Talk Elections

Donald Trump 37%
Ted  Cruz 31%
John Kasich 22%

Hilary 48
sanders 45

http://www.wthr.com/story/31792956/exclusive-wthrhpi-poll-trump-clinton-ahead-in-indiana (http://www.wthr.com/story/31792956/exclusive-wthrhpi-poll-trump-clinton-ahead-in-indiana)

Decent numbers. Kasich will decline from 22 and most of the 10% undecided will go to Cruz. Wouldn't look good if it was tomorrow but by May 3 this'll be fine.

Looks like a tossup for the Democrats.

What does this mean? Are they "drilling down" into self-identified Republicans (not too useful in an open primary) or into likely voters?

Excellent numbers for Trump. He doesn't even need to win the state, he just needs to pick up 6 or more delegates due to the upcoming slaughters on Mid-Atlantic and Final Tuesday.

Haha, Trump has higher approvals than Cruz among Indiana Republicans. Also:


Already banking votes for Trump!

37% is a pretty weak showing for Trump. He's being saved by the vote splitting among his opponents.   

The fact that Sanders is so close now, shows he'll probably pull out the win.

As for Repubs, usually Kasich's numbers decline closer to the primary, but Kasich seems to be seriously contesting IN. Also, he fits very well the the Greg Ballard/Mitch Daniels Hoosiers, and also Kasich knows how to campaign in the midwest. But alas, Trump is Trump, and if Kasich's numbers go up, Trump will win the state.

Hard to conclude too much from one poll, but this would support the idea that both races will be competitive.

The way the state allocates, one vote more than Cruz will get Trump the 30 statewide delegates. It's then three delegates each for the 9 CDs.

Sanders has a pretty big demographic advantage here so this poll has to be disappointing.  If it's tied nationally, he is supposed to win it by six. To be on pace to make up a pledged delegate deficit by the end of the primary, he needs to win by at least 14 and that's before the next five states vote.

Like another poster, I think Sanders is likely close enough now that he will win by outspending her greatly on television. But there's got to be a chance that Clinton taking 4 or 5 states next week depresses his turnout and he could lose. Mook knows Indiana very well.

Kasich had much more institutional support in Wisconsin (including two ex-Governors, Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum). It didn't help. (Not that he'll do worse here than in Wisconsin, but I don't him to do much better, and I doubt he'll hit 22).

Hmm, perhaps Pennsylvania will be a good test, perhaps he'll get a bonus for being the neighbor governor to some extent

Said it in another thread and will say it here, if Kasich is serious about a contested convention he pulls a Rubio here and tells his supporters to vote for Cruz to stop Trump.

Looks like Indiana, not Wisconsin, will be Cruz's real last stand.  I'm still inclined to think he will eke out a win, but it will be a real barn-burner.

I think he would be more inclined to do that if Cruz did the same for him in the five states this coming Tuesday, but we all know the Zodiac Killer wouldn't do that.

I think Cruz should do the same for MD or at the very least agree on a Cruz-Kasich slate of PA anti-Trump delegates.

But neither of these people seem capable of doing it.

Ruh roh...

Sanders needs to win IN by a huge margin, not just win.

Clinton lost IN but she was strong in WVa and KY. I think she wins

Clinton won IN in 2008

I think this poll is trouble for Trump, especially when taken together with the few private polls from last few weeks that were reported showing him tied and/or slightly ahead of Cruz in Indiana. These polls have him in a range from low 30's to mid 30's. Pretty much the same as in Wisconsin, and the polls pretty much hit his actual results almost on the nose. But the polls were wildly off of Cruz's actual results, which has happened again and again throughout these primaries.

Just for the sake of comparison, Trump got 38% of the vote in Illinois, and a whopping 22% (124,000 or so votes) of his raw vote total came from Cook County (Chicago) alone, probably including a fair number of crossover blue collar Democrats. Trump fairly well dominated in much of the rest of the state also, but if not for his huge raw vote total in Cook Co., and some help from Rubio's votes, Trump would have lost Illinois. 

