Tuesday night’s primary and caucuses are one of the smaller events on the calendar: three states on the Democratic side, and only two states for the Republicans. All three are in the inland west, with Arizona and Utah on both sides, and Idaho for the Democrats (the Republicans already contested Idaho on March 8, which Ted Cruz won). On the Republican side, there won’t be much uncertainty; Donald Trump is poised to win Arizona easily, and Cruz is likely to win Utah by an even bigger margin. (Arizona has a lot of elderly people who are obsessed with the border, and Utah has a lot of Mormons, who, while not evangelicals, tend to have similar priorities, so those states play to their respective strengths.)
Bernie Sanders backers have been looking forward to this stretch of the primary calendar as we move to the west, but Tuesday may still wind up seeing Hillary Clinton win the majority of the delegates on the night even if she wins only one of the states; she’s poised to win Arizona, which has significantly more delegates than Utah and Idaho put together, by a sizable margin. (The more enjoyable day for Sanders fans instead will be Saturday the 26th; that day includes the Washington caucus, which may give Sanders a bigger net haul of delegates than any state so far … his biggest so far, despite its small size, is still Vermont, where he netted 16 delegates by sweeping the state.)
Polls close in Arizona at 7 pm local time (although Arizona is on Mountain time, most of the state except for the Navajo Nation doesn’t use daylight savings, so that's still 10 PM EST). Idaho caucuses start at 7 PM Mountain time or, in the Panhandle, 6 PM Pacific, while Utah’s caucuses start at 6 PM Mountain time. Daily Kos Elections will start its live-blogging at 9 PM Eastern; in the meantime, let’s take a quick look at each state’s polls, how it allocates its delegates, and what else to watch.
ARIZONA
Democratic delegates: 16 at-large, 9 party leaders and elected officials, 6 in AZ-01, 8 in AZ-02, 5 in AZ-03, 4 in AZ-04, 5 in AZ-05, 6 in AZ-06, 5 in AZ-07, 5 in AZ-08, and 6 in AZ-09 (75 total pledged)
Democratic polls: Clinton 50, Sanders 24 (HuffPo Pollster aggregate)
Republican delegates: 58 statewide
Republican polls: Trump 37, Cruz 20, Kasich 16 (aggregate)
As we said, Arizona has the bulk of the delegates on Tuesday, and the polls aren’t looking particularly competitive on either side. On the Democratic side, Arizona is better suited, demographically, for Hillary Clinton. In fact, it’s reminiscent of Florida in a number of ways: it’s a closed primary so independents won't be participating, it has a large Latino population (30.5 percent), and it has a lot of senior citizens (not to the extent of Florida, or even some states like Maine and West Virginia where you have a lot of “aging in place,” but still an above average amount, at 16 percent of the population). Unsurprisingly, Clinton has a large lead in recent polls. There have only been two polls in the last month, but both had Clinton in the 50s and Sanders in the 20s … leaving an unusually high number of undecided voters. For Arizona to become interesting, the undecided voters would have to have broken decisively in Sanders’ direction in the last week.
The two congressional districts that, at first glance, seem like Clinton’s best districts because they have the most Latino voters, AZ-03 and AZ-07 (which are 62 and 64 percent Latino, respectively), aren’t the districts with the most delegates, because they have such low turnout. The 3rd may also have some hidden Sanders strength, to the extent that the Univ. of Arizona is located in the part of Tucson that’s in the 3rd. (It’s also possible that Arizona’s Latino population won’t be as lopsidedly pro-Clinton as we saw in Texas or Florida; exit polls in neighboring Nevada, for instance, saw Latinos more closely divided, though there was much fighting after the fact as to whether those exits were accurate.)
Instead, the most delegate-rich district in AZ-02, in Tucson’s suburbs, which is a whiter but also considerably older district. The most senior-heavy district, though, is AZ-04, which is partly in Phoenix’s suburbs and also includes retirement destinations elsewhere in the state like Prescott and Lake Havasu City; it’s 26 percent 65 and older, one of the oldest districts anywhere outside of Florida. While it doesn’t have a lot of delegates (only 4 … it’s a red district at the presidential level), this may also be a strongly pro-Clinton district.
Other districts where Sanders might show some life are AZ-09, a suburban district that includes Tempe, where Arizona St. University is, and especially AZ-01, which encompasses much of the state’s north. The 1st includes not just the college town of Flagstaff but also much of the Navajo Nation; this district has by far the highest percentage of Native Americans of any CD in the nation (at 24 percent of the population), and while we don’t have a clear sense of how Native Americans are breaking on the primary yet (we haven’t had a primary or caucus in an area like this before), we do know that the Navajo Nation’s president, Russell Begaye, just endorsed Sanders.
