It probably will, but I also expect that the final result will be much better than current polling suggests. Clinton leads by 24 in the RCP average. I expect that margin to come down significantly in the next week.
Seems like the best hope would be that he can change the minds of 3% of Democratic voters in the next couple months.
Right now Nate Silver projects Hillary to win by between 25 and 34 points. That’s an enormous margin, and it could come down a lot and still be a blowout like NH.
Yeah, but if Sanders keeps on gaining 5-10 points just by campaigning in a particular state, then a lot of states turn from losses to wins. He was supposed to lose Nevada by 20 points not too long ago.
Nate Silver is leaning heavily on his “polls plus” forecasts this year, which integrate not just polling, but endorsements. Now, I had frankly felt for a long time endorsements weren’t that important, I mean Jeb had tons of endorsements throughout the country and is gone now. But there is data to back up endorsements correlating to election performance, but I also thought this was such an atypical year that polls-plus wasn’t as good as his polls-only projections.
However I will say this, polls plus showed Trump winning SC with 30.5%, Rubio in second with 19.5%, and Cruz in third with 19.5%, and Bush at 11.4%. Polls only showed Trump at 32.9%, Rubio at 18.5%, Cruz at 19.9%, and Bush at 10.4%.
The actual results? Well, polls-plus underestimated Trump, overestimated Bush, but polls plus correctly showed that Rubio was going to come in second.
My take on it from reading what the Bush campaign has been saying, at least, is endorsements do matter, sometimes. Rubio was down at like 11% and it appears the Nikki Haley endorsement really helped him. The Bush campaign said their internal polling, which was moving positively upward throughout the week (and Haley had privately told them she was likely to endorse Bush), but when Haley endorsed Rubio they say their internal polling hit a wall and never recovered. So that’s some “street level” view that sometimes key endorsements do actually seem to matter, at least for some candidates and in some places.
So all that being said, how does it relate to Nevada? Well Hillary got key support from a range of important unions at the last minute (most didn’t formally declare for her, but they agreed to advocate for her and start working for her in the final days leading up to the caucus), South Carolina is going to be similar–she’s going to have all the major endorsements and most major local power structures are going to be behind her. Additionally, these power structures have the most power in places with high percentages of black and Latino voters (who are more likely to be tuned in to issues organizations and community leaders) and older white voters who are more likely to have a union affiliation, or be involved with a group like AARP or etc. Young people of all ages are much less likely to be involved with such organizations, and even eschew them, but primary elections and elections in general are an old person’s game. I don’t see any magic wand for Bernie to wave in South Carolina, over half the electorate is black, and she’s got all the cards in her hands in terms of local power brokers, and South Carolina is a state where local power brokers seem to matter.
Yes, if his sole goal is to move the conversation then he has already succeeded.
I hope that his goal also includes helping create a circumstance in which those items can potentially be successfully implemented to as much of a degree as possible. That means he has to work to excite turnout in the general and in particular in states which may be close down ticket. If he alternatively relatively sits in his ass saying “Mission accomplished. I moved the conversation.” then for shame.
The real work is as he has stated clearly: impacting the make-up of Congress with turn out.
Actually those polls were in like November, before he had tied Iowa and won New Hampshire, and the Nevada caucuses are notoriously difficult to poll. If your hypothesis is true Sanders is only going to lose by 10-15% in South Carolina, if that happens I would agree with your conclusion on the implications of that. If he loses South Carolina by 20%, it’s more likely that Nevada’s 3 month old polling data was just not reflective of the reality of the last two months, that New Hampshire was a place uniquely favorable to Bernie, and that Iowa has always been a crapshoot for candidates, and routinely bucks the establishment. With only three states done voting I think it’s too early to argue there is a trend that Bernie can move the electorate by 10% just by showing up in the State–note that Bernie has been making appearances in South Carolina off and of for awhile, so I’d have expected if this theory was true he’d have seen more movement in the polls.
Yes. We know he’s going to lose SC, but we also knew that Clinton would lose NH. It’s all about expectations. If Sanders loses by single digits it’s as good as a win for him. Just as Clinton’s failure to close any ground in NH made it a bigger loss for her even though a loss was expected.