Well, Rubio is obviously no longer in the race, and so far, the only Midwest state to have a traditional primary vote since then is Wisconsin, which Cruz won convincingly.

Indiana is also more Conservative than Illinois.

And in what area is Trump going to get such a huge block of votes in Indiana as he did in Cook County Illinois, in one spot, to put him over the top?

I also question whether Kasich is really going to do 8 points better in Indiana than he did in Wisconsin. Wisconsin set up much better for Kasich, in my opinion.

Add to all that the fact that Cruz overperforms his poll #'s more often than not, and that Cruz will be going all in in Indiana with advertising, outside Super-PAC ad help, huge campaign volunteer get out the vote operation, and a lot of personal appearances/rallies....My guess is Cruz wins by 5+.

The Northwest part of the state from Whiting to South Bend. I expect them to vote like the Chicago suburbs did. Also I expect Trump to do very well in the Southwest part of the state between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers as it is a very Catholic region and ancestral Democratic, plus the counties along the Ohio River.

The media painted it as a loss because it was only a 3-pt victory on the same day Obama landslided in NC.  There could be any number of reasons for OC's confusion, but that's the only one I can think of.

You think Trump, by himself, is going to get 120,000+ votes from just that one area of Indiana?

I have no idea what the exact numbers are going to be there, but I do expect the percentages to look like they did in the Chicago area.

I agree with Gass' analysis. Indiana to me is more Downstate Illinois/Chicago Burbs than Wisconsin.

Trump is OBVIOUSLY going to clean up in Lake County. Do you guys know anything about that area? It's more friendly to him than Cook County.

Of course it's also a much smaller portion of its respective state.

Percentages yes, maybe so, but I wasn't talking about the percentages, I was talking about the raw number of votes. I doubt he's going to get anywhere near the raw number of votes in Lake county as he did in Cook County. If he'd have only gotten half the vote in Cook County that he actually did, he and Cruz would basically have tied statewide. I just don't see where he can rack up that kind of raw vote total in any one area of Indiana like he did in Illinois.

That's what I was getting at.

Lake County isn't the only county that will matter in Northern Indiana.

Porter County (Valparaiso, Portage), LaPorte County (Michigan City, La Porte), St. Joseph (South Bend metro), and Elkhart County are all heavily industrialized counties that have a large portion of economically struggling areas, steel workers, whites of southern origin, racial tensions, and suburbs.

Predicting the raw vote total is hard, because this will be the first time the Republican primary mattered in 20 years. In 2012, these counties cast 78,000 of 635,000 total votes in the GOP primary (~12%). In 2016, we have a competitive primary, and also a candidate (Trump) who draws up very strong emotions among supporters and detractors.

If Hillary sweeps on Tuesday, I can see a lot of independents and maybe even Democrats crossing over to meddle in the GOP primary (to boost Trump? Or to stop him? who knows). I also predict that turnout from disaffected voters will surge and benefit Trump.

Northwest/northern Indiana will most certainly be Trump's voter base for the primary. The question is how many votes will he get here and everywhere else, compared to his opponents.

What are your thoughts of Southwest IN and the counties along the Ohio River also being strong for Trump? Trump has done very well in places that are ancestral Democrat.

No idea tbh. Not familiar with much south of Indianapolis. Just off of Illinois' and Ohio's results, I'm guessing Trump.

My thoughts are that Trump will romp in IN-08 and 09, in the south, along with IN-01 (the industrial NW corner). IN-06 is mixed but lean anti Trump unless Dearborn county (Cinci burbs), is lower middle class. Columbus is kind of an upscale town, and not good for Trump, and Richmond probably is not either, and then there are the east Indianapolis burbs, which should also be close. Trump should lose the other CD's I would think.

What about CD-02? I feel like that could be close or lean Trump.

Maybe. Are South Bend Catholics Trump Catholics? The other counties are very conservative, and religious, which is not Trump's best demographic. He does best with more secular lower middle class/working class Catholics, and goes down from there, outside the south.

The county with South Bend in it is actually plurality mainline protestant. I think that's the district that could determine who wins the state.