I have not been posting about the primaries as much this year as the last few cycles for the very sensible reason that we know who both nominees will be. But I don't want to ignore the news all together, so here is my look back at NH and look forward to SC.
New Hampshire: I Nailed It.
Here are my predictions for the Republican primary with the actual results in parenthesis.
Donald Trump: 54.1% (54.3%)
Nikki Haley 43.9% (43.2%)
Binkley 0.5% (0.1%)
Others: 1.5% (2.0%)
I should have lumped Binkley in with "Others", but I wanted to give the guy a fair shot since he was the only declared candidate still in the races of any stature at all.
Just want to point out that my slight error was to overestimate Nikki Haley's performance. But boy am I less guilty of that than any mainstream pundit.
Here are my predictions for the Democratic primary with the actual results in parenthesis:
Joe Biden: 64.3% (63.9%)
Dean Phillips: 16.7% (19.6%)
Marianne Williamson: 8.2% (4%)
Others: 10% (12.5%)
The key number here was Biden. He was a write-in candidate and those are hard to predict. My only slight mistake was underrating Dean slightly and overrating Marianne Williamson. (I can't help it. She's wonderful, isn't she? So sad that her grift is now dead.)
Giving myself an A on this one. Close to an A+ on Republican and somewhere between A and A- on the Democratic side.
South Carolina: Not Much Suspense.
South Carolina has been pivotal in the last 3 contested Democratic races. Obama winning in 2008, Bernie losing in 2016 and Biden crushing all of hos opponents in 2016 can largely explain the last four Democratic presidential contests.
The stakes are lower today. But Biden could use a big number. This is his first time on the ballot in this cycle and a crushing might push Dean Phillips back to the back benches of Congress where he belongs for the next 11 months.
So here's the official pick:
Biden 83%
Phillips 13%
Others: 4%
Williamson will get some votes and there will be write-ins. But nothing to move the needle. Most likely, Biden will win all 29 delegates.
About November.
Still holding off on my first official general election forecast. But I feel good about things. There has been a stream of good economic news. And it looks like we might just get a substantial ceasefire in Gaza soon.
The Republicans don't have a real contest for the next three weeks. But Haley's polling in SC has cratered. At some point soon she might admit that it's better to withdraw than to lose her home state by 25 or 30 points.
The public is slowly waking up to the reality of a Trump-Biden rematch. Polling for now is still all over the place. But I think that will change over the next six weeks or so.
My confidence of a Biden win this November is up to about 60%. Details to follow.
Does the name James Rassman mean anything to you? Probably not.
On March 13, 1969 James Rassman was embarked on a swift boat in the Mekong River delta. During a firefight, he went over the side, falling into the Bay Hap River. John Kerry ordered the boat to turn around, back into enemy fire. When Rassman was unable to pull himself onto the boat, Kerry went down and reached for him, pulling him to safety.
Rassman lived a mostly quiet life after getting home from the service. But one day in 2004 he got on a plane to Iowa and showed up at a John Kerry event to tell that story. Kerry was already rising in the polls, but this pushed him over the top. He won Iowa and New Hampshire on his way to a relatively easy nomination that summer.
Most politicians do not have a story like that. There are only so many war heroes to go around. Joe Biden has a hell of personal story. When Joe Bide was 30 years old and a senator-elect, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident. Last week during a CNN Town Hall Reverend Anthony Thompson asked Biden a question about his faith. Rev. Thompson's wife was murdered by a white supremacist during the mass shooting of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Vice-President Biden responded to the question in direct and personal terms, as seen above.
And yesterday, Biden swamped the South Carolina primary with nearly 50% of the vote. He won 39 of 54 delegates and the race now feels like a two-man contest. If Biden holds his own on Super Tuesday, and winds up winning the nomination in Milwaukee, the moment with Reverend Thompson might be seen as the turning point of what recently looked like a doomed campaign.
So where does this leave us?
I. Early State Analysis.
After four contests, the race stands as follows:
1. Joe Biden, 30% of the vote, 1 win, 54 delegates.
2. Bernie Sanders, 24% of the vote, 2 wins, 2 second places finishes, 60 delegates.
3. Pete Buttigieg, 15% of the vote, 1 win, 1 second, 1 third, and 1 fourth. 26 delegates
4. Elizabeth Warren 10 % of the vote, 8 delegates
5. Amy Klobuchar 10% of the vote, 7 delegates.
II. The Horse Race: No More Tiers.
1. The Front Runner-Bernie Sanders.
Bernie leads in delegates and after Tuesday will probably have the popular vote lead too. He is the front-runner. He has done well with Latino voters and he remains the overwhelming favorite of young voters. But he has only exceeded expectations once (Nevada) and a winnowing field probably helps Biden going forward.
