2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah besides his vicious defamation of my home state I think his thinking here is sound.

What's so bad about being good at football? 

[alfred russel]

I deleted my post because after checking, while one recent poll has Hillary up just 2 nationally, the two other recent ones have her up 18 and 21.

[OttoVonBismarck]

A lot of pollsters won't poll primaries too far out, but yeah, I think the calendar and the early polling favors Hillary. I think there's also a streak of conservatism among the white voters in SEC Democratic primaries/caucuses that can hurt Sanders as well. I think Sanders has a message that can resonate with a lot of working class whites, but I think the conservative Southern whites will have a hard time working their minds around a guy who is against core values of their (entrepreneurship, capitalism etc--the use of the word Socialism will scare Southern white Democrats in my opinion.)

In addition to the Georgia polling you mentioned, they've also polled Michigan in the last week and Clinton is up there by 29%.

I think Sanders wins Minnesota, and I'm not sure on Massachusetts or Colorado--but the last poll (months old) had Clinton up by 25% in both states. Let's say Sanders sweeps all these non-SEC/Southern states and wins Minnesota/Massachusetts/Colorado/Vermont (he will almost def win Minnesota and Vermont in my opinion), discounting the weird entities like American Samoa and "Democrats Abroad" that gives Hillary 12-4 record from the time span post-New Hampshire up through Super Tuesday.

The schedule after that is 3/5: Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, all demographic nightmares for Sanders and I think he loses all three. So now 15-4 after his New Hampshire win. Then Mississippi on 3/8 which I think he loses real bad due to the huge black population, and finally Michigan--which he's down 29% in a poll done this week. So that's 17-4.

I do think that you're right and "right now" Sanders must lead in a lot of States, but these are States that don't vote for a long time in the grand scheme of the primary. While I think Sanders has a core of "true believers" I'm not really aware of any candidate that could disproportionately lose so many early primaries and not take a massive hit in a few important areas:

1) Media perception, when talking heads start focusing on his losses and not Hillary's struggles, it creates a perception of a candidate who is likely losing
2) Fundraising--I find it hard to believe a candidate won't take a fundraising hit with such a poor month under his belt
3) Grassroots/etc - To a degree success helps build out grassroots volunteers, Bernie has a core of people who are going to go out and volunteer for him no matter what, but he's going to lose some people if he blows up like this in the next month

So I think it's likely that after a 17-4 span, his national polling will no longer be anywhere close to on par with Hillary, in fact it'll probably be back where it was before mid-December when Bernie really started to threaten her in national opinion polls.

Also--superdelegates are 20% of the vote. In 2008 it was close enough that they could have swung the nomination away from Obama and to Hillary, but what happened instead is when the primaries wound down and Obama had a "majority of the pledged delegates", a lot of superdelegates declared for Obama. This was seen largely as a desire to respect the "will of the electorate", because Obama came pretty close in pledged delegates to locking it up, and was a few hundred ahead of Hillary, so it truly would've been stealing the election in a sense from Obama to coronate Hillary at that point.

But in a situation where Hillary likely wins the delegate count among pledged delegates, it's likely that a huge percentage of superdelegates stay with Hillary.

It's also worth noting that Obama was competitive consistently. The Super Tuesday in 2008 held about twice as many elections as in 2016, roughly 24, and Hillary and Obama roughly split those 24 states. The projection I'm making is Bernie is going to win about 25% of the Super Tuesday states, and likely will lose a string of five States immediately after that as a "follow up." I think that creates a vastly different scenario than Obama '08.

[alfred russel]

In the longest run, I think it ultimately probably comes down to the national polling average. The democratic situation is very straightforward - two people head to head the whole way. The order of states may help build momentum and move the national numbers, but if Sanders is down 20% nationally, he needs to fix that or he won't stay competitive for long.

[Eddie Teach]

Nebraska, Kansas, all demographic nightmares for Sanders

How so? If Sanders does well in lily-white states, than those two should be in the bag.

[Phillip V]

There is always the possibility that Clinton has a stroke, gets arrested, or commits a sex scandal.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Nebraska, Kansas, all demographic nightmares for Sanders

How so? If Sanders does well in lily-white states, than those two should be in the bag.

Sanders does well in lily-white liberal states all of those words are required to give Sanders his typical advantage. His demographic are the left leaning whites in the party. States in the bible belt tend to have more conservative voters across the board--more conservative Democrats and more conservative Republicans. Those white voters are not that liberal, and will be off put by a lot of the things Sanders says.

[Eddie Teach]

That would be more of a cultural than demographic factor, IMO.

[CountDeMoney]

conservative Southern whites will have a hard time working their minds around a guy who is against core values of their (entrepreneurship, capitalism etc--

Always amusing, considering how they are the ones those core values are against.

https://youtu.be/mS9U75YC-jA

[Admiral Yi]

Sanders does well in lily-white liberal states all of those words are required to give Sanders his typical advantage. His demographic are the left leaning whites in the party. States in the bible belt tend to have more conservative voters across the board--more conservative Democrats and more conservative Republicans. Those white voters are not that liberal, and will be off put by a lot of the things Sanders says.

Sanders pushed in Iowa, not that different demographically from Nebraska and Kansas.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Eh, but Iowa has never followed demographic norms in its caucuses. And Iowa is definitely way more liberal than Kansas, Iowa sent electoral votes to Obama, Kansas elected Sam Brownback governor.

[Jaron]

This just in:

Bernie doesn't like the blacks. Noose at eleven.

[Martinus]

Yay for my man Trump. Trump/Christie 2016. 

[Martinus]

Wow Rubio. Was that his 'Wraaaaa' Howard Dean moment?

Good. I'd prefer almost everyone on the ballot to him.

[Martinus]

Also, I didn't think Ank could post more Bernie Sanders memes per minute. I was wrong.

He posted approximately 25 of them within the last two hours.