i generally tend to interpret undecided voters as undecided voters and rub up against the idea that they will distribute nicely in the end. and, in this circumstance - sanders v. clinton - you'd think that undecided should benefit sanders (although it didn't work out that way in ohio).
on the one hand, these are not good numbers for sanders. on the other hand, they're not catastrophic - because of that large undecided group.
but, this isn't what sanders wants to see. a lack of momentum and a lack of exposure (are there televised debates this week? town halls? i haven't seen any.) make this a different circumstance than last week.
i mean, let's be clear, here: i argued that all the factors leading up to the 15th were going to be in sanders' favour, and they clearly were. he split illinois. a week previous, the polling had him thirty points down. he clearly got a huge bump. and, the truth is that i really should have spoken more carefully. i shouldn't have said he will win; i should have said that if turnout is high then he will win. and, if turnout was higher than he would have won! i got a little carried away by rhetoric. but, the analysis was actually spot on if you can see through that.
none of that holds, here. i don't see any particular reason to think that sanders ought to make up this spread over the next five days.
so, if you look back, you'll see that i initially reacted badly to michigan pre-polling - and then modified my prediction to something closer as more results came in. i am going to need to see some more polling before i post a negative prediction. but, i don't see any reason to suspect that the situation will repeat itself.
there's a lot of reasons to suggest that he can do well in both tuscon and phoenix. but, right now, this looks bad - even while acknowledging that we'll need more data before we should start freaking out.
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/business/2016/03/new-arizona-poll-trump-clinton-lead-but-ample.html