I like Bernie's chances of winning a plurality of delegates. But to win a majority, he's going to need to course-correct a little. As moderates drop out, he should hire some of their staff because he needs to get better at messaging for the center of the country.
At the last debate he responded to every criticism of him with an angry harrumph. When called out on his support of Fidel Castro, he doubled down. This will not win him any votes going forward. He needs to think about the center more, not just to win the nomination but to be competitive in the general election.
2. The Alternative- Joe Biden.
Biden just had the best night of his life. But nothing is guaranteed on Super Tuesday. He needs to win the southern states and to make the delegate threshold in California. He's also an underdog in Texas, but he can probably control the delegate bleeding there.
But one good night does not erase his weaknesses. He is prone to gaffes and his fundraising has been poor. He can probably win a convention floor fight over Bernie, but only if the numbers are close to even.
3. The Persister-Elizabeth Warren.
Third in Iowa. Fourth in neighboring New Hampshire. Fourth again Nevada, Fifth in South Carolina. She has under-performed and her trend is downward. But she retains a committed core of voters who like her debate style and her thoroughness. They have donated enough money to her campaign that she can keep competing through March.
Last night she was frank in saying that her plan going forward was to win as many delegates as possible. She knows the math does not exist to propel her to a delegate majority. But she also knows that every delegate she earns gives her leverage in Milwaukee. She is from the left wing of the Democratic party but she's also a believer in institutions. At the time of her choosing, she could endorse either Bernie or Biden and sell it with a straight face.
If she wins Massachusetts on Tuesday, she has a justification to stay on beyond that point. She will not be the presidential nominee. But she could be the most powerful broker at the first brokered convention of my lifetime.
4. The Imperfect Pragmatist-Amy Klobuchar.
I have been with Amy for months. I still think she has the best resume to get elected and the best temperament to govern. But it's not going to happen this year.
She caught a break in Iowa. The confusion about the outcome and the poor showing of Vice-President Biden became the biggest stories coming out of the first caucus. By performing slightly better than polls suggested, she looked like a credible option. And then she had a great debate night in New Hampshire. This led to a respectable third place finish. Six delegates and 20% of the vote gave her momentum and boosted her fund raising.
But at the next debate, she got into a petty exchange with Buttigieg that took some of the glow off her earlier performance. She also completely failed to develop a narrative for why black and brown people should vote for her. So she bombed down to 5th in Nevada and all the way to 6th in South Carolina.
5-3-5-6 is not going to do it. But she is the betting favorite to win Minnesota on Tuesday, and I know that means a lot to her. Like Warren, she knows that every delegate is valuable.
Fun fact-the very first presidential candidate that I ever supported was Senator Paul Simon (D-IL). When I was 14 years old, I went to a Barnes and Noble and special-ordered his book about putting America to work through an infrastructure jobs program. I was too young to vote for him, but I followed him closely, including his surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live with the other Paul Simon. (No relation and no endorsement either.)
Simon won his home state Illinois primary that March. I want Amy Klobuchar to do the same this week. And then, she needs to drop out.
5. The Republican- Mike Bloomberg.
He has spent half a billion dollars on this campaign before his name ever appeared on a regular ballot. I don't blame him for staying around long enough to find out just how bad that investment is. There might even be a practical justification for competing on Tuesday. A lot of mail-in ballots were cast before his campaign was revealed to be the cynical joke that it is. So he might just get 15 percent of the vote in California. He certainly will get it in plenty of congressional districts. That could cost Sanders some delegates, and if that prevents a Bernie nomination, well there are worse ways for a 78 year old man to spend eight tenths of one percent of his wealth.
6. Yeah, she's still running-Tulsi Gabbard.
One percent in South Carolina. One. But she's still the preferred candidate of Fox News.
And pour a little out for Tom Steyer. He spent $250 million dollars so people could hear his opinions about various things. That's not as ridiculous as spending the percentage of free time that I spend doing the same thing.
Bonus Segment: I was drafting this posting when the news broke that Pete Buttigieg was dropping out of the 2020 race. I'll leave this here, unedited for posterity's sake. I am glad he accepted the reality of the math. He has a bright future. The Rookie of the Year-Pete Buttigieg.
Someday he might be the answer to the trivia question: Who won the last Iowa caucus?
