Democratic Primary
My low posting frequency may create an illusion that I've not been paying close attention to the primaries, but don't be deceived; that's not the case. I just have a low post frequency.
This is very interesting indeed. It's a poll of Puerto Rico about the Democratic Primary, giving Clinton a 13% lead. I've been wondering about getting a poll of Puerto Rico ever since I saw Jay Cost's popular vote spreadsheet, which helps to model the long-shot case for superdelegates overturning the pledged delegates based on a last-minute surge for Clinton in the popular vote. In there, the two biggest boons to Clinton's vote total were Pennsylvania (as biggest state left, and a place where she's strong) and Puerto Rico (with an estimate of 1 million turnout and a generous 25% margin for Clinton). Reducing her margin in either state dramatically changed the game.
For example, using the current Pollster.com trend estimate for Pennsylvania of 7%, giving Obama a conservative 10% lead in North Carolina (current trend estimate is over 15%), and then setting the margin in Puerto Rico to Research & Research's 13% poll outcome gives Obama a popular vote lead in every calculation except in the unlikely scenarios in which MI and FL results are included without any redistribution to Obama of the MI undecideds or re-estimation based on exit polls or national popular vote.
That makes the amount of her lead rather important -- Puerto Rico has the potential to be a crucial vote in Clinton's case to the superdelegates, and it becomes even more important as Obama gains in Pennsylvania, reducing the number of votes she'll pick up there against him. But if either the Puerto Rico turnout or her margin of victory (assuming she wins) is small enough, there won't be a case left to make.
You can tweak some of the other numbers, but it doesn't change much. It's really NC, PA, and Puerto Rico (under the assumption that there's a big turnout for the primary vote) that play the biggest roles in the popular vote race, and Obama's just too far ahead in the popular vote right now to close the gap unless she can do extremely well in at least two of them.
Currently the betting markets are showing 85% chance of victory for Obama in the primary. That might be a little conservative.
This is very interesting indeed. It's a poll of Puerto Rico about the Democratic Primary, giving Clinton a 13% lead. I've been wondering about getting a poll of Puerto Rico ever since I saw Jay Cost's popular vote spreadsheet, which helps to model the long-shot case for superdelegates overturning the pledged delegates based on a last-minute surge for Clinton in the popular vote. In there, the two biggest boons to Clinton's vote total were Pennsylvania (as biggest state left, and a place where she's strong) and Puerto Rico (with an estimate of 1 million turnout and a generous 25% margin for Clinton). Reducing her margin in either state dramatically changed the game.
For example, using the current Pollster.com trend estimate for Pennsylvania of 7%, giving Obama a conservative 10% lead in North Carolina (current trend estimate is over 15%), and then setting the margin in Puerto Rico to Research & Research's 13% poll outcome gives Obama a popular vote lead in every calculation except in the unlikely scenarios in which MI and FL results are included without any redistribution to Obama of the MI undecideds or re-estimation based on exit polls or national popular vote.
That makes the amount of her lead rather important -- Puerto Rico has the potential to be a crucial vote in Clinton's case to the superdelegates, and it becomes even more important as Obama gains in Pennsylvania, reducing the number of votes she'll pick up there against him. But if either the Puerto Rico turnout or her margin of victory (assuming she wins) is small enough, there won't be a case left to make.
You can tweak some of the other numbers, but it doesn't change much. It's really NC, PA, and Puerto Rico (under the assumption that there's a big turnout for the primary vote) that play the biggest roles in the popular vote race, and Obama's just too far ahead in the popular vote right now to close the gap unless she can do extremely well in at least two of them.
Currently the betting markets are showing 85% chance of victory for Obama in the primary. That might be a little conservative.