Cross-posted at Election Inspection
(Preliminary District-Level predictions here)
It's been a wild ride, but we've finally made it to Indiana and North Carolina (or at least we're almost there). This will be my final projection for the Indiana primary, I'll do my North Carolina one next.
Before starting, I want to say that I've been consulting with poblano's Indiana turnout model (it's a very good place to get a base vote going, even if you might disagree with the final conclusion). While I suspect that Obama is going to do better than a lot of the pundits believe (yes, after Wright-gate II) I don't think that Obama will pull off a victory here. Having said that, the best Clinton could possibly hope for is a net of 4-6 delegates, even if she were to get a 10 point spread (and I assure you, I don't believe that will happen). Now then, let's get started:
CD 1
Delegates at stake: 6 (Obama 4, Clinton 2)
District Profile
District Analysis: I've been going back and forth with this one, I was initially projecting that Clinton and Obama would get a delegate tie here, but I think that, unlike districts bordering Missouri and Wisconsin, this one does contain an exurb of Chicago (and part of Chicago), which should give Obama a nice healthy boost here and will be the push needed to get Obama over the top and to a 4-2 split.
*CD-02
Delegates at stake: 6 (Clinton 3, Obama 3)
District Profile
District analysis: At first glance, this looks like a district where Clinton should get a 4-2 split, but upon looking at how Clinton did in a similar district in Pennsylvania, PA-05, where Clinton only managed to get 57.6% of the vote (which would be .8% short of a 4-2 split in a 6 delegate district), and considering that this district has a higher percentage of African Americans (even when factoring in the number of latinos here) I have to believe that Obama can pretty easily keep Clinton below 58.35% and maintain a delegate tie.
*CD-03
Delegates at stake: 4 (Clinton 2, Obama 2)
District Profile
District analysis: Another district with a striking similarity to PA-05, only this is slightly better educated, and has slightly more latinos (6.1%) than African Americans (5.8%). Clinton will win the district, but she won’t get the 62.5% of the vote needed for a 3-1 split.
*CD-04
Delegates at stake: 4 (Clinton 2, Obama 2)
District Profile
District analysis: Wow... this district is so much like PA-19 that I can basically predict the same outcome here, it will be a 2-2 split with Clinton getting a majority of votes.
CD-05
Delegates at stake: 4 (Clinton 2, Obama 2)
District Profile
District Analysis: I was pretty sloppy with this district in my previous analysis, and so I had just given this district willy-nilly to Clinton with a massive win thinking it was just like PA-18, when Daily Kos user Terrier Mix pointed out that this district is significantly younger than PA-18. What does this mean? Well for starters, it means that Clinton's chances of getting a 3-1 split here are slim-to-none. Secondly, although Poblano's model predicts that Obama will get a majority of votes here, this district is also an incredibly partisan Republican district, and I suspect that enough of them will vote and cause trouble enough to cost Obama the popular vote here.
CD-06
Delegates at stake: 5 (Clinton 3, Obama 2)
District Profile
District Analysis: This was another district I was blindly projecting would go to Hillary Clinton by ungodly margins, when Terrier Mix comes and mentions a reason why that projection would be completely off:
About half of the votes in the 6th district will come from Madison and Delaware counties, which are northeast of Indianapolis. Demographically, the district is similar to OH-04, a few miles to the east, where Obama received 39% of the vote.
Clinton should still handily win the district, of course, but Obama's not going to do nearly as badly as I was initially projection, it'll be 3-2 for Clinton in the only odd-numbered Indiana congressional district.
*CD-07
Delegates at stake: 6 (Obama 4, Clinton 2)
District Profile
District analysis: Basically, this is the city of Indianapolis. This district is pretty similar to <span style="color: #59708c;">MS-03</span>, where Obama won 65% of the vote, even considering that there are slight differences here comparable to MS-03 (relatively high latino population, slightly lower education rate and slightly fewer African Americans), this district should give Obama at least 60% of the vote (more than the 58.35% needed for a 4-2 split).
CD-08
Delegates at stake: 6 (Clinton 4, Obama 2)
District Profile
District analysis: I've been toiling and toiling with this district for a while now because of what Daily Kos diarist Fro has mentioned about this particular district:
[S]outhern Indiana is very different geographically from OH-06 or VA-09. It's not flat as a pancake like the Northern half of Indiana, but there's lots of farmland alongside the small hills and forests. Highest point in Indiana is only 1372 ft above sea level.
While I find this convincing, and Poblano's model predicts that Obama should be able to keep Clinton to a delegate tie here, I suspect that Clinton's surrogate Regular Guy Evan Bayh (if you haven't caught onto the irony of this, you aren't paying attention, but I digress) is going to be a tremendous help here (as Terra Haute is his home-town) (Bayh the way [forgive my incredibly horrible pun] if Obama manages to beat out Clinton in Indiana, you can bet money that Evan Bayh's name will disappear from anyone's VP short list). Clinton should still get the 4-2 split, but if Obama prevents this, it's probably a sign of a good night for him.
CD-09
Delegates at stake: 6 (Clinton 3, Obama 3)
District Profile
District analysis: At first I predicted that Clinton would get a massive win here (and would give her a 4-2 split), but then, as (s)he did with CD-08, Fro made an excellent point about CD-09:
Bloomington, Indiana is essentially a mini-Madison Wisconsin in this district which should provide a large margin for Obama to offset some of the rest of the district. Note the Louisville, KY suburbs clustered in the middle of the southern part of the district. Dearborn and Ohio counties in the far east are part of the Cincy Metro area.
Lee Hamilton was Congressman in this district for 30+ years and is still very popular and respected (think what you expected to happen when Kennedy endorsed Obama in MA, except this guy knows all the local party officials). He has endorsed Obama.
This, along with Poblano's model, have convinced me that CD-09 will split 3-3 between Clinton and Obama.
District-Level Delegates 47 (Obama 24, Clinton 23)
Final Popular Vote Result:
Clinton 51.7%, Obama 48.3%
At-Large delegates 16 Clinton 8, Obama 8
PLEOs 9 Clinton 5, Obama 4
Total Delegates 72 (Clinton 36, Obama 36)
Yep, that's right, even though Hillary Clinton will likely win the state, I'm projecting that she will net absolutely no delegates from the state. This will be down the wire, and I'd like to add that if Obama wins the state, it probably also means that he outperformed in CD-08, thus giving him a net gain of +4 out of the state.
*Denotes that there were no changes made to the district(By the way, I think I've fixed all the bad tags in here, so please forgive me for the sloppy formating earlier)