Winning Iowa is nothing to sneeze at it. He had to overcome a lot of questions about his age and resume. He also had to convince a lot of people that the country was ready to elect a gay president. He followed this up with a very close 2nd place finish in New Hampshire.
But then the race turned to more diverse states, and he faltered. A respectable third in Nevada but a distant 4th in South Carolina. At one point last night it looked like he might announce that he was dropping out today. But for now, his campaign goes on.
Maybe he has polling that shows him sucking up sizeable delegate numbers in places like Oklahoma and Colorado. But he is the one candidate who I think could enhance his career by dropping out early. You won Iowa, kid. If Biden becomes president, you'll probably have a plumb job this time next year.
Putting up a bunch of six to ten percent performances on Tuesday doesn't get you much.
III. The Power Rankings, Take 13. These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates: 1. Amy Klobuchar (For old time's sake.) 2. Joe Biden 3. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 4) 4. Bernie Sanders (Up from 6.) 5. Michael Bloomberg (Same position numerically because Pete dropped out, but for the record I have moved him below Bernie Sanders.) 6. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 8, but DFL is still DFL.)
Iowa and New Hampshire have Cauc-voted, and all we know for sure is that we don't know much.
I. New Hampshire Analysis.
My predictions were terrible but the polling averages were pretty accurate. Let's compare:
1. Bernie Sanders: Result 1st 25.9%. Polling average 1st 28.7, Prediction 1st 28%.
Bernie did fine. He won and that's the most important thing. But his number was slightly lower than expected and as in Iowa, it does not seem that he brought out waves of young people to vote for him. The electorate is obviously focused on beating Trump and his electability argument is predicated on turning out young people to vote for him in unprecedented numbers. So far, we don't have evidence of that.
The optimistic take is that Bernie is the person most likely to wind up with a plurality of delegates. I am increasing skeptical that he will get through the process with a majority however. Yesterday Nate Silver's model had him winding up with about 1,650 delegates. After NH the model has him winning 1,531. (1,990 are needed for a majority.)
2. Pete Buttigieg. Result: 2nd/24.4% Polling average: 2nd/21.3% Prediction: 3rd/16%.
Pete overperformed, slightly. His strategy officially paid off. By working IA and NH meticulously and accepting all free media invitations, he was able to get one gold and one silver. For the moment he has a negligible lead in delegates with 23. (Sanders has 21.)
Now he has to run nationally. He will get a lot of attention but I think voters will be concerned about his lack of experience.
3. Amy Klobuchar Result 3rd/19.8% Polling average: 3rd/11.75 Prediction: 5th/11%.
No one can accuse me of being a homer. Klobuchar had a great night and will now get a lot of media attention. But she has to start running in places that have not paid much attention to her until very recently. She had a fundraising windfall after the last debate and should have one today too. But she has to scale up in a hurry and I'm not sure what her campaign will focus on next.
She remains a huge long-shot. Nate Silver's model only has her winning 80 delegates. (Up from a project 57 before NH.) That's two percent. She needs to start beating Pete and she has to worry that Bloomberg might get a lot of voters that otherwise would have voted for her.
I would advise her to keep pointing out the contrasts with Mayor Pete. She has the resume of a president. He does not. But she also needs someone to go negative on Bernie. I don't think it's the right time to do that directly. But Biden and Warren might have to do that for their own interests.
4. Elizabeth Warren Result: 4th/9.3%. Polling Average: 4th/11% Prediction: 4th/14%.
It was not her night. Being from a neighboring state, she should have done better than 4th. But she can also claim with a straight face to have done as well as Klobuchar so far. (She in fact has 8 delegates, and Klobuchar 7.) I think she is a pragmatist. Most years that would mean dropping out now. But this year looks like a fight for every delegate until Milwaukee. She will stay in until Super Tuesday, at least. Watch her fundraising. I think a lot of her donors might be drifting towards Amy Klobuchar today but I know Warren is a worker. She knows that she can still have a big say in who the nominee is and what the platform looks like.
5. Joe Biden. Result 5th/8.3% Polling Average: 4th(tie)/11.0%. Prediction: 2nd/20%.
I thought NH would give Biden a comeback narrative. But his attack on Mayor Pete felt petty and he slid all the way down to 5th place. He skipped town before the voting was done. But he does have an argument that will resonate with some-so far only white people have been voting. That can give him some hope but he's a wounded candidate and there will be a lot of money spent trying to deny him a win in South Carolina. If he's going to be the nominee, he needs to have the best 18 days of his campaigning life.
