thanks to 538 for doing the work, here.
but, it's just firming up my previous analysis about the unlikeliness of what happened, and what i've been saying for what is actually several months now.
first, note that if there were really that many people making voting decisions at the last minute, it does suggest that the two candidates that dropped were actually the two strongest candidates in the race. if the polls say that 60% of late deciding voters in tennessee swung to biden at the last minute, what that tells me is that there was a relatively good chance that one or both of (buttigieg, klobuchar) may have been on track for a serious upset - because most of the voters there probably weren't taking bernie sanders very seriously, due to serious ideological disagreements (voters in the south, both white and black, being much more religious and much more conservative than voters in the rest of the country). it also reflects the reality that there was an actual decision to be made among more moderate voters, while sanders was the only thing vaguely approaching a left-liberal candidate in the race. but, we've been robbed of finding out what might have happened...
so, i don't have any particular reason to doubt that a large number of voters decided late.
what i'm far more skeptical about is the idea that so many people that self-identified as very liberal (with the meaning of the word 'liberal' in the confused american sense, presumably - in context, it doesn't mean support for private property or free markets) would vote for biden. that's an incoherent piece of data. it's like doing a poll and learning that 40% of christians voted for satan. i see it in front of me, but i don't believe that statistic.
regardless, as mentioned previously, it doesn't matter if sanders' support has collapsed amongst whites, which was the obvious conclusion to draw, although i do once again thank the site for doing the work. nobody really expected sanders to be competitive with religious and conservative southern blacks, except maybe for him, in whatever fit of delusion brought it on. but, he was supposed to win northern whites, and by large margins. that was the reason he was competitive in 2016 - he often won northern whites by large margins.
if he's lost that support, and it appears as though he has, he's going to lose michigan, and perhaps rather badly. he can't win in these states without carrying white voters by a large margin, and they seem to have abandoned him fairly thoroughly.
so, i don't have any particular reason to doubt that a large number of voters decided late.
what i'm far more skeptical about is the idea that so many people that self-identified as very liberal (with the meaning of the word 'liberal' in the confused american sense, presumably - in context, it doesn't mean support for private property or free markets) would vote for biden. that's an incoherent piece of data. it's like doing a poll and learning that 40% of christians voted for satan. i see it in front of me, but i don't believe that statistic.
regardless, as mentioned previously, it doesn't matter if sanders' support has collapsed amongst whites, which was the obvious conclusion to draw, although i do once again thank the site for doing the work. nobody really expected sanders to be competitive with religious and conservative southern blacks, except maybe for him, in whatever fit of delusion brought it on. but, he was supposed to win northern whites, and by large margins. that was the reason he was competitive in 2016 - he often won northern whites by large margins.
if he's lost that support, and it appears as though he has, he's going to lose michigan, and perhaps rather badly. he can't win in these states without carrying white voters by a large margin, and they seem to have abandoned him fairly thoroughly.
the result is that we're going to be stuck with another democratic nominee that is basically the same as a republican. we're going to have to listen to him talk about god, and how he loves the troops and how america's the best and all of this other nauseating, conservative bullshit.