Democratic Grand Finale Tuesday results thread (1st polls close @8pm ET)

[Landslide Lyndon]

Sanders' last non-California event was at New Mexico, May 20. So yeah, it wasn't a month, it was 18 days.

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

If he spent a decent amount of time in New Mexico or eastern South Dakota, he probably could've won those states.

Quite possibly. He did campaign a bit in both of them though.

Other than in Michigan, Bernie just never seemed to have luck on his side in the close ones.

SD, NM, IA, MO, MA

Those were all within about 3% and were all Hillary wins.

[Boston Bread]

If he spent a decent amount of time in New Mexico or eastern South Dakota, he probably could've won those states.

Quite possibly. He did campaign a bit in both of them though.

Other than in Michigan, Bernie just never seemed to have luck on his side in the close ones.

SD, NM, IA, MO, MA

Those were all within about 3% and were all Hillary wins.

Also add IL. Yeah, Clinton lucked out in quite a few states.

[Holmes]

If he spent a decent amount of time in New Mexico or eastern South Dakota, he probably could've won those states.

Quite possibly. He did campaign a bit in both of them though.

Other than in Michigan, Bernie just never seemed to have luck on his side in the close ones.

It helps to have the establishment on your side.

Interestingly, Clinton actually did overperform her '08 margin of victory against Obama in New Mexico this year, but it was still tight. I really wish there was exit polling here. You'd think it would've been a bigger Clinton victory - closed primary, large latino population, and she won the primaries of the two neighbouring states with similar demographics (Arizona and Texas) convincingly. I think she did win the latino vote - every county that's >50% latino voted for her, except Taos county. Clinton won McKinley county, which is predominantly Native American (Navajo, Hopi, Zuni). Sanders won the more white counties. I'm guessing that the latino and white vote were very polarized, and mayve latino turnout was down.

[NOVA Green]

Margin narrows to 8.5%.

Clinton - 53.8% - 2,664,312
Sanders - 45.3% - 2,246,936

It's pretty amazing that despite changes in candidate coalitions, the time the primary was held, and the just the passage of 8 years in general, CA basically did the exact same thing it did in 2008. 2008 was Clinton +8.3%, the margin this time does not differ from that by a statistically relevant amount. Talk about inelastic.

Agreed, that is one of the more interesting stories of the '08 and '16 California primaries. Hillary managed to simultaneously pull significant chunks of the Obama '08 state coalition, lost a decent chunk of her '08 base, maintained a solid core of her '08 support, and grabbed some Edwards voters here and there.

Here is a map that uses Hillary's '08 numbers as a baseline (Where there were two candidates other than Obama and Hillary that got a combined 5-10% of the vote in most counties), where obviously Hillary is the only constant between '08 and '16.



So basically, her dramatic improvement in her percentages the Bay Area and Sacramento from '08 to '16, effectively offset a significant drop in her support in Southern California, Central Valley, and much of rural Northern California.

What is quite interesting is the areas where she had some of the biggest collapse in her actual vote % from '08 to '16 include rural and small-town areas in heavily Anglo Northern California, as well as heavily Latino parts of the Central Valley, and effectively erased the rural advantage that she had over Obama who did much better in urban areas in Norcal, and Sac, and Obama effectively got slaughtered in SoCal (Inland Empire and OC), lost San Diego County by only 12 points and LA County by about 13 points.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Sanders' last non-California event was at New Mexico, May 20. So yeah, it wasn't a month, it was 18 days.

When were events the definitive mark of campaign strength?

I had pretty good sources that suggest he just eviscerated his field program for the last round of primaries, and I suspect it seriously hurt him everywhere.

[IceSpear]

If he spent a decent amount of time in New Mexico or eastern South Dakota, he probably could've won those states.

Quite possibly. He did campaign a bit in both of them though.

Other than in Michigan, Bernie just never seemed to have luck on his side in the close ones.

It helps to have the establishment on your side.

Ground game tends to help in close races, and of course Hillary's was much better.

[NOVA Green]

So here's another map that shows the total margin swing between '08 and '16, again recognizing that there are still some counties that we are awaiting a decent chunk of votes from.

Basically, what this designed to illustrate is the impact of the total Hillary margin performance between '08 and '16, and demonstrate the impact of the Edwards and Kuchinich votes, as well as the impact of Hillary's dramatic improved performance in the Bay Area/Sac on her current California statewide margins.

So for example: 2008 Alameda County (52.2 Obama-43.6% Hillary) for a net -8.6% margin.
                        2016 Alamenda County (48.3 Bernie- 51.7% Hillary) for a net +3.4% margin
                        Map shows Alameda as purple to represent a total 12% margin swing.