I am starting to think that Trump's Ukraine/Hunter/Burisma fantasy hurt Biden. I don't think any Democrat believes this is a real scandal but there's probably some percentage who doesn't want to go through Hillary's emails again. The unfortunate thing is that any candidate will have some version of that bullshit thrown at them by Trump and Fox News. Biden's reputation is probably best suited to withstand it. But he got his ass kicked twice and I'm not sure how he turns that story around.
II.. The Horse Race.
The Top Tier (Front Runners)
1. Bernie Sanders
2. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 2)
3. Michael Bloomberg (Up from 4)
Tier Two (The Alternatives)
4. Amy Klobuchar (Up from 6)
5. Elizabeth Warren
Tier Three: (The Wounded)
6. Joe Biden (Down from 2)
Tier Four: (Nothing Better to Do With the Lives)
7. Tom Steyer He's already spent a fortune in NV and SC so he might as well stick around to see if he can get any return on it. I suspect not.
8. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 9)
III. The Power Rankings, Take 12
These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.
1. Amy Klobuchar
2. Joe Biden (Up from 4)
3. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 5)
4. Elizabeth Warren (Up from 6)
5. Michael Bloomberg (Up from 7)
6. Bernie Sanders (Up from 8)
7. Tom Steyer (Up from 9)
8. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 11)
Pour a little out for Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick. Bennet and Patrick would have been contenders for compromise candidates at a brokered convention. But I doubt that will happen now.
Andrew Yang will start a podcast and/or Multiple Level Marketing scheme any day now. His endorsement would be worth something, but I'm not sure who he would give it to. Without one, I suspect that the 3 percent of voters he got in NH will split pretty evenly, among Bernie and Pete.
The Republican primary is underway in South Carolina and Democrats are caucusing in Nevada. The markets today have seen a continued drop in Senator Cruz' numbers and a surge in support for Rubio. The Democratic race seems largely unchanged.
A few days ago Nate Silver's website published a post about Republican delegate math that made the argument that Ted Cruz had a very tough road to the nomination. The thrust of the thesis was that most of the states he is likely to win do not award all of their delegates to the statewide winner. His home state of Texas only awards all of its delegates to the statewide winner if that candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. In a fractured field, that seems unlikely.
The other bad piece of news is that Marco Rubio is once again the darling of the media. Several reporters embarrassed themselves this week by writing incredibly upbeat articles about Senator Rubio of a "comeback kid" nature. Now that his tormentor Chris Christie has left the field he seems to be doing much better on the campaign trail. And Jeb Bush continues to set new standards for how not to run for president in 2016. I don't know if Marco is ready for prime time, but there are large segments of the party ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.
We'll know in a few hours whether Rubio's comeback is for real or just another figment of the mainstream media's natural instinct to over rate conventional, telegenic candidates. I'm somewhat skeptical but the implosion of Jeb's campaign can't hurt him, especially if Jeb takes the hint and exits the race.
My official predictions for South Carolina GOP are: Trump 31, Cruz 24, Rubio 21, Bush 10, Kasich 9, Carson 5. The most interesting numbers and story lines to look for are these:
1. The race for 2nd place. If Rubio passes Cruz then there will be more pressure on Bush and Kasich to clear the field for Rubio. But if he finishes behind Rubio for the 3rd straight time I think those guys can justify staying in a little while longer. The Republican caucuses are on Tuesday and that's supposed to be a good state for Bush. I think he has too much money and too big of an organization to not give it one more try.
2. Trump's ceiling. A few days ago it looked like Trump was going to beat his New Hampshire mark of 35 percent. But his trend has been downward for a few days and I think a more realistic goal is 30 percent.
3. Trump's margin of victory. If Trump wins by 10 points or more, he is likely to get all 50 SC delegates. I suspect Cruz will win at least one congressional district which would net him 3 delegates and maybe Rubio will come on strong to win 3 also. The over/'under for Trump to have a truly successful night is 44 delegates.
4. How far does Jeb fall? For almost 20 years the word on him was that it's such a shame he lost his first run for governor. If he had won in 1992, he would have had seniority over his brother and been the nominee/president in 2000. The past few weeks have exposed that myth. He lost in 1992 because he's a lousy politician. If he had won, then John McCain probably would have beat him in the 2000 primaries.
He can not do better than a distant 4th place tonight. The honorable thing would be to bow out immediately. But much like his older brother, he's not big on exit plans and I expect him to soldier on through Super Tuesday at least. If he doesn't, it's because the party bigwigs have figured out that his candidacy can only help Trump and hurt them.
