Both parties have primaries in Michigan and Mississippi on Tuesday, and the Republicans also have a primary in Idaho and a caucus in Hawaii.
I’ll give the GOP details below. (From the Green Papers - click on the links for each state.) If someone wants to do the same for the Dems, go for it; I think we can share a thread.
So on the GOP side, Michigan has 59 delegates, Mississippi 40, Idaho 32, and Hawaii 19.
Michigan allocates its 59 delegates proportionately on a statewide basis, with a 15% cutoff, and a 50% winner-take-all threshold.
Mississippi allocates 28 of its delegates proportionately on a statewide basis with a 15% cutoff. (No WTA threshold.) The remaining 12 are allocated by Congressional district, 3 per CD, with 2 and 1 to the first- and second-place finishers in the CD, with a 50% WTA threshold in each CD.
Idaho allocates its 32 delegates proportionately on a statewide basis, with a 20% cutoff, and a 50% winner-take-all threshold.
Hawaii’s 19 delegates are allocated more or less proportionately with some fun n’ games in the rounding that I was too lazy to wade through. 10 delegates are allocated statewide, 3 for each of its two CDs, and 3 party officials will be delegates. Even though it’s a caucus, the vote is by secret ballot, and while it’s technically a closed caucus, anyone can register to vote and join the GOP on the spot, so the difference between this and an open caucus is pretty trivial.
FWIW, I think Cruz wins Idaho, Michigan’s gonna be a close race between Trump and Kasich, Mississippi will be a tossup between Trump and Cruz, and I have no idea about Hawaii.
And unlike this weekend, with caucuses and primaries in several states, there won’t be much going on between March 8 and March 15. Between those Tuesdays, the Dems have caucuses in the Northern Marianas Islands, while the GOP has caucuses in the Virgin Islands, and party conventions in D.C. and Guam. Heavyweight stuff, huh?
Just walked into the break room at work and Fox News (Hey, I don’t control the channel changer) is showing Trump with 41% in Michigan. No idea whose poll it is or how reputable it is, but figuring Trump will keep his Southern dominance in Mississippi, that’s two out of four for Trump (and the ones with the most votes).
Kasich really needs Michigan to show he’s not a 'one trick pony". RT, any polls you’ve seen favoring Ohio’s favorite son in Michigan?
And not a word about Marco. Guess he’s deperately trying to claim Florida. It’s his only hope, it appears.
One poll showed Kasich +2 in Michigan, but the weight of polling suggests against that. However this election has failed to predict some big Trump defeats, so I think in some circumstances there has been overpolling in favor of Trump versus reality on election day.
I will say the results of 3/5 I think make a contested convention a lot more likely, although if Trump wins Michigan/Mississippi and Ohio I think he’d still be on track to hit an absolute pledged delegate majority.
That being said he lost some elections to Cruz (and possibly would’ve lost Louisiana if not for so much early voting) in states that prior contests would’ve suggested he’d win handily, so it’s possible we’ve hit “peak Trump” and maybe all the negative nonsense finally is softening up support for him.
On the Dem side Clinton will win huge in Mississippi, and unless there is a momentous Sanders surge polling hasn’t captured she’ll win by double digits in Michigan. If that happens then talk of a “path to the nomination” by the remaining die hard Bernie believers will transition from being “illogical” to “ridiculous.”
Not really. Without winner-take-all allocation, he can’t get a couple of surprise small wins and leverage that up into a delegate lead like the Republican candidates could theoretically do. Sanders would have to start getting something on the order of 60-65% of the vote in every state going forward from here in order to win, and outside a couple of people who I know that write long screeds on Facebook, I don’t know that anyone really expects him to be able to.
I’ll be casting a Michigan Hillary vote tomorrow. I want the contest to end so we can focus on T-Rump.
I think Hillary wins easily in Michigan. Call me crazy, but don’t be surprised if Trump comes in second. I think the Trump fever is breaking and others are getting a second look. Not so sure it’s Kasich, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cruz pulls off a stunner.
The fact none of the Democratic primaries are winner take all means that his path to the nomination requires turning things around right now. He’s down by 199 delegates today. This means he needs to win 53% of the remaining pledged delegates to pull even in pledged delegates.
