LIVEBLOG: The Nevada Democratic Caucuses

It’ll be Sanders by a field goal.

(posted from another thread)

NV is a very tough one to predict b/c the polling is truly garbage.

Here’s the raw polling avg. of all polls released in the last week:

Sanders 26%, Biden 16%, Pete 15%, Liz 11%, Amy 9%, Steyer 15% (yes…you read that right). After digging into internals and looking at data where I can find it, here are my predictions:

Age Demo: 18-34: 13%, 35-44: 18%, 45-54: 16%, 55-64: 20%, 65+ 33% (rounded)
Race: White 61%, Latinx 18%, African American 13%, Asian 4%, Other 4%

My current prediction on the first alignment is Bernie 28%, Biden 22%, Pete 17%, Liz 13% Amy 9%, Steyer 6%, Other 5%.

I have no clear idea on the 2nd alignment. Potentially, Biden/Pete can benefit from Amy/Steyer not making the cut.

The wildcards or unknowns that make the prediction very tenuous:

Latinx support. Some polls have Bernie doing exceedingly well. Other polling (Telemundo/Univision) show a much tighter race between Bernie and Biden among Latinx voters. I’m going with the latter data point. Honestly, though, it’s anyone’s guess.

White support. Biden appears to have fairly strong black support and probably good Latinx union member support. The wildcard for him is white support. Presently, he’s in the 13%-14% range. If he were to get up to 20% he’d have a very decent chance to make this a close race w/Bernie or even beat him under certain circumstances. However, if he can’t lift that white support, he might be in that 17%-20% range. 2nd alignment might get him there, but his best chance to win is to persuade more moderate white voters to support him on the first ballot. If he can get that to at least 18% he’ll have a reasonably good day.

Liz Warren - NV is not a good state for her demographically. Not enough college ed voters. Too many splits among that group with Pete/Amy. Low Latinx support per polling. She made a big impression in the debate the other night, but didn’t tag Bernie, so it’s not clear to me that she’ll get a boost among young voters. Don’t know where she gets the votes, but I think she’ll probably move some Amy voters back her way and may be take some from Pete. I don’t know if it will be enough to get past the threshold on 1st alignment. I have her at the borderline. If, however, Liz does get some younger voter support, it could hurt Bernie and make this thing a real crapshoot.

I think the Amy Klobuchar campaign is dead in NV. I’d be very surprised if she made the cut.

I think Pete has an outside shot to win. If he does, I do think it would change this race.

All in all, I’d expect Bernie to win the PV, but I’m projecting a delegate split that keeps things close and yields a minor Biden resurgence that he might be able to use to help win in SC. I do think if he gets to a close 2nd, delegate draw or even wins on second alignment, he’d see a big surge his way.

However, if he flops and finishes 4th, I think it could be Bloomberg time.

FWIW, a journalist I follow on twitter has spoken with various respected NV experts on background. Of 5 scenarios, Biden finishes 1st in 1, 2nd in 3, and fourth in 1. Pete only gets to #2 in 1 scenario. If Biden gets one of those happy scenarios to hit, then it could shift the tone and tenor of the campaign.

Next you’ll be asking why we don’t use the metric system!