Primary calendar / poll closing times and delegate allocation megathread (Christmas is saved!)

[Gass3268]

The current schedule is very good for Clinton, but almost equally bad for Bush. Way too many southern states early in the process with Florida no longer being the Republican kingmaker like it was the past two cycles.

[Gass3268]

So do we have an official calendar yet or are we still waiting on some states?

[Gass3268]

Tue, Feb. 23: NV caucuses (8pm - 12am)

Will the media starts to show numbers and project a winner at 8pm eastern or at 12am eastern?

Don't be shocked if none of the cable networks cover this heavily.

[Gass3268]

March 15 poll closing times:

Florida: 7pm ET in most of the state, but 8pm ET in the panhandle.
North Carolina: 7:30pm ET
Ohio: 7:30pm ET
Illinois: 8pm ET
Missouri: 8pm ET

Northern Mariana Islands Republican caucus: no idea

Nice, I like how all 5 states are compacted in this same hour. I imagine that they will be able to make a call on both sides in FL when all the polls close at 8pm (At least on the Democratic side).

[Gass3268]

March 15 poll closing times:

Florida: 7pm ET in most of the state, but 8pm ET in the panhandle.
North Carolina: 7:30pm ET
Ohio: 7:30pm ET
Illinois: 8pm ET
Missouri: 8pm ET

Northern Mariana Islands Republican caucus: no idea

Nice, I like how all 5 states are compacted in this same hour. I imagine that they will be able to make a call on both sides in FL when all the polls close at 8pm (At least on the Democratic side).

I noticed that, too.  This Tuesday will be a lot easier on the bed time than last Tuesday when we had to wait forever for Idaho and Hawaii.

Next week will be rougher with Arizona, Idaho (Democrats), and Utah voting.

[Gass3268]

I have a gut feeling we are going to be seeing a lot of the network's B-teams with closing times like that.

[Gass3268]

Also, not entirely sure if this applies for the primary or not, but at least for the general, Arizona does NOT allow any results to be released until an hour AFTER the polls close. What this means is while the state can be called at 10 ET, there may be no release of results until 11 ET. Judging from past elections, the count is pretty fast once results actually start getting released though.

There isn't going to be an exit poll either. Don't expect calls until results start coming in.

[Gass3268]

Am I to assume all the results will be announced at once like previous caucuses.

I'm not sure about Washington, but Alaska and Hawaii came in bit by bit for Republicans and not all at once.

It will depend on the local Democratic Party.

[Gass3268]

Will Indiana have an exit poll? I'm assuming it will.

Yeah, also it's important to note that we will get 1 hour worth of results coming in from the Eastern Time Zone part of the state before they can call the state. So there will be a lot of hard numbers in when all the polls are closed.

[Gass3268]

Will Indiana have an exit poll? I'm assuming it will.

Yeah, also it's important to note that we will get 1 hour worth of results coming in from the Eastern Time Zone part of the state before they can call the state. So there will be a lot of hard numbers in when all the polls are closed.

Here's the county map for where polls close an hour later. I wonder if this could make the early votes friendly to Cruz, since Benchmark Politics has LaPorte County as one of Trump's best counties.

I imagine Trump will dominate the Central Time Zone areas, but if Trump is winning by a decent margin in the Eastern Time Zone, I imagine they'd call it him once all the polls close.