Voted in Raleigh, NC. They had more people than they had expected for the first half hour. Should be another busy day.
Let me just say I’ve been eternally grateful for my TiVo since I’ve been able to skip over the political ads that have flooded NC in the past week or two.
I’ll be headed over to the polling place (a church of course) later this morning.
I’m thinking of this as WTA Tuesday on the GOP side, since this is the first day that winner-take-all primaries are allowed.
Florida (99 delegates) and Ohio (66) are WTA, and Illinois (69) and Missouri (52) are winner-take-most, while North Carolina (72) is strictly proportional, with no threshold. Like they were Democrats or something. 
A quick summary of how Illinois and Missouri work:
Missouri is easier, it’s just like South Carolina with different numbers. 12 of its 52 delegates are WTA statewide, and the other 40 are WTA by Congressional district, 5 delegates per each of its 8 CDs.
Illinois is kinda like SC and MO, and the basic outline is the same: 15 of its 69 delegates are WTA at the state level, and the other 54 are determined by CD, 3 to each of its 18 districts.
Where Illinois is different is that in each CD, you vote for the actual delegates by name. The delegates’ candidate affiliation is listed with their name, so this really shouldn’t have a big effect, but it would enable voters to split their district-level vote among 2 or 3 candidates if they so chose. So it is a smallish wild card.
Oh, and the Northern Marianas Islands are picking 9 delegates today, and Politico says Trump’s won those 9 delegates already. (Guess they must be west of the International Date Line.)
My take on things:
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Trump will win Florida, ending the Rubio campaign.
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Kasich will win Ohio, which will keep him in the game for another several weeks. (Because almost nothing happens between now and New York on April 19.)
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Trump will win NC, which won’t matter that much because it’s proportional. If he beats Cruz by 10%, he gets 7 more delegates than Cruz there. Big whoop.
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The big question mark, as I see it, is Trump v. Cruz in Missouri and Illinois. If Cruz wins both, then he stays within about 100 delegates of Trump, with nobody else close. If Trump wins both, he’s way out in front, and Cruz suddenly looks dead in the water. If they split, then Trump widens his lead, but Cruz still looks like the likeliest alternative to Trump.
More than half of the Florida electorate *already *voted in the early period, so trends against Trump in polls the last few days may not affect the results much. Trump probably won’t sweep, but he’s going to effectively clinch it tonight anyway,. Same for Clinton.
For what it’s worth (very, very little) everyone calling in to the Chicago-area AM radio morning show during my drive up said they were voting Trump. I think I caught one person saying Cruz but Trump was far and away the dominant choice of the the morning.
Of course, it could just be that Trump supporters are more inclined to call radio shows, etc.
I agree with RTF’s assessment. I expect no surprises tonight on the R side. Rubio gets out and returns to DC. Question- does suspending have the effect of releasing delegates? In theory, could a candidate suspend and then reanimate his campaign later?
On the D side, I think Bernie pulls a surprise somewhere, maybe Ohio. He tends to underpoll and if enough young people are motivated, they could keep him going.
Not by itself. Candidates can still use their delegates in the deal-making at a brokered convention.
Yes. Ross Perot did that in 1992.
Based on buzz here in Chicago over the past week, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Bernie does well in Illinois. Which would seriously tick Hillary off.
I read an article somewhere (can’t find it again) about the trouble with polling this election. It said as of Friday in Ohio about 14,000 independants registered with one of the parties for this election. So they’ve been underestimating turn out in most states.
Also, polls that call people tend to use land lines and people who have a voting record to call people. Using that method you’re going to miss a huge portion of people under . . . (trying to think of someone I know with a land line) well, you’re missing a lot of the younger demographic and first time voters.
I doubt that any serious poll these days doesn’t include a cell phone sample.
Given that you don’t have to change the area code on your cell phone when moving from state to state, I’m not sure exactly how the pollsters clean up their cell phone sampling frames (Somebody Else’s Problem, thank goodness - the survey I work on sends interviewers out to knock on doors), but they do include cell phones in their samples.
Superita Tuesday? Superette Tuesday?
Some are calling it Separation Tuesday. Seems a bit overdramatic, the only one who won’t be in the race this time tomorrow is Rubio.
Kasich isn’t quite guaranteed a win, though it’s a good bet, and he said that he will drop out if he loses.
Right now, there are four candidates with some non-zero chance at the GOP nomination, and two for the Dems’. In a few hours, there will be only one of each, no matter what the others do or don’t do. That’s separation.
I think if Kasich wins Ohio, then Trump may well fall short of having a majority of delegates going into the convention. I also don’t think anyone else will have a majority. Thus the number of people with a shot at the GOP nomination is indeterminate.
On the Democratic side, Hillary had it wrapped up long ago.
Not-as-Super-as Super-Tuesday-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Tuesday Tuesday.
I question your math. Even in the best-case scenario for Sanders, he can’t knock Clinton out of the race today. He may or may not still be in it tomorrow, but either way, Clinton will be. If you think he has a chance of still being in it tomorrow, then today won’t definitely reduce the Democratic field to one. And if you think that he doesn’t have a chance of still being in it tomorrow, then the Democratic field is already reduced to one.
Vote for Rob Anybody!
I wonder if a certain politician will be extra vigilant on this day, the Ides of March? :eek:
He isn’t the one I meant.