Once March rolls around it’s all about delegates, but SC is still an expectations game. Bernie can gain momentum off of a better than expected performance, and so far he’s 3 for 3 in outperforming expectations. I expect a 4 for 4.
I’d disagree with 3 for 3, a lot of pundits were calling Nevada a tie going into it, and several national political commentators I was listening to on NPR earlier said they woke up this morning expecting Bernie would clench it based on the crowds and turnout they were seeing. instead he lost by 5.5%, so I think he didn’t hit the expectations he had in Nevada.
The only way you can argue he did is if you’re saying he was expected to lose by 20% because that’s what a Gravis poll or whatever back in November said, but I don’t think that was what the real expectation was. I think there was real expectation he was going to sneak a win here, and he didn’t–and the national press, if we talk perception game, has reacted as though it was a setback for Bernie.
Those early polls were considered pretty credible, even after Target, a Republican firm, found the race tied. Many here on SDMB said that was a BS poll, but it turned out to be quite accurate. Up until like a week ago, the expectation was that Clinton would win easily.
Now of course the expectations game is whatever the press says it is, so if you want to call Nevada a poor performance by Sanders, that’s fine. But if he keeps up such “poor performances” as turning states where he’s down by 20 into states where he loses by 5, he’ll win the nomination. Because in some states he’s only down by 10-15.
He had a really good campaign in '08, yes. He ran almost as an inkblot, and on the hope of the new.
Clinton is doing the opposite in one way: She’s running on her and her husband’s familiarity, and not much else of substance. She unfortunately has little to inspire voters beyond that.
Sanders has a radical agenda, and that’s inspiring to many. Looks like he won’t get it all passed anytime soon, but it’s something like a road map for the progressive wing. He just isn’t as prepared this year, and he may not be able to make up the difference in popular support in a blitz campaign.
Each is missing the sense of youth and vitality that Barack had in '08. They have records to be used against them.
The worrying thing is that the “Obama” of the race could turn out to be one of the Republicans even you won’t vote for. But I don’t think any of them have the whole package either.
Cruz made enemies in the Senate; Obama made friends. Rubio has the youth, but not the charisma. Trump is the unexpected outsider, but not as young nor as likeable.
And Kasich? Well, at least he’s midwestern.
S. Carolina is an early state with a heavily black constituency for Democrats. The Democratic Party is “majority-minority,” and honestly, we didn’t expect latinos to turn out for Bernie, so without blacks he had a problem. His respectable showing among latinos yesterday makes that problem a lot smaller.
–but–
A lot of it is bias, really. People who don’t want Bernie to win like to imagine he has no real hope.
In Hyde’s case, he wants someone he can vote for in November. He doesn’t like the look of the GOP side this time out, and so he’s backing Hillary.
In the commercial media, Bernie is an worrying general election candidate because he doesn’t have a PAC and will probably buy fewer ads–an undesirable precedent for companies that live on advertising sales. Yes, it can be that mercenary. Having him as a challenger in the primary is nice because it means more ad money now, but there are a of non-Trump Republicans, who do have PACs. I think the media like candidates who pay them.
Trump, of course, so far averts this whole thing by being enough a celebrity to be an eyeball driver. Trump is bait for viewers, which means ratings and clicks. It’s nutty.
But a Trump/Sanders race would be a letdown compared to the huge ad sales in 2008. That makes accounting sad. 
So they talk about Hillary, whom they may actually personally like better anyway.
I make my assessments based off of polling–when they change so will my assessments. I think Bernie is in a better position now than he was before Iowa and New Hampshire, but he’s not shown in a manner reflective in polls or in the ballot box that he’s going to be able to appeal to the demographics that makeup the Democratic primary electorate. I never wanted Romney to lose but I also never predicted he’d win, I don’t conflate what I think will happen with what I want to happen. When Romney beat Bush in the first debate I didn’t jump on the train that said Romney was going to win–because his polling bump just brought him within striking distance, it didn’t close the deal. I did say it showed that some of Obama’s support is “wide but thin”, and that if Romney could find a way to make another similar jump he’d beat Obama. Instead Obama was able to beat him back down and Romney never seriously threatened him again.
I’ve said if he narrows SC to 10-15 points that’d be something, but if he can’t keep it within 20 I see little reason to not presume he gets crushed throughout the South, loses probably 50/50 of the other close states and the delegate math just don’t work out on that.
