Saturday’s caucuses may be the high water mark for this year’s primary season for Bernie Sanders; it’s three caucuses (where he tends to do better than primaries), and three west coast states. In particular, Washington is likely to give Sanders the largest net delegate haul of any state. If Sanders pulls, say, 65 percent of the vote in Washington, he’ll net around 30 delegates for that state alone (there are 101 pledged delegates, which would break, say, 66-35) … which would be more than any state so far (the biggest net he’s gotten so far is, surprisingly, Utah, which doesn’t have a lot of delegates but where he netted 21 thanks to winning by such a wide margin). It’ll also probably be the largest net of any state he’ll win in the future, unless he wins delegate-rich California by a decent margin (though bear in mind that no poll has ever shown him winning, at all, in California).
Saturday is Democratic events only: Alaska and Hawaii already had their Republican caucuses (Ted Cruz won Alaska, Donald Trump won Hawaii), while Washington’s GOP will award delegates at the state’s May 24 primary. The Democratic candidates will also be on the ballot on the May 24 primary, but for the Democrats, it’s a beauty contest. Which leads to the question: if there’s already a perfectly fine primary happening anyway, why determine delegates using a voter-suppressing technique like the caucus, which makes attendance difficult for people who work Saturdays, for the elderly and disabled, for people with young children, and for people who simply don’t want to spend several hours on something that should take one minute (seeing as how Washington also is a vote-by-mail state, where the idea of waiting in line to vote is unheard of)?
Daily Kos Elections won’t be liveblogging on Saturday because of the uncertainty about when results show up from caucuses, but we will post open threads where commenters can congregate. Washington’s caucuses start at 10 AM Pacific time (or 1 PM EST). Alaska’s caucuses start at 10 AM Alaska time (which is 2 PM EST in most of the state, except for the Aleutian Islands). And Hawaii’s caucuses (which are more of a ‘firehouse primary’) start at 1 PM Hawaii time (which is 7 PM EST).
ALASKA
Democratic delegates: 4 at-large, 2 party leaders and elected officials, 10 congressional district (16 total pledged)
Democratic polls: 1 from Jan.: Clinton 44, Sanders 41
Alaska has only 16 delegates up for grabs; it’s not only one of the least populous states, but also is Republican-leaning at the presidential level, so that limits the delegate count. Alaska’s caucus is a “closed caucus,” so only registered Democrats will be able to participate. That’s probably one point in Hillary Clinton’s favor (she has tended to do better where independents aren’t participating); another thing Clinton supporters might point to is the one poll that we’ve seen, which puts her ahead slightly. I would highly caution against reading anything into that poll, though; Alaska is a difficult state to poll, with some rural voters simply living outside the range of phone communication. Also, the polling of Democratic caucuses this year has been simply terrible, usually underestimating Sanders support by wide margins. (Recall the polls in Utah and Idaho has Sanders winning only narrowly, while Kansas and Minnesota polls had Clinton winning.)
One other difference from Utah and Idaho, though, is that Alaska is a demographically diverse state. The 2010 Census finds it only 67 percent white, with 15 percent Native, 5 percent Asian, 3 percent black, and 6 percent Hispanic. With the state’s GOP overwhelmingly white, Natives are actually a substantial part of the Democratic electorate here; I haven’t seen much inside information on how much the campaigns have been reaching out to the Native vote here, but one clue that Clinton might do well among the Native population here is that she won the two most-predominantly Native American counties in Arizona (Navajo and Apache Counties) by wide margins.
That said, I’d still expect Sanders to win the majority of delegates here; the white portion of the Democratic electorate in Alaska tends to be of more of the do-your-own-thing, left-libertarian mindset, which is tailor-made for Sanders. Another clue is that Barack Obama won 69 percent of the delegates in Alaska in 2008. The real question is whether the Native American vote breaks for Clinton and keeps things close, or if it’s an Idaho-style blowout.
