538 - Election Update: Sanders Needs Something Extraordinary To Happen

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The FiveThirtyEight primary model is back on after incorporating the results from “Triple M Tuesday”, in which Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Washington, Idaho, North Dakota and Democrats Abroad voted. But you may have hardly noticed the change.

That’s because the model was already pretty certain that former Vice President Joe Biden would win a majority of pledged delegates based on his lead so far, as well as polls in those states in addition to states set to vote later this month. Because the results from last night largely matched our forecast, the forecast is essentially unchanged.

But to back up a bit: If Super Tuesday was a good day for Biden, everything since then — including the results from last night — have been great for him. The model expected Biden to get a bounce from Super Tuesday, but the bounce has actually been a bit larger than the model expected, with Biden having claimed a 17-point lead in national polls while also dominating the polls in upcoming states. The results of Tuesday’s contests were largely consistent with the polls, too. As of Wednesday afternoon — with results not yet officially finalized — Biden leads in Michigan by 17 percentage points, in Missouri by 26 points and in Mississippi by a whopping 66 points, where Sanders looks as though he may fall just below the 15 percent threshold required to win statewide delegates.

Biden also won Idaho, although he lost North Dakota, whose party-run primary, with a limited number of voting sites and short voting hours, resulted in very low turnout, which helped Sen. Bernie Sanders as he over performs in caucuses relative to primaries. So going forward, the model will treat party-run primaries — which are also set to take place in Alaska, Hawaii and Kansas — as being essentially halfway in between primaries and caucuses, boosting Sanders’s odds in those states.

-more-

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-sanders-needs-something-extraordinary-to-happen/

[George II]

1. This afternoon I went through their forecasts for all of the remaining states/territories....

They're forecasting that Biden will win every single one of them - 31 states and territories. Some are close, some are blowouts.

As of now Biden has 872 delegates, Sanders 727, a difference of 145. Plus, over the last three hours Biden has gone into the lead in Washington, too, with the lead widening with every update, now +1.3%

404,991 34.91%
389,848 33.6%

+15,143 +1.31%

https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/20200310/President-Democratic-Party.html

[Cha]

2. Thank you for doing that, George.. and Mahalo

Washington!