We need a president who’s old enough to have known Typhoid Mary, because isn’t the election all about Groundhogs and Woodchucks. Lots of spin between now and Tuesday, even as Alan Lichtman is predicting two outcomes: Sanders or a brokered convention.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign won the South Carolina primary.
The campaign was exuberant after Biden won a state for the first time during his three presidential bids.
Biden went after frontrunner Bernie Sanders in his victory speech, which resulted in a harsh review of his comments from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The most shared article about the Big Apple Democrat tied to the first primary debate is an Associated Press pickup of a New York Post exclusive from 2014 that ran in The Guardian under the headline, “Groundhog died week after New York mayor Bill de Blasio dropped it.”
www.rawstory.com/...
A professor of political science with a history of accurately predicting the outcome of U.S. presidential elections said either Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will win the primary or the Democratic National Committee will face a brokered convention in July.
Allan Lichtman from American University is the co-creator of "The Keys to the White House," a forecast model used to predict nine previous elections, according to The Independent.
"I think the most likely outcomes are Sanders wins or nobody wins, and for the first time in over 50 years, we actually have a convention nominating the candidate," he said.
The prediction model also indicated that "it is generally speaking the incumbent's election to lose," according to The Independent.
The professor said the model is not designed to forecast primaries, but there are signs that the upcoming Democratic convention could be a brokered one.
A brokered convention could happen if no Democratic candidate wins more than half of the 1,990 pledged delegates by the end of the primary race.
thehill.com/...
Nate Silver thinks Bernie Sanders is still ahead.
More:
* Biden is now the plurality favorite in all *Southern* Super Tuesday states (he already was in the model before tonight, but a slightly heavier favorite now).
* However, he projects to have delegate accumulation problems outside of the South, especially CA.
My hunch is that the model is overestimating the performance of Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Warren on Super Tuesday and that these candidates will lose votes to Biden and Sanders (probably more to Biden than Sanders, but both).
That is, voters will behave more tactically than the model assumes and move toward the top 2 candidates, making "no majority" a bit less likely than it says. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of time for polling between now and Tuesday so tbh we may not know a ton until then.
As a final point, Sanders entered tonight 12 points ahead of Biden in our national poll average. It seems to be assuming something like that Sanders loses 2 points and Biden gains 3 as a result of SC, closing the gap to 7. But that still gives Bernie a lead to work with.