So note, basically the only areas where there was improvement in Hillary's relative margins from 2008 was in the Bay Area/Sac, and a few parts of the Central Coast and a couple small rural Sierra Nevada Counties.

So at this point, it appears that Hillary's dramatic improvement in most of the Bay Area, was the key reason for her ~7-8% statewide win.

[Holmes]

Bay Area remains the best part of the state.

[NOVA Green]

Bay Area remains the best part of the state.

Hey--- I love the Bay for so many reasons, and would love to be able to afford to live there again....
Still trying to negotiate a relo with my senior management, but with the current COLA to compensate for cost of housing not too likely until FY17.

Back to politics, the fascinating thing about the total margin swings for Hillary between '08 and '16 is that there are only two counties with huge swings (Marin and SF). Marin had a whopping +33% total margin swing from '08 and SF +16%.

Interestingly enough, Santa Clara County was the only county in Bay Area "proper" with a relatively low margin swing towards Hillary (only +3.1% total margin swing). Now this was Hillary's best county in the Bay in '08 when she captured 53.8% in a multi-candidate field, however her dramatic gains from '08 to '16 in heavily Obama parts of the County (Mtn View and up the Peninsula, plus places like Saratoga and Los Gatos, were somewhat offset by a drop in performance in San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara city.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

After today:

Clinton 53.6% - 2,681,392
Sanders 45.5% - 2,274,540

Looking pretty likely that the Clinton margin will be under 400,000 when everything is in.

[NOVA Green]

After today:

Clinton 53.6% - 2,681,392
Sanders 45.5% - 2,274,540

Looking pretty likely that the Clinton margin will be under 400,000 when everything is in.

Also, officially as of this moment, Bernie has outperformed Obama margins against Hillary in California.

2008 (43.16 Obama- 51.47 Hillary) = +8.3 % Hillary
2016 (45.5 Bernie- 53.6% Hillary)= +8.1% Hillary

[NOVA Green]

Revising my projections based upon new data points- Am now thinking total Dem Primary (Hillary + Bernie votes will be a bit higher than I estimated at the end of last week, more like 5,160,000 and that Hillary will likely finish below 7% over Bernie in Cali.

Late Vote-by-Mails aka VbM (Estimated Dem ballots 72k). My guess (42k-30k Bernie)

These include mostly counties where we have not yet seen any numbers since Election Day (Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Placer, and Sonoma). Am estimating VbMs will break (39k-28k) Bernie. Also, ~5k misc Dem late VbMs from a few misc counties (Santa Cruz, Stanislaus, Napa, LA, and some spare change from a few other places).
Conservatively (3k-2k Bernie)


Provisionals--- (Estimated remaining Dem ballots- 113k). My guess (69k-44k Bernie).

Almost 60% of these are from counties in Southern California that I think will break (42k-27k Bernie) based upon patterns we have seen thus far. Remaining (LA County, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernadino).

Additionally, we likely have about 16k Dem Provisional ballots remaining from the Central Valley (San Joaquin, Kern, Stanislaus, and Tulare) that will likely break about (9.6k-6.4k Bernie).

Coastal counties- ~15k Dem Provisionals (Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Humboldt, Mendocino) that should break about (10k-5k Bernie)

Relatively small number from Sac/Placer (~15k Dem Provisionals) that will likely break about (8k-7k Bernie).

Based upon the updated results today and votes outstanding, am starting to think it looks more like a +6.9% Hillary win, and quite possibly lower (~+6.7%), rather than the +7.5% Hillary numbers I was forecasting earlier.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Any chance the margin rounds to 52-47 at the end?

[IceSpear]

Any chance the margin rounds to 52-47 at the end?

That would be pretty funny since it would mean at the end of the day, all those Clinton +2 polls we all laughed at were actually the most accurate.

[NOVA Green]

Any chance the margin rounds to 52-47 at the end?

I would be shocked.... key variable would be Late VbMs in Sonoma and Placer (Combined total 75k votes) not only breaking heavily Democratic, but also heavily Bernie. This is a huge chunk of outstanding total ballots, and I estimated 60% of Sonoma would be Dem ballots and 55% in Placer County and would roughly break (53-55% Bernie) and a roughly (53-47% Bernie) off of Dem provisionals in Placer and Sacramento counties.

Even with a fairly conservative model based upon data trends with outstanding provisionals that are both valid Dem and average margins in reporting counties, things would really have to break hard in the closing numbers from the remaining provisionals in SoCal, Central Valley, North Coast, and Central Coast counties to close it a (47-52 Hillary) rounded out margin.

I'll need to play around with the numbers a bit more, but either way by EOD Friday we should have most of the remaining numbers in, with a trickle before next weeks final reporting deadline, so we'll finally have a pretty good idea within a few days!