On the Democratic side, everything is awarded proportionately at the statewide and district level, with a 15 percent viability threshold. Things are very different on the GOP side: the entire state is winner-take-all. Whoever gets the most votes statewide gets all 58 delegates. Given his wide lead in the polls, look for Donald Trump to add those delegates to his total, which will get him closer to squeaking over the 50 percent mark on pledged delegates and (he hopes) avoiding a fight at the convention.
IDAHO
Democratic delegates: 5 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 8 in ID-01, 7 in ID-02 (23 total pledged)
Democratic polls: One poll from Feb.: Sanders 47, Clinton 45
Idaho features only an open caucus on the Democratic side; the Republicans had their caucus several weeks ago, with Ted Cruz winning. Conventional wisdom has slotted the Gem State into Bernie Sanders’ column, largely because he’s done well in most caucus states so far. History also plays a role: Barack Obama mightily ran up the score here in 2008, winning Idaho by a 15-3 margin, one of the most lopsided victories of that whole year. It’s also worth considering that the few Democrats in Idaho (most of whom are crammed into Boise, along with a few other spots like the college town of Moscow and the ski resort of Sun Valley) tend to be pretty liberal and right in the Sanders target demographic (white, secular, college-educated, and many of whom would fit in just fine in Seattle or Portland). There used to be more working-class union Democrats in the Panhandle long ago (mostly miners and loggers), but that has almost entirely dissipated.
The one poll we’ve seen, from Utah-based firm Dan Jones, isn’t showing a blowout though; it only has a narrow Sanders lead. Based on history (the 2008 caucus) and results in caucuses in similar states (i.e. Colorado and Kansas, where Sanders won more convincingly), I’d expect his margin in Idaho to be a good bit wider than two points, though. Idaho delegates are awarded proportionately, with a 15 percent viability threshold.
UTAH
Democratic delegates: 7 at-large, 4 PLEOs, 5 in UT-01, 6 in UT-02, 5 in UT-03, 6 in UT-04 (33 total pledged)
Democratic polls: One poll from Mar.: Sanders 52, Clinton 44; one poll from Feb.: Clinton 51, Sanders 44
Republican delegates: 40 statewide
Republican polls: Cruz 53, Trump 12, Kasich 4 (aggregate)
Utah is a lot like Idaho for the Democrats: with most of the state’s residents both Mormons and Republicans, there simply aren’t a lot of Democrats in the state, but the ones who are there (mostly in Salt Lake City) tend to very liberal. (In fact, SLC tends to act as a magnet for liberal-minded folks in not just all of Utah but its surrounding states as well … hence its frequent appearance on lists of the nation's gayest cities.) Utah does have a growing Latino population, but they simply aren’t voting much yet, and Utah has never had much union penetration (again, except for a few mining-oriented counties in the sticks), leaving most of the Democratic votes in Utah coming from secular, urban whites. While Obama’s 2008 victory here wasn't as lopsided as in Idaho (at only 14-9), that precedent also means a likely Sanders victory in Utah.
The most recent poll of Utah gives Sanders an 8-point lead; all previous polls gave Clinton a lead but it looks like the polls finally caught up with the state’s demographic propensities. Democratic delegates are awarded proportionately, with a 15 percent threshold at both the CD and statewide level. (Note, though, that Utah and Idaho together still have fewer delegates than Arizona by itself, which is why Clinton is likely to walk away with a net gain on the entire night. For instance, if you extrapolate Arizona’s polls to a 63-37 Clinton victory, extrapolate Utah’s polls to a 54-46 Sanders victory, and just give Sanders a 60-40 win in Idaho, and then assign delegates based on those percentages without doing fancy CD-level math, you end up with Clinton +19 in Arizona (47-28), Sanders +3 in Utah (18-15), and Sanders +5 in Idaho (14-9).)
On the Republican side, Utah awards delegates statewide, potentially winner-take-all. If one candidate tops 50 percent, the state is winner-take-all (for 40 delegates). If nobody tops 50, delegates are awarded proportionately to all challengers. Right now, the polls are showing that Ted Cruz is on track to hit the winner-take-all trigger, but only narrowly. (We also know that Cruz easily won ID-02, the heavily Mormon part of Idaho, so that’s a clue how he'll do here.) Favorite son Mitt Romney just did robocalls on Cruz’s behalf, though, which should help keep Cruz above the 50 percent mark. (While Romney has played both sides of the Never Trump fence, here, it makes strategic sense to bolster only Cruz, if the main goal is to deny Trump any delegates and to keep him from hitting 50 percent among pledged delegates nationwide in order to force a floor fight.)
AMERICAN SAMOA
On top of all that, there’s also the Republican caucus in American Samoa on Tuesday! It has a whopping six pledged delegates, which doesn’t seem like much until you realize that there are probably only a few hundred Republicans on the entire island, so this may be the nation’s smallest delegate-to-voter ratio anywhere. It’s unclear when we’ll know these results … we certainly won't be covering it in our liveblog ... but with every delegate counting in large amounts on the GOP side, those delegates are actually pretty important.