A bombshell to close out your weekend in style: Hillary up fifteen in Oregon.
★★★
The Oregon primary is on Tuesday, May 17th.
If the numbers from a newly released poll of the OR Democratic primary are accurate and hold steady for a week, it’s over. Team Sanders is banking on a twenty-plus percent win in Oregon (which wouldn’t narrow her lead, but would have value for the sake of appearances) – a defeat of this magnitude on friendly ground could sound his bell’s last tolling.
The poll (by Portland’s DHM Research) calculates the outcomes of two scenarios, one based on higher Democratic turnout, the other on average turnout. n=304, MoE 5.6%.
Both scenarios show a statistically significant lead for Hillary Clinton outside the poll’s MoE.
In the high turnout model [.pdf], she leads by 7%, 45% to 38%, in the average turnout model [.pdf] by 15%, 48% to 33%.
After Oregon, 930 pledged delegates remain on the table.
★★★
So off to the meat. The Inquisitr:
Hillary Clinton may have a big surprise coming up this week with polls from Oregon showing her ahead in a state many thought would be a cake walk for Bernie Sanders.
Desperately needing momentum in his bid to pull off an upset in the Democratic primary, Sanders has been looking to Oregon as a chance to take a big chunk out of Clinton’s delegate lead. It is a progressive state with demographics favorable to Sanders, and he has drawn some huge crowds during his campaigning there. [...]
Supporters of Bernie Sanders believed the same way with many rallying to reach voters through phone banking in an effort to give Sanders a big win, hoping to be by 20 points or more.
But, the polls don’t reflect that. [Portland-based pollster] Horvick’s firm, DHM Research, showed that Hillary Clinton is actually leading Bernie Sanders and by a margin of 15 points. The poll had Clinton ahead 48 percent to 33 percent.
The Los Angeles Times has more:
Like everyone else in Oregon, pollster John Horvick has watched as Bernie Sanders draws massive crowds by capitalizing on liberal dissatisfaction in this left-leaning state.
“It felt like this is Bernie Sanders country,” he said.
That’s why the latest poll results from his firm, DHM Research, were something of a surprise. Hillary Clinton led 48% to 33% , a gap much larger than the margin of error of 5.6 percentage points. [...]
Now, some reasons to believe Clinton could pull off a victory here.
Oregon has a closed primary, meaning only registered Democrats can vote, and Sanders hasn't won a closed primary yet in this campaign. Older voters are much more likely than their younger counterparts to be registered with a party, and they’re more likely to favor Clinton, giving her an edge.
In addition, Horvick’s team calculated a second set of numbers based on a potential turnout where young voters and new voters cast ballots in higher numbers than normal .
Even then, Clinton had a lead that exceeded the margin of error, 45% to 38%.
I was unable to find any polling whatsoever of Oregon’s primary, and assumed (along with everyone else) – the demographics being favorable to Sanders – that he would carry the state. Not by enough to gain a lead or even whittle away substantially at his delegate and vote deficit by all that much, but a win is a win.
If an expected win however becomes an unexpected double-digit loss, it becomes difficult to imagine what believable rationale the Sanders campaign might concoct to keep its donor spigots open and troops motivated.
With seventy four delegates, Oregon represents the third-largest electoral reservoir remaining, after California (546) and New Jersey (142).
★★★
So what comes next? Assuming Sanders loses Oregon by these margins, he would have to win all remaining primaries by ~ 70% to 30%, a vote share he has not reached outside of his home state of Vermont and that is not evident in the polling we have of the contests to come. All things are possible under heaven, this precise eventuality however strikes me at least as somewhat unlikely to occur.
Which is British understatement for “not a fuck’s chance”.
★★★
Candidate Resources on the Web and Daily Kos