[IceSpear]

Can anyone explain why Some Dude Phil Wyman carried a handful of counties in the Senate race, but neither of the "credible candidates" like Sundheim or Del Beccaro did? Was he at the top of the ballot or something?

[IceSpear]

CA-02 has flipped back to Bernie. It'll go to him comfortably once the lazy ass counties that still haven't updated since election night get off their asses and do their job. CA really should shorten the canvass period to 2 weeks, a month is completely unnecessary just encourages ridiculous laziness like this.

Also, Reddit's wet dream is officially dead, as Hillary's raw vote lead is now larger than the total amount of votes outstanding.

[NOVA Green]

CA-02 has flipped back to Bernie. It'll go to him comfortably once the lazy ass counties that still haven't updated since election night get off their asses and do their job. CA really should shorten the canvass period to 2 weeks, a month is completely unnecessary just encourages ridiculous laziness like this.

Absolute truth,, bolded for emphasis.

Now in all fairness to the Cali election system in general (and not about the handful of counties that haven't provided updates since ED), it appears that their state election laws do really attempt do make it easy to not only vote and have every vote counted regardless of absentee, versus early voting, versus vote-by-mail versus provisional, and part of the reason for the delay is it is such a complex hybrid system that requires going back checking Vote-by-Mail requests against provisional ballots, follow-ups for a week after election day with individuals that forgot to sign the back of their mail-in-ballot, etc....

So part of the delay in general is probably as a result of that, but still I think their should be a standardized process that requires at least weekly updates, rather than the patchwork quilt that is the current county election reporting process.

[NOVA Green]

Can anyone explain why Some Dude Phil Wyman carried a handful of counties in the Senate race, but neither of the "credible candidates" like Sundheim or Del Beccaro did? Was he at the top of the ballot or something?

Ok.... not a real follower of what passes for Republican politics in California, or what is essentially a virtually non-existent party in much of the state, but thinking the following:

1.) Name Recognition- Although Sundheim and Del Beccaro were well known among Republican party insiders in Cali, for their leading role within the Cali Republican machine, they weren't well known to many Republican voters. Wyman was at least somewhat well known within the Inland Empire and South Central Valley as a result of his long career in the state legislature, where he earned the nickname "carpet-bagger" because he was always hopping CDs... Also, he almost upset an "establishment Republican" for the AG election in 2014.

2.) Tea Party and Libertarian support- Not sure how valid this element is, but a little internet research showed him getting pretty high marks from these segments of the Republican party, that likely played well in the heavily rural and Republican leaning counties that he performed best in. Also high marks from Anti-Abortion activists in a state where many Republicans really don't want to be associated as being anti-choice.

3.) Water Rights- He appears to have done well in non-urban agricultural parts of the state, where the drought and water issues are prominent among many Republicans. He floated a crazy idea of importing water from the Upper Mississippi River to California as a solution for the water issue. Not sure how many other crazy things he said on this topic, but it got him a ton of free local media throughout many parts of the state.

4.) General Insane Statements to get public attention- He called for the death penalty for a major California politician convicted on corruption charges that got him a lot of free statewide media attention, and cemented an image as a "non-conventional"political figure.

Anyways, that's what I could find out, but I'm sure some of resident California gurus probably have a better angle on this guy...

[Eraserhead]

If he spent a decent amount of time in New Mexico or eastern South Dakota, he probably could've won those states.

Quite possibly. He did campaign a bit in both of them though.

Other than in Michigan, Bernie just never seemed to have luck on his side in the close ones.

SD, NM, IA, MO, MA

Those were all within about 3% and were all Hillary wins.

Don't forget IL and KY!

[dspNY]

These counties have completed their canvass (CCC)

Alameda
Alpine
Butte
Calaveras
Colusa
Glenn
Lassen
Madera
Mariposa
Modoc
Mono
Monterey
Napa
Orange
Plumas
San Francisco
Shasta
Sierra
Solano
Tehama
Trinity
Yuba

[NOVA Green]

These counties have completed their canvass (CCC)

Alameda
Alpine
Butte
Calaveras
Colusa
Glenn
Lassen
Madera
Mariposa
Modoc
Mono
Monterey
Napa
Orange
Plumas
San Francisco
Shasta
Sierra
Solano
Tehama
Trinity
Yuba

Good start, but here is an update of where we are today not only in terms of CC, but also where counties are at based upon their "official certifications" and also the official reports regarding existing outstanding ballots yet to be counted.

[Frodo]

Are all the other states done counting their ballots?  Judging by how everyone seems focused on California. 

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Clinton 53.5% - 2,690,831
Sanders 45.6% - 2,289,971