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Tags 2020 elections , Democratic primaries , iowa caucus , political predictions , political speculation , presidential candidates

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Old 11th February 2020, 10:29 PM   #361
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
He can still claim it as a win.
Hillary Clinton can claim that winning the popular vote was a moral victory, if she likes, but it's not *really* a win, and we all know it.

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Old 11th February 2020, 10:30 PM   #362
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Ooh, btw, if you just google nh primary results it shows the delegate breakdown as well as the raw vote count.

Currently 9 each for Sanders and Buttigieg, 6 for Klobuchar.
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Old 11th February 2020, 10:37 PM   #363
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Hillary Clinton can claim that winning the popular vote was a moral victory, if she likes, but it's not *really* a win, and we all know it.
Yeah, but in this case, it's perceptions and "momentum" that matter more than the actual number of delegates, because the process has barely begun. There's still a long road ahead and 24 delegates is only a drop in the bucket.
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Old 11th February 2020, 10:39 PM   #364
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
Ooh, btw, if you just google nh primary results it shows the delegate breakdown as well as the raw vote count.



Currently 9 each for Sanders and Buttigieg, 6 for Klobuchar.
That's all 24 of them. Will check again in the a.m.

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Old 11th February 2020, 10:52 PM   #365
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Hillary Clinton can claim that winning the popular vote was a moral victory, if she likes, but it's not *really* a win, and we all know it.

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From a strategic perspective, it makes no sense to do anything other than claim a victory. The New Hampshire primary is not the end.

Claiming victory and truthfully being able