Clinton Likely To Win Democratic Party Nomination

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Almost exactly 50% of the votes have been cast in the Democratic Party primary and caucus process. I’ve been updating a model to predict primary and caucus results all along, and the model has done fairly well. The most recent update, however, was a bit off. That update involved separating states into two groups, southern vs northern, then calculating different sets of likely voting patterns by ethnicity for those two groups, and integrating that with estimates of ethnic distribution (“white, black, hispanic”) among Democratic voters by state.

What I did not do in those models was to incorporate the effect of whether or not a primary or caucus is open, closed, or somewhere in between.

Now that we have had quite a few primaries and caucuses, it is possible to move to a somewhat more sophisticated model, because there is (probably) enough data.

I ran a multi-variable regression analysis that coded primary openness (0=closed, 1=semi open, 2=open) and whether or not a state is southern or not southern, then included the percent of each ethnic group by state.

The result indicated that the percent of a voting group (by state) that is hispanic did not influence the result. In doing the analysis I looked only at states, and excluded Vermont and New Hampshire because of the strong favorite son effect. The resulting model, naturally, predicts the number of delegates that have already been awarded to each candidate, in total, precisely, for the simple reason that the model is based on that number. Within the data set, the R-squared value is 0.83, which is pretty good. This means, roughly, that 83% of the variation in voting (by percent who voted for each candidate) is explained by those variables. The following table shows the actual delegates won vs. the delegates predicted by the model.

Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 11.07.20 AM

Also indicated is the spread between the two candidates in percent. The spread starts off a bit wonky because there are only a few contests, but then settles in to about 20% and remains at that level. Not shown is an analysis of the degree to which Sanders performed relative to expectations. If that number changed a lot, showing a trend, this would be important for predicting the future. The first half of the contests show Sanders under performing, according to this model, by 2%, and the last half have him over performing by 2%. So there may be a very low level “surge,” but not enough to make any real difference in the outcome.

So, what does the future look like? There are several states coming up where Sanders is likely to do well. But is it enough to make it likely for him to overtake Clinton? With a 20% spread and half the votes counted, Sanders would have to take an average of 60% of the delegates from here on. That is very unlikely.

The following table shows the primary and caucus outcomes through the present, followed by the predicted delegate commitments for the rest of the primary season. The percent spread between the candidates is indicated, and it does indeed drop over time, though slowly, reaching a minimum of 8% for the last few races.

Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 11.49.30 AM

The total number of delegates required to lock the nomination is 2,383. There are 717 uncommitted delegates (aka “Super Delegates”). If we assume that all of those uncommitted delegates will simply vote for the majority candidate, then the number of delegates required to have a likely lock on the nomination is 1669. This is not a fully supportable assumption because some of the uncommitted delegates may chose a different path, but it is a reasonable approximation.

The part of the table above marked in yellow indicates the approximate point in time when the leading candidate, Clinton, will get somewhere around 1669 delegates. So, if this model is reasonably accurate, Clinton will achieve a lock about mid May.

The next set of primaries, next week, are Arizona, Idaho, and Utah. In my view, these are somewhat hard to predict. Polls suggest a weak Sanders win in Idaho and a weak Clinton win in Utah. My model predicts a strong Clinton win in Arizona, and Sanders victories in Idaho and Utah. The total number of delegates at stake next week is small (131 in total). In order for Sanders to signal that he can overtake Clinton, he would have to win about 79 delegates in total. If he falls short of that, the rest of the road is more uphill. If he does better than that, then he may be seriously in the running.

Sanders is also expected to do well in the next several races (Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) according to my model. However, I don’t actually expect my model to work at all in Hawaii. My model suggests that he may well achieve over 55% of the vote in those primaries, but again, he will have to have already achieved 60% (unlikely) on the 22nd for this to start to accumulate to a catch-up number.

Following Wyoming is New York State followed by Super Tuesday III, six states with 631 delegates. My model suggests he will get less than half of these delegates, though he will do well in Pennsylvania and lose by not much in New York. I’m also predicting that he will win in California, in June, but not by much.

Between now and the end of the race, there are 1946 uncommitted delegates to fight for. Of these, the top five states account for a whopping 1138 delegates. These states are Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey. I predict he will come close to even with Clinton or win most of these states (but Clinton will do very well in New Jersey), but in order for Sanders to overtake Clinton by focusing on these states, he’ll have to do VERY well in all or most of them.