HAWAII
Democratic delegates: 6 at-large, 3 PLEOs, 8 in HI-01, 8 in HI-02 (25 total pledged)
Democratic polls: absolutely nothing
We’re flying even more blind in Hawaii than we are in Alaska, where no one has bothered to poll at all, and where there’s a demographic mix that’s totally unlike any other state. Hawaii is the least-white state in the country: in 2010, it was only 23 percent white, with 39 percent Asian, 10 percent Native Hawaiian, 9 percent Hispanic, and 24 percent falling into the category of “two or more races.” While Clinton has done well in less-white states in the past, though, that’s generally been states with either large black or Hispanic electorates; we simply don’t have any data from anywhere with an Asian plurality to use as a comparison. In fact, the most heavily Asian place that we have results from, so far, is Fort Bend County in Texas (which is 18 percent Asian); Clinton won there with 75 percent of the vote, but the Texas Democrat mindset doesn’t necessarily map well onto Hawaii. Even Nate Silver’s state similarity index isn’t any help here; it just tells us that Hawaii isn’t similar to anyone else.
I could point to the fact that Obama won 70 percent of the delegates in Hawaii in 2008, but he has "favorite son" status in Hawaii, so that's not a reliable indicator at all. Hawaiians tend to be liberal, by disposition, but a closer look at individual issues doesn’t put Hawaii in quite the same liberal terrain as the New England or Pacific Northwest states. I think we’ll simply have to leave it at: Hawaii is probably the least likely state for Sanders to win of the three on Saturday, but we shouldn't be surprised by a big victory for him here either.
WASHINGTON
Democratic delegates: 22 at-large, 12 PLEOs, 7 in WA-01, 7 in WA-02, 6 in WA-03, 4 in WA-04, 5 in WA-05, 7 in WA-06, 12 in WA-07, 6 in WA-08, 7 in WA-09, 6 in WA-10
Democratic polls: nothing since May 2015
Finally, there’s Washington, which, despite the fact that it has the 12th most pledged delegates of any state in the Democratic nomination process, has not been the subject of any polls in nearly a year. I think most pollsters have looked at the terrible accuracy rate of polling in caucus states so far this cycle, and just said “I’m not touching that.” (Washington is the largest state to use caucuses; Minnesota comes in second on that measure.) On top of that, Washington has a purely open caucus, so it’s even harder for a pollster to model the probable influx of independent voters.
Unlike Alaska and Hawaii, though, Nate Silver’s “state similarity" index actually is helpful here. Washington’s most similar state is, unsurprisingly, Oregon, which hasn’t voted yet. But the two next-most-similar states are Minnesota and Colorado, both of which have not only voted, but also held caucuses! Sanders got 58 percent of the delegates in Colorado and 60 percent in Minnesota, so that’s probably a good marker for the low end of Sanders’ range in Washington. I’d suspect that’s more of a floor than ceiling for Sanders, though; there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence for the idea that he’ll be more popular in Washington, like the planned rally at Seattle’s baseball stadium which could wind up with 50,000 attendees, or the fact that Seattle has the most per capita Sanders contributions of any of the nation’s major cities.
One other potentially helpful data point is that Obama won 67 percent of Washington’s delegates in 2008. With that in mind, I would expect a breakdown closer to that (65 percent or more for Sanders) than what we saw in Minnesota. With 101 pledged delegates up for grabs, that would turn into, say, a 66-35 delegate breakdown in Washington, which, as I said earlier, would be the largest net haul of any state for Sanders so far.
Washington’s congressional district math easily points to WA-07 as Sanders’ strongest district; most of Seattle (and, frankly, all of the white parts of Seattle) is in the 7th, and this is also the district with the most delegates (12). Clinton will probably be able to maintain viability here (like most states, there’s a 15 percent threshold at the CD level in Washington), but this could easily go 9-3 for Sanders. Look for Clinton to do better in, say, WA-09 (which is the non-white parts of Seattle, plus Seattle’s diverse southern suburbs) and WA-04 (which is the most Hispanic district in the state, in eastern Washington), but Sanders’ appeal seems pretty deep even in the suburbs in Washington, so it’s possible he’ll get a majority in all ten districts.