5. How many dead-enders vote for Carson? I think he has a rump of supporters who just feel good about voting for him. This demographic can probably keep him in the mid single digits for the foreseeable future and the institutional party is probably okay with that because Cruz is the main person hurt by that.
6. Who wins Nevada for the Democrats? Polling has been all but impossible in this race so my prediction is that Hillary's organizational ties out muscle any youthful enthusiasm on Bernie's side. If Hillary exceeds 52% of the vote, she can call it a good night. If not, Bernie will declare a tie to be a victory. Official Predictions: Hillary 52.2%, Bernie 47.8%
Only three presidents have been elected without benefit of having won the New Hampshire primary: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. So the only three presidents to pull of this feat are the last three presidents. It looks very likely that that streak will run to four now that the 2016 New Hampshire Primaries were won by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
I. The Big Picture: Hillary is More Likely Than Not to be the Next President.
Bernie beat Hillary lost by 22 points. That is an ass-whopping and coming off of their virtual tie in Iowa, there is much reason for Sanders to be encouraged. The next states to vote for the Democrats are Nevada, which should be very close and South Carolina, which Hillary is expected to win comfortably. The early states are likely to result in two ties and two blowouts in opposite directions.
Hillary is likely to survive that. The predictions market at predictwise.com gives here an 82% chance of being the nominee. And they give the Democratic nominee a 61% chance of winning the general election. If you multiply those possibilities, she has a 50.002% chance of being the next elected president of the United States.
I like her chances even better than that. The theory of my 2016 posts has been that the prediction markets are underestimating the Democrats' prospects. Instead of being a 60% favorite, I think the Democratic nominee should be more like a 2 to 1 favorite at about 66%. I think the market is about right on her being the nominee, so .82 *. 67 is right about 55 percent. But a lot has to happen before then and we have two very interesting races unfolding for the weeks and months ahead.
So here's some fun with math. Here are the probabilities of each candidate becoming president, based solely on the two prediction markets on predictwise.com:
Clinton 51%, Trump 22%, Sanders 10%, Rubio 9% Cruz 6%, Bush 5%, Kasich 1%.
And here are the most likely candidate match-ups for the general election:
Match-up
Probability
Clinton
Sanders
Trump vs.....
39.0%
8.0%
Rubio vs....
18.3%
3.7%
Cruz vs....
13.3%
2.7%
Bush
10.0%
2.0%
Kasich
1.7%
0.3%
II. The GOP State of the Race.
Trump dominated New Hampshire. Before the primary I was not sure if he could get over 30% of the vote. He blew that away with 35.3%. He more than doubled his nearest competitor, John Kasich. Kasich had a great night too, but only got 16% of the vote in a state that he campaigned in almost full time. Ted Cruz also had reason to be happy with a third place finish.
Perhaps the most significant result is that Jeb Bush beat out Marco Rubio for 4th place by just over 1,000 votes. I don't think Jeb would have dropped out if he finished 5th, but the 5th place finish cemented the image of Rubio coming off the rails because of his terrible debate performance.
South Carolina will decide a lot for the Republicans. Trump is very likely to win and that will mean that his appeal is not just a quirk of New Hampshire. Cruz seems like a lock to finish second, but if Rubio somehow passes him, then the narrative will be that he overcame his New Hampshire slip up. He will then head into Nevada and Super Tuesday with some momentum.
But Jeb Bush is the most interesting story. He did terribly in Iowa and middling in New Hampshire. Between the two states he has received less than nine percent of the votes. But he is doubling-down on this effort and has recruited his brother George W. Bush to record commercials and campaign for him. This is a classic short-term decision based on W's inexplicably high approval ratings among South Carolina Republican voters. So they seem to think he can be of help in the SC primary. But who is really persuaded by learning that a candidate is supported by his sibling? And if Bush somehow does well enough in SC to continue his campaign and be nominated, those commercials will just be used against him by the Democrats. So yes, a Bush has once again committed to a strategy without contemplating an exit strategy.
III. My Updated Forecast.
I remain bullish on Rubio, relative to the predictions market. But I think this has now become a pretty close race between Trump, Cruz and Rubio. Kasich is also in better shape because I think he benefits from Rubio's stumble. I give Bush a 5% chance mostly because he has the resources to compete.
This chart lists some relevant numbers for the Republican race. The IA&NH column reflects the share of each candidate's votes among the remaining candidates. (Votes for Paul, Huckabee, etc are not included in the math.) The Predictwise column is their current marketshare to be the nominee. The last two columns refer to my personal forecast. The yellow column reflects where it was before New Hampshire and the orange is my current forecast.