A quick back of the envelope calculation based on 538 shows that he might be down ~250 pledged delegates on Wednesday morning. If that happens he’ll need around 55% of remaining delegates to pull even.
Winning a population weighted average of 55% may or may not be realistic (so far it’s been 59.8% - 38.5% Clinton - Sanders). As that number creeps up Sanders’s realistic chances evaporate if they have not already.
My feeling is it is not realistic at all for Sanders to be able to catch up to Clinton at this point. He has to know this and should concede and throw all of his support behind Clinton to make her victory in November as much of a sure thing as possible.
ETA: …which is all the more important as I have a sinking feeling Clinton may be up against Cruz and not Trump.
As others have explained, he has a path, but it’s not very realistic. Proportional is weird because it can give the illusion of the race being a lot closer than it is. The WTA primaries the Republicans use for some of their states can have an effect of making it seem like someone has fallen too far behind but they could legitimately catch up by winning a couple states. For someone who is trailing by a few hundred delegates in the pure proportional primary winning a few states may move them only a small number of delegates up on their opponent, so it’s not just winning that is needed to catch up, but winning by huge margins while your opponent stops winning any other states. Eventually it’ll get to the point where you need very unrealistic margins for every remaining state, like beating your opponent by 10% for every state left, or 15 % or 20% etc as the number of delegates outstanding gets smaller.
There are two new polls of Michigan taken mostly or entirely since Thursday’s debate. They show Trump running 15 and 22 points ahead of Kasich. The 15-pointer is Monmouth University, and they’re good. (The link shows a 13-point lead for Trump in the Monmouth poll; that’s because Cruz snuck into second place in that one.) So I’m inclined to believe that the ARG poll is iffy.
It wouldn’t surprise me anyway to see Trump win by single digits, but I’d be surprised to see him not win.
There are ~550 delegates’ worth of WTA or WTMost primaries in blue states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast between mid-April and early June, so there’d be a path forward for a guy like Kasich if he could pick up some wins this week and next. But if he had some ham, he could make a ham sandwich, if he had some bread.
Kasich’s longshot path does not depend on winning Michigan. A solid second there suffices and gets him some delegates. It’s proportional. He must however win Ohio (as he is favored to do). From there he is the last traditional lane candidate standing and all forces that want anything but Trump or Cruz will rally behind him. Under that circumstance there are a few upcoming WTA states that he would have a crack at: WI, MD, DE, PA (mostly WTA), IN, CA, and NJ. A few of those states might be enough to make it a contested convention and be spun as effectively a three-way tie plurality be damned. And then it is a hot mess that is all previous bets off.
So getting closer to polls closing, and while I don’t expect any big upsets some potential possible things that could happen and that would be interesting:
-Cruz winning Mississippi, he had a late surge in Louisiana that may suggest the Deep South is turning to him (just in time! Oh wait, other than Florida they’ve all already voted.)
-Kasich potentially coming in second in Michigan, combined with
-Rubio potentially missing the delegate cutoff in Michigan could represent a major media push for Kasich. Kasich is strictly a “contested convention candidate” at this point, but to make that work for him he’d need something like coming in second here in Michigan (maybe even winning) winning Ohio, Illinois, basically collecting enough delegates that you could justify giving him the nomination over Trump (who almost certainly would have the plurality in a contested convention.)
-While not mentioned enough (it was mentioned in OP, and it was relevant in Vermont), the Democratic contests have minimums as well–and Bernie is legitimately in danger of missing the 15% delegate threshold in Mississippi–the blackest state in the country, with a helpful heap of conservative white Democrats on top of that. If that happens it’s a +36 delegate swing for Hillary. 538’s polls-plus has him at 14.5%, polls-only at 16.7%, so it’s in the real realm of possibility.
I switched from Hillary to Sanders today when I voted. I was all set to vote for Hillary to put an end to the campaign, but I was quite offended by the way she misled about Sanders not voting for the auto bailout. He did vote for the bailout was a standalone bill, but he did not vote for it when coupled with the Wall Street bailout. So he refused to take a poison pill. Hillary knows this full well and I thought it was disingenuous of her to take that line of attack.
