Monday, February 10, 2020

who's going to win new hampshire?

this was always going to be one of sanders' best states, however he was doing. i haven't seen a poll with him higher than 33%, which is not very high, given the totality of the circumstances, but the field appears to be split badly enough that that measly 33% will be more than enough to win. i doubt he even gets to 33% - 25% is probably closer to the final tally - but that still looks like enough to win a plurality.

it's not a lot of delegates, though.

if 25% is a weak delegate haul, the ~20% that buttigieg is going to get is even weaker.

but, is anybody else going to clear the 15% threshold? this is important. it does not appear as though biden or warren are going to. klobuchar is the media's new favourite, but she's still a long shot to get to 15% in new hampshire, or much of anywhere else for that matter.

if you don't get to 15%, you don't get delegates, and the candidates that do get over 15% get curved up. so, sanders is all of a sudden getting 25%/45% = 56%, and buttigieg is all of a sudden getting 20/45 = 44%.

and, everybody else gets zero.

this middle tier of (klobuchar, warren, biden) may manage to clear 15% at the district level, here and there. but, they are going to be fighting to get on the board, and some or all of them might fail to do so.

so, you're looking at a likely outcome of something like this:

sanders - 12
buttigieg - 9
klobuchar - 1
warren - 1
biden - 1

that would put sanders and buttigieg basically tied going into nevada, with the other three falling back. but, we haven't awarded a lot of delegates yet, and there's still a lot of voting to do.