This model uses everything that happened before (mostly) to predict everything that will happen in the future. The first half of this series of events is over (in terms of delegate counts) and there is no evidence of any dynamic change occurring at the moment. This model does an excellent job at retrodicting the prior races, but it might slightly underestimate Sanders performance, since for the last half of the retrodicted contests Sanders outperforms the model by an average of 2%. However, in order for him to catch up to Clinton, he has to outperform the model by 10%.

The graphic at the top of the post is the predicted delegate counts for the entire primary season. The already-held contests are represented as predictions instead of actual because the final number (today’s delegate count) is the same for both predicted and actual. There is a slight narrowing of the gap (see table above) but not enough to change the outcome of Clinton achieving a lock on the Democratic Party nomination in May.

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16 thoughts on “Clinton Likely To Win Democratic Party Nomination

  1. Okay, so how does this campaign compare to the one between Obama and Clinton in 2008. Where was Obama at this point by comparison?

  2. No kidding, Douglas.

    It’s a damned shame that progressives will have to hold their noses and vote for a war supporting, idea deficient dynastic politician just to ward off the fascist, know nothing populist of the Republican party.

    What a sad alternative we get from the Democrats! A woman so unlikable and uninspiring that she actually runs the risk of losing to a clown like Trump.

  3. What a sad alternative we get from the Democrats! A woman so unlikable and uninspiring that she actually runs the risk of losing to a clown like Trump.

    No guys, sorry. It’s not Hillary, Sanders, or any other Democratic candidate that’s the potential problem here with Trump winning. It’s the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., that Trump plays to, that is the real problem here.

    Anyone that wants to build a wall between two countries in modern times, or whose supporters (well, 75% of them anyway) think all Muslims should be banned from the U.S… that’s the *real* scary bit here. Authoritarian leaders like Trump playing to uneducated people’s fears will destroy the U.S., if it hasn’t already.

  4. Minor nit — doesn’t really change the results — you seem to be missing the Democrats Abroad delegation. That’s 13 pledged delegates if I understand correctly, and it is predicted to go about 70% Sanders based on the partial count so far (which would be a 9-4 split). Polling closed on March 8, results are due March 20.

    http://www.democratsabroad.org/press

  5. I’ve been updating a model to predict primary and caucus results all along, and the model has done fairly well.

    I believe the technical term is “overfitting.”

  6. ^ And/or data dredging. “Clinton likely to win Democratic Party nomination” can be arrived at by simple counting.

  7. The rise of American authoritarianism
    “In South Carolina, a CBS News exit poll found that 75 percent of Republican voters supported banning Muslims from the United States. A PPP poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning gays and lesbians from the country. Twenty percent said Lincoln shouldn’t have freed the slaves…

    …the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.
    This trend had been accelerated in recent years by demographic and economic changes such as immigration, which “activated” authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strongman leader who would preserve a status quo they feel is under threat and impose order on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.
    Trump embodies the classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive…

    …theory: that if social change and physical threats [e.g. Isis] coincided at the same time, it could awaken a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats.

    http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

  8. #9, Agree with Vox article that Trump is just a symptom, but I think America’s changing economic landscape is more responsible then the changing social landscape. Essentially, neoconservatives and neoliberals have been laying the seeds of a populist revolt for decades. Trump may fail this year, but if you vote in politicians that continue to hollow out the working class for the benefit of the elites, you are also voting for more dangerous populist challengers in the next election cycle. And consider that this year, one populist challenger was the very principled Sanders. In the next election we may only have a choice between authoritarians on both sides.

  9. Albatros: “Okay, so how does this campaign compare to the one between Obama and Clinton in 2008. Where was Obama at this point by comparison?”

    Good question. I’m working on a graphic. In terms of national polling, Obama passed Clinton in mid February

    Obama passed Clinton’s numbers in delegate count at about the same time. In other words, not the same pattern as this year.

  10. I agree 100% with Donal’s fears. First of all, I’m not confident that Hillary can beat Trump, especially if the next conspicuous economic step downward, or act of violence that can be termed terrorism and has white victims, happens shortly before the election. (Trump has money enough to BUY himself a “terrorist attack” – and don’t tell me he’s not already thinking of it. “Reichstag fire” is part of the playbook he’s working from.)

    If Hillary does win, the question will be whether four to eight more years of kicking the can down the road for Wall Street’s benefit means that the next pseudo-populist authoritarian we see will actually be running on the National Socialist ticket. Or whether we can get through eight more years of trying to overthrow the government of every country that borders or is friendly to Russia without them deciding they have to do something serious about us before it’s too late. (Yes, her foreign policy will be much less disastrous than that of any remaining Republican candidate – but it’s still disastrous by any objective measure.)

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