If playing fantasy baseball starts with knowing the rules of your league, then handicapping a Presidential primary race starts with knowing the primary schedule and the rules. Three items that struck me:
1. Super Tuesday is March 3, and it now includes California.
2. The Democrats have gone away from winner-take-all contests and instead will use proportional representation to assign delegates.
Somebody should really dig into how these rules are going to work. I particularly do not understand the minimum of 15 percent. What if no candidate gets 15 percent? No delegates for anybody? That would be funny. Or what if one candidate gets 17 percent and the second-place candidate gets 14.9 percent? Does that mean winner-take-all?
The answer is in the details of the rules. But I have not been able to coax the details out of Google. Keeping in mind my ignorance, here are some thoughts:
Prior to Super Tuesday, there will only be four events: caucuses in Iowa and Nevada; and primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. These are supposed to winnow the field, but I don’t see how. If you thought you were a viable candidate before those events, your mind isn’t going to change based on the outcomes there.
Super Tuesday itself features the hard-left states of Vermont and Massachusetts (and maybe Minnesota and Virginia, considering that it’s the Democratic primary we’re talking about), the polyglot states of Texas and California, and the Southern states of Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
Massachusetts and Vermont should be friendly to Sanders and Warren, who appeal to white, hard-left voters. California should be friendly to Harris. Also, to the extent that African-American voters are identity-driven, she will contend with Cory Booker for those voters, who will be particularly important in North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee. Beto must be expecting to do well in Texas and Oklahoma. If Julian Castro inspires a Hispanic-identity vote, then maybe he gets some respectable vote totals in Texas and California. Virginia’s eclectic mix of Democratic constituents includes Federal government workers, who probably will want to vote for the candidate who at the time seems most likely to defeat Mr. Trump. Assuming Biden gets in the race, he may not win any state, but he probably finishes in the top five everywhere.
The way I look at it, the only way that one candidate can have a clear path to the nomination is with a lot of help from the media. But the media narrative after Super Tuesday might be “the race is still wide open.” From a news outlet’s self-interest perspective, that narrative has the advantage of maintaining people’s curiosity about the race.
Between now and Super Tuesday, the winnowing that does take place is likely to be executed by the media, by exposing candidates’ personal negatives and controversial past statements or connections. This gives an incentive for candidates’ campaign staff to put a lot of effort into feeding the media stories that weaken and embarrass their rivals. I would not be surprised to see “black ops” taken to a whole new level over the next twelve months.
The media also could give a candidate a favorable spin. For example, assume that Harris wins less than a majority of delegates in any state on Super Tuesday, but she rolls up big enough vote totals in California and the Southern states to be anointed the “winner of the popular vote.” If it is widely echoed in the media, such a narrative could enable her to claim the mantle of inevitability.
If it looks as though none of the candidates can beat Mr. Trump, then the media might encourage the arrival of a “savior.” The “savior” could be Oprah or Michelle, but that would be awkward if Harris is still in the running for the nomination.
I still would make my hypothetical bet with Elaine Kamarck, in which I would win if no center-left candidate were to arrive at the convention with more than 40 percent of the vote. One of the possibilities that she designated as center-left, Senator Sherrod Brown, has since declined to enter the race.
Not doing well in the early events may not change the candidates position, but it will have a big impact on their ability to raise donations — especially large ones.
It’s interesting that the Democratic Party has moved to proportional delegations for their convention when at the same time most of the candidates want to change from proportional voting (i.e., electoral college) to a first one past the post voting for the presidential election.
I was thinking about proportional representatives this morning in regards to a story about the Supreme Court holding hearings on cases involving gerrymandering. If we moved from the Anglo-American system of single representative districts to multi-representative districts with proportional allocation of the seats gerrymandering wouldn’t be an issue.
Not that I have any dog in this fight, but I would guess that Booker turns out to be more appealing to African American voters than Harris (who is half Jamaican, half East Indian – like Obama, another “African American” without any African American ancestry).
Harris nailed the teachers unions with her proposal for another 50 billion a year in federal funding. She gets teachers money in New York, Illinois, California, Florida and Texas. A rapid achievement due to the strength of the California teachers union nationwide.
It will narrow a lot before Super Tuesday. Iowa (caucus), New Hampshire (primary), Nevada (caucus), and South Carolina (primary) will come before Super Tuesday. I do know that New York state is considering moving up between Iowa and New Hampshire, but I will discount this possibility for now.
I think it very unlikely that more than 3 candidates continue after New Hampshire. The thing that holds true these days is that if you finish worse than 3rd two votes in a row, you are done- no more money comes your way- this is especially true of mainline candidates like Liz Warren and and Joe Biden, and will be true of Kamala Harris and all the other female D.C. based candidates, too. As the field stands, New Hampshire will winnow savagely. I would guess that Sanders and Biden finish in the top 3 of the first two races, so that leaves room for just two more candidates to move to Nevada and South Carolina. Caucuses are hard to judge because internal state endorsements and in kind contributions matter a lot.