No, Fish Thing, clearly he has to go back in time and change minds in Nevada, instead of worrying about primaries in the future. Don’t you understand anything? [/sarcasm]
Of course you are right.
The “pattern” I see is that Bernie has done OK in two small-state caucuses, and–as expected–quite well in a primary in New England. All he has to do now is get more people to take him seriously and show up. And primaries are not caucuses, and we haven’t seen a primary yet where she gets more votes, so we don’t know how many Hillary leaners will turn out in the Southern primaries.
All he really has to do is convince more voters to show up. He’s shown he has a movement. Most of his “momentum” is still there.
So far, that seems fair. Sorry to single you out. I just know you are coming at this from a particular standpoint.
I would counter that polls measure a moving target, and we don’t have data on relative primary turnout between machine supporters and ideological progressives this year.
As someone with my own biases & cause in this race, I would be delinquent in my own political participation to tell anyone it’s already over; that would be potentially self-fulfilling. The truth is that the Bernie build-up is still going, but needs to accelerate. Bernie has a lot of work to do, and he’s not winning yet, but he may still be able to overtake her with a blitz. It’s not a commanding position, but it’s better than the goofy media with their all-or-nothing reporting might make it sound.
Turnout this year was a third lower than in 2008. That’s after it was 23% lower in the Iowa Democratic caucus and 13% lower in the New Hampshire primary.
Not amazingly great news for either candidate but a pretty dismal pattern for a movement candidate whose theory of both electability and of capability if elected rests on having inspired a political revolution by way of mobilizing vast numbers of voters.
Thing Fish he does not necessarily need to change anyones’ minds. In primaries often less than 25% turnout with 2008 being notable with a tight race and historic candidates inspiring a consistent 30%. He has to do better than he did in Nevada at getting those who support him to the polls.
Hillary has very significant advantages here. First her support is strongest in the demographics who most reliably come out to vote: women; self-identified Democrats; those 40 and over … Second she has a well established organization in place in all the states that has been working the ground, well probably they never really stopped since 2008! And she has the money to out advertise across multiple markets (while he spent more of his less war chest trying to pull off Nevada, knowing that a win there would bootstrap some excitement and get a whole bunch more average $27 donations; a reasonable calculated gamble even if it did not pay off).
His team doing a significantly better job at getting out their vote than they did this time as they start cycling into headwinds is a pretty tall order.
Republicans, however, are experiencing record turnout.
Yup, I pointed this out after IA and NH, and now it seems to be getting worse. Not an auspicious sign for his theory of the race. Dare I say, “Oh no you can’t!”?
I thought so too. Sounds pretty similar to what I saw in Iowa. I think there are definitely some appealing aspects about it, and I don’t mind the lack of secret ballot nearly as much as I do in a general election (the reason I oppose voting by mail in the Pacific Northwest, or anywhere else) although I suspect Hillary would probably get a few more young votes if it were secret. But the low turnout is really a problem. If they could get greater participation and keep the caucuses, that would be cool–but again, Bernie likes to talk up the need for high turnout for a progressive to win, and the abysmally low turnout for these caucuses is the polar opposite.
Yes, all of this. Bernheads seem to go through stages of grief about this stuff: definitely denial (“the youth are the future, who cares who the geezers like?”) and anger (“it’s not fair that these corrupt establishment groups have this much power, and black people are stupid for listening to them”) so far. I don’t know what bargaining would look like, but I expect to see depression for sure, and then hopefully acceptance by November (as Bill Clinton says, “fall in love, then fall in line”).
Everything you are saying is technically true. But I think it’s unfair to lay the blame at the feet of the news media. It seems clear to me that this is what the parties were aiming for in designing their primary/caucus calendars as they have. Otherwise, why not just have a national primary on the same day, and see who gets the most delegates? Answer: because they aren’t just engaging in a process of tallying up delegates in those early states, but purposefully playing a game of winners and losers, early momentum, comebacks, etc.
I think the primary calendar is sort of a caucus writ large; a long process of forming coalitions and arguing for given candidates. This is less obvious with only two candidates in the race.
I think that’s actually a pretty trenchant observation. But that dovetails with what I’m saying: the media is helping facilitate that process, which is not just about allocating delegates.