Last I heard, the two candidates in the Saturday caucus are running approximately even.
My newsfeed says HRC and BS are even at this point. If that’s the outcome, that’s not good for HRC!!
Yeah, polling there is a real gamble.
That’s an unfortunate abbreviation.
I think no middle name, so that’s it. We could do BBS for Bernard “Bernie” Sanders.
I lived in Las Vegas for 10 years, back in the pre-caucus days. It’s a demographically weird place with very strange attitudes to lots of things.
Now it has lots of retired Californians. And lots of relatively highly paid yet lowly skilled people. Definitely not a Rust Belt or an SEC demographic. And as said, the caucuses are a bear to poll. As are the people.
I agree with **adaher **that if HRC bombs in NV that’ll deeply dent the story of her inevitability. But it won’t trigger a free fall. If she does bomb in NV then unless she utterly crushes SC then the SEC we’ll have a real horse race.
What with Trump’s inevitability also taking battle damage the last few days this whole election remains a lot of fun to watch & talk about. If only they all were running for Student Council so the outcome wouldn’t much matter to the whole darn planet.
I don’t see it that way. I think caucuses are too different from regular primaries to draw conclusions on.
I say wait a week. Look at South Carolina. If Hillary wins by 5 points, she should be worried. If she wins by 20, I’d say she’s in terrific shape. Or look at Oklahoma: Bernie has a shot there and he needs to take it. He will definitely take Vermont and probably take Massachusetts, Minnesota and even Colorado.
Go over to 538 and check out their point spreads. They project how the 2 candidates do in each state, assuming Hillary leads by 12 points and assuming their national polls are even. For South Carolina, Bernie basically needs to lose by less than 11 points to have a shot.
As we all know, in Nevada the Hooker Vote is almost as important to the Democrats as the John Vote is to the Republicans. Has anyone been out there to . . . probe their feelings? With . . . perhaps . . . polls?
I’ll answer my own question after calling both parties:
D - “An hour and a half to two hours.” So 11:00 to 1:00 or less.
R - “If you’re only interested in voting, you can come any time, vote, and leave.” Caucus is 5:00 to 8:30.
Ten days ago I posted this:
Based on my own informal polling and conversations, with friends and with complete strangers in line at the market, at gas stations, etc. I now think that Bernie is going to take Nevada.
Looks like major news outlets are starting to call the caucuses for Hillary, she’s up 2% statewide and has a large margin in Clark County (which is a majority of the precincts that haven’t reported in yet.)
That’s the problem with Bernie supporters. How do you know a Bernie supporter? Wait one quarter of a millisecond. They’ll tell you , they’ll post on social media about the greatness of Bernie, and they’ll post to 100 comment sections about Bernie all in that quarter millisecond.
FiveThirtyEight is projecting Hillary gets 18 to 20 of the 35 pledged delegates, Bernie will get 15 to 17. So the margin itself is too small to really matter, but HRC gets to say she won and there’s also a “scorecard” going around that shows what number of delegates Bernie needs to get from each state to win the nomination, and his number for Nevada was 19. Of course that score card is just a rough guide, because obviously if Bernie surges more and wins states (or does way better in states he’s currently polling badly) then the math changes, but at least for now it’s the status quo ante: Bernie is running a strong campaign but HRC is still out ahead.
Losing by five or six, as the final is expected to be, followed by what is very likely to be a solid rout in SC next, takes a lot of wind out of Sanders’ sail. Especially if the demographic breakdown shows he failed to connect significantly with Hispanic voters, still only winning big on younger White liberals. You cannot go the distance without getting more than that demographic even if they go for you overwhelmingly.
A win here would have offset the SC rout to come and gotten more to look at him seriously. Now? March 1 he’ll take his home state but I doubt anything else.
Even the 538 comment section is interesting to read for the spin attempts. Some Shaynaesque petulance, some well she should have won by more so it’s a win, some well by delegate count its not too bad, but more of the beginning a resignation that he won’t make it and that the good he has done is the impact he’s had on the discussion and what she has now committed to.
Are you saying that we sound louder than our actual numbers? Maybe so, maybe so.
Nevada, and Clark County in particular, has a sizeable African-American community. I haven’t checked, but my gut from having lived there is the percentages and economic breakdown aren’t too far from the national averages.
As such this will be the first good look at how much truth the mantra “Hillary owns the black vote; blacks dislike / hate Bernie” has in it. A lot? Some? A little? Almost none?
I also have no clue how NV caucus participation differs with blacks versus whites or Hispanics. Nor how caucus participation varies from general election participation. So those factors will have to be taken into consideration before anyone makes useful predictions.
Uh, this is more or less where the Sanders campaign was trying to get. I didn’t expect a shocking upset, not with as short a time as he’s had people on the ground. (I would have liked one; but this is OK.) He had a respectable showing in a diverse state, and will probably be shown to have strong support in the demographics we expected. This result is in line with the “momentum” strategy.
I don’t think that’s “Shaynaesque petulance” on my part.
Good news this afternoon.
I can’t imagine the US electing a self-proclaimed socialist who campaigns on big tax increases and who is even more of an opposition research dream candidate than is Hillary. And I don’t want any of the plausible GOP candidates to win this November. So I’m glad to see Clinton having averted the common scenario where the front-runner collapses.
Please don’t take shots at other posters.