I would think Booker and Harris both would love to get to Super Tuesday and participate in many of the Dem primaries in the South where African-Americans make up over half the vote (ie, states like AL, SC, MS, LA, and states where they make up 30-40%- VA, NC, TN, GA. However, one or both will not make it to Super Tuesday.
After Super Tuesday, you will likely already be down to heads up action with maybe a stragglers on fumes moving forward, but only get 1-5% of the vote anywhere because they get no press coverage and have no money for ads. This is the real effect of the 15% cut off- it will pretty well limit the delegates assigned to only those in the top 3 at most.
Now, if NY does move up between IA and NH, it is hard to judge. Gillibrand is the Senator, but I think that won’t matter- the woman is a non-entity. I would think that candidates like Sanders would do well with a lot of white voters in NYC, and even upstate, Biden would probably do well with the financial class, and Harris/Booker should do well with everyone else. If NY does move up, it will hasten the elimination of all but 3, and maybe all but 2.
Somebody should really dig into how these rules are going to work. I particularly do not understand the minimum of 15 percent.
It is a great way to get 10 – 12 candidates down to 3 – 4 candidates quickly. ‘You got 4% of the vote IA, so no delegates signals both candidates and donors of a campaign going nowhere.’ With a lot more, the rule has a number of issues but I suspect it is 5 on Super Tuesday:
Several Points:
1) Most polls are Biden v Sanders for 1 & 2 with one of Beto, Harris, and out-of-the-blue, Mayor Pete playing the spoiler. The other candidates are not catching fire yet although give to September/October to find out.
2) I bet most Ds would vote Obama third term and that is why I do think Biden is leading. Also, Biden was leading in SC poll a month ago so the Harris and/or Harris are not winning Southern Af-Am. (Who are more conservative Ds and put HRC and Obama to Primary victory.)
3) At this point I have little idea who takes the Southern Hispanic-American votes. HRC did win in 2016 and I suspect like Southern Af-Am they go Biden or Beto. (No NV polls at this time.)
4) Unfortunately, the best run campaign is Bernie Sanders and he has really boned up on foreign policy with Matt Duss. (Major Peacenik.)
I would just note that Biden hasn’t declared yet. He’s clearly enjoying the limelight, but it’s not clear to me that he has the stomach or stamina for another campaign. And it’s unlikely that in his 70s he has overcome his many failings as a presidential campaigner over the last decades.
Oprah’ s endorsement gave the nomination to Obama in 2008 and Hillary in 2016. She will deliver her bloc to Harris pre-Super Tuesday after which it is game over. The Oprah endorsement may lack the punch it might have had since Harris bought the overlapping teachers unions bloc out early with pay increase promises, but the Oprah bloc is still the largest and most important voting bloc in the democrat voting population and she will deliver. Remember you read it here first.
Is this legit? If not, alert the Russian Hackers about new opportunities.
https://www.demrulz.org/wp-content/files/2020_Delegate_Selection_Rules_Final_Incorporated_9.7.18.pdf
See Rule 14. Clause F seems to deal with the case with everyone is below 15% by reducing the threshold to half as many as the winner. Winning with 15% would be golden. (And how cute is Clause A?)
I wonder if Trump could win the Democratic nomination with these rules.
Kamala is shrewder than I.
Her plot is a one step yearly transfer from the Federal deb trough to teachers salaries, by ratio. She has a uniform direct gift to every teacher and every school district in the nation. It is efficient politically and financially, it is a one stepper, basically bypassing state legislatures. It is politically efficient because it mobilizes teachers and students throughout the nation for each primary, she is a welcome candidate for any school visit anywhere.
I got it, didn’t think of it. This was on my mind, the volatility of No Child left behind as it involved state legislatures, a very heterogeneous group. This was the original solution to that volatility, we knew it back then, just boost teachers pay by ratio, leave it at that. A one step subsidy.
The primaries now pit two group, nurses union and teachers union; both going for the same pie. I see that in LA, now. Nurses and hospitals trying to catch up with the new teacher’s contract.
“I particularly do not understand the minimum of 15 percent. What if no candidate gets 15 percent? ”
I don’t see how this is at all a reasonable possibility. Human things like this follow a Pareto distribution. Around 20% of the candidates will get about 80% of the votes. So with this field, 3 or 4 candidates will split 80%. At least 2 candidates will break the 15% mark. In the 2016 Republican Iowa caucuses, the top 3 of 12 picked up 75% of the vote.
The winner take all is more of a concern. But realistically, the leader will be pushing 40% in order to drive all the others below 15%. Trump almost accomplished this in the New Hampshire primary. Trump had 35%, Kasich has 16%, and Cruz had 12%.