect any particular pattern here (say, the polls are more likely to be wrong in big states, or in blue states), but the evidence continues to mount that the polls, on the whole, are overstating Trump's support. Not all of them, obviously, but enough to be statistically significant.

Here are the Democratic results, including—when possible—how the pollsters did with Joe Biden:

Note that Iowa's caucuses were conducted entirely via mail in January, but that the state Democratic party held the results until last night to comply with DNC rules.

Looking at the numbers, let's first get this out of the way so we can move on to more interesting stuff: What on earth is Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-MN) doing? He managed a single second-place finish, which is worse than Jason Palmer, a candidate nobody ever heard of until yesterday, who came in first in American Samoa. Meanwhile, Marianne Williamson, who isn't even in the race anymore, took second in seven states, while uncommitted (or whatever a particular state's version of that phrase is) took second in the remaining six. In fact, there were states where Phillips trailed both Williamson AND uncommitted. And in Texas, Phillips was not only outpaced by Williamson, he also lagged behind another "who?" candidate in Armando Perez-Serrato, whose platform is: execute Donald Trump, deport millions of immigrants, return Hawaii to the Hawaiians, increase Social Security payments by 50% and cut federal income taxes. Good luck with that, Armando. In any case, either Phillips goes to the No Candidate... er, the No Labels "Party" and throws himself on their mercy, or he goes home.

Moving on, there's one piece of concerning news for Joe Biden, and that is the result in Minnesota, which is like Michigan in that it has a fair number of lefty students, a fair number of lefties in general, and a fair number of Muslims (though many of those Muslims, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, DFL-MN, are not Arab American). For nearly 20% to vote uncommitted is pretty eye-opening. It is clear, just as it was from the Michigan results, that Biden has a Gaza problem. That said, as we've written previously, including yesterday, he and his team know that and are working on it. And remember, the alternative to Biden remains Donald Trump.

Beyond the Minnesota result, we see nothing but good news for the President. His march to the Democratic nomination continues unabated, and he's going to clinch it later this month. And for all the talk of dissension in the Democratic ranks, in every state that held both Republican and Democratic contests yesterday save one (Oklahoma), Biden's share of the vote was greater than Trump's share of the vote. If Biden has an issue here then, as we've already written several times, surely Trump has a bigger one. Sure, some of those Haley votes are ratfu**ing Democrats, but not all of them. In particular, North Carolina only allows Republicans and independents to vote in the Republican primary. Those Haley voters are all must-haves for Donald Trump in a state that is going to be close.

As to the Biden polls, don't read TOO much into that column, because the Democratic side of the contest is poorly polled right now, and because when things are this lopsided, it skews the numbers. That said, in six of the seven states where there's enough polling data, Biden did better than predicted. And, obviously, it was by a lot. You should not presume that the polls are underestimating him by 10 or 15 points, because there's no way that's true. But it's fair to say they ARE underestimating him.

Tomorrow, Hawaii Democrats will hold what could be their last-ever presidential caucus, if Armando Perez-Serrato is elected president. On Friday, it will be Republicans in American Samoa. On March 12, Georgia, Mississippi, and Washington are up; they will be followed, on March 19, by Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio. In theory, Donald Trump could have clinched the nomination on the 12th, but if Nikki Haley remains above 50% in Vermont, that won't be possible. So, it is probable that both Trump and Biden will clinch their nominations on the 19th, and your 2024 presidential contest will be set. (Z)