Democratic Ides of March Tuesday results thread (first polls close at 7pm ET)

[Adam Griffin]

Nate Cohn posted this map of the South (Clinton vs. Sanders):



He notes that OK, NC, and FL all have party registration, and so the "Dixiecrats" (or whatever you want to call them) are unable to crossover and vote in the Republican primary.

Not necessarily a perfect correlation there: Louisiana has party registration, too, and the biggest D registration advantage out of all of those states to boot. Furthermore, look at the areas surrounding western NC (North GA, East TN, SW VA, etc) where there isn't party registration - Sanders came within single digits in about 20 counties in North GA and did quite well in East TN and VA, too.

[Adam Griffin]

Nate Cohn posted this map of the South (Clinton vs. Sanders):



He notes that OK, NC, and FL all have party registration, and so the "Dixiecrats" (or whatever you want to call them) are unable to crossover and vote in the Republican primary.

Not necessarily a perfect correlation there: Louisiana has party registration, too, and the biggest D registration advantage out of all of those states to boot. Furthermore, look at the areas surrounding western NC (North GA, East TN, SW VA, etc) where there isn't party registration - Sanders came within single digits in about 20 counties in North GA and did quite well in East TN and VA, too.

Just to add to this: when you look at partisan registration figures for 2014-2015 in NC, you'll also notice that some of the stronger areas for Sanders are in some of the most ancestrally-weak areas in terms of Democratic registrations, so I'm not sure I buy this theory about closed primaries influencing the result to any substantial degree for Sanders.