Democratic caucuses and primaries

d4m10n said:
In other words, there are systemic rewards in place which incentivize sensational first-past-the-post style coverage even when those doing the reporting know full well the result is a tie on the points which actually matter, that is, pledged delegates. My point was (and remains) that as skeptics we should be promoting a more factual and grounded approach.



Indeed. Here are my takeaways so far:

  1. Moderate and centrist Dems are around twice as numerous as Democratic Socialists and their fellow travelers, but the latter group have mostly coalesced around a single candidate
  2. The odds of a contested convention have been creeping up steadily, which is horrifying fascinating
  3. With essentially two ties in a row, Nevada has become more important than ever before
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Had I bet on who would be leading at this point, I would have lost, along with almost everyone else. I'm encouraged mostly because I think either Amy or Pete are better than crazy uncle Joe and Sanders is at least more authentic than Warren. If this trend continues, my choices in the primary will not suck.
 
d4m10n said:
Because of the breathless horse race coverage (the sort which treats ties as wins) or because of solid and rational reasons?
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For reality based reasons. Voting does not take place in a hyper rational world. It's fine to base your personal opinions on that, but extrapolating that to the larger population is divorced from reality.

The nature of FPTP is that many voters engage let some game theory to inform their votes. Voters may opt to vote for a lower preference candidate if their top tier is not viable. The staggered voting schedule means that voter preference is an iterative process as front-runners emerge and weaker candidates fall off.

People often change their mind about how they will vote if it becomes clear their preferred candidate cannot win. You can categorize this as irrational horse-racing, but this is the context in which the race will be decided.

I also suspect that having more centrist candidates with no clear front-runner hinders the ability of party elites to effectively express their anti-Sanders bias.


You'd prefer an anti-majoritarian outcome?
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I suspect that prolonging the race between the moderates will improve the chances of Sanders becoming the majoritarian candidate. The jockeying among the centrist wing highlights the differences between them and Sanders.
 
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It's "The Spoiler Effect" and it's what turns two party first past the post systems into.... *gestures at everything* this.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The nature of FPTP is that many voters engage let some game theory to inform their votes.
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Democratic nominating contest is not FPTP, and therefore the press should stop covering it as such.

SuburbanTurkey said:
Voters may opt to vote for a lower preference candidate if their top tier is not viable.
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With a rather small fraction of the primary votes in so far, can we make a rational assessment of general election viability?

Seems to me that would be "extrapolating...to the larger population" in a "divorced from reality" way, unless the first two states happen to be representative of the general voting population.

SuburbanTurkey said:
People often change their mind about how they will vote if it becomes clear their preferred candidate cannot win.
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People often engage in the fallacy of hasty inductionWP as well.

As of now, we've seen 64 delegates pledged in a race to 1,991.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
I have no doubt that Trump will challenge the validity of the general election should he lose. The question will be how far will he go?
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He'll challenge the validity of it well before that. Just as he did in 2016. If he loses, he'll take it to the Supreme Court, 4/9 of which would happily declare him President for Life.
 
d4m10n said:
Post-NH the 538 primary model has Bernie tied with a contested convention.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/
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First, consider the rather precise phrasing that our model uses. It forecasts the chance that a candidate wins “more than half of pledged delegates.” To be more exact, it forecasts the chance a candidate wins a majority of pledged delegates as of the end of the day on June 6, when the last state or territory (the Virgin Islands) votes.

Winning a majority of pledged delegates is not quite the same thing as winning the nomination. Nor does the failure of any candidate to win the majority of delegates by June 6 necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention.
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Linky.
 
This is a fair correction, Tsukasa, and I appreciate the linky.

That said, I don't have a adjective for "the sort of convention that requires pledged delegates to break their (surprisingly non-binding) pledges in order to make things work," which may or may not be technically brokered or contested.
 
d4m10n said:
Post-NH the 538 primary model has Bernie tied with a contested convention.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/
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I have tons of respect for Silver and his stats, but I do wonder if we aren't quite a bit off the beaten path in this primary, with Steyer and Bloomberg looming ahead. If you look at his projections for the upcoming primaries and caucuses, he has Bernie winning every state (scroll down).

Well, of course if that happens it's Sanders easily, even if he doesn't end up with a majority of delegates. But Steyer has been registering significant support in South Carolina, and Bloomberg has the money to face Sanders, who seems to be the exact candidate he entered the race to beat.
 
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Brainster said:
I have tons of respect for Silver and his stats, but I do wonder if we aren't quite a bit off the beaten path in this primary, with Steyer and Bloomberg looming ahead. If you look at his projections for the upcoming primaries and caucuses, he has Bernie winning every state (scroll down).

Well, of course if that happens it's Sanders easily, even if he doesn't end up with a majority of delegates. But Steyer has been registering significant support in South Carolina, and Bloomberg has the money to face Sanders, who seems to be the exact candidate he entered the race to beat.
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It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.

If Sanders wins, Biden might limp on to Super Tuesday, but he will be finished.

As for the billionaires and their big spending ways, isn't it the case that after a certain level of money, you get massively diminishing returns?

For example, if you have seen Bloomberg's ads 500 times, how much more likely are you to vote for him if you see his adverts another 100 or 200 times?
 
angrysoba said:
It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.

If Sanders wins, Biden might limp on to Super Tuesday, but he will be finished.

As for the billionaires and their big spending ways, isn't it the case that after a certain level of money, you get massively diminishing returns?

For example, if you have seen Bloomberg's ads 500 times, how much more likely are you to vote for him if you see his adverts another 100 or 200 times?
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Also worth digging deeper into the high pay rates Bloomberg is often cited as having. Yes, he's hiring lots of people connected to state-level parties and giving them generous sums for consulting/strategic work. This is wonk-speak for "opening doors and doing certain favors for me."

I will admit this is not a new or particularly insidious thing, but neither is it an admirable or respectable thing.
 
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angrysoba said:
It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.
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He hasn't, maybe. If you are looking at the 538 projections, they are based on a lot of other things like national polls. NV hasn't had a poll since January, and SC polls were before IA, and Biden was still leading. NV is particularly hard to poll, as well. We don't have any actual updates based on recent events.
 
d4m10n said:
It's too early for Super Tuesday predictions, but I'm predicting a 3 or 4-way split between the non-DSA candidates on that day.
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There’s bound to be pressure on them to choose a single candidate. Splitting the vote is how Sanders will win the nomination. If they leave it to late, the mass of voters might just get behind the leader.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
He hasn't, maybe. If you are looking at the 538 projections, they are based on a lot of other things like national polls. NV hasn't had a poll since January, and SC polls were before IA, and Biden was still leading. NV is particularly hard to poll, as well. We don't have any actual updates based on recent events.
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This. Part of the problem (or maybe not) is that it assumes a bounce (slight or big, depending on certain factors) for the winner of each primary or caucus, but it does not make some rather obvious assumptions about who will drop out (or more complicated ones about who will pick up votes from the drop-outs' supporters).

I think he's way underestimating both Steyer and Bloomberg. He doesn't even have Klobuchar broken out separately (she's still in the 100-1 field) although it seems obvious that she will outlast Warren.
 
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BTW, the turnout in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire broke the 2008 record by about 3% (296,222-287,527). Not sure how to interpret that especially since 2008 had very competitive races on both sides unlike Tuesday.

One thing I am hearing from pundits but have not seen polling on is that Buttigieg is doing well among younger voters that he is blunting some of Bernie's advantage in that demo. And that younger voters did not come out en masse in New Hampshire. Again a big part of Bernie's message is that he can get the youth vote out.
 
The fact that 5 territories have primaries when they can't vote for the President is weird to me.

71 delegates out of 3,979 isn't like enough to skew any numbers or anything so it doesn't matter, it's just weird.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The fact that 5 territories have primaries when they can't vote for the President is weird to me.

71 delegates out of 3,979 isn't like enough to skew any numbers or anything so it doesn't matter, it's just weird.
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Its also weird that territories can elect people to congress, but those people are unable to vote, only engage in 'debate'.
 
Brainster said:
BTW, the turnout in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire broke the 2008 record by about 3% (296,222-287,527). Not sure how to interpret that especially since 2008 had very competitive races on both sides unlike Tuesday.
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The population grew around 3% in those intervening years, so per capita turnout is pretty close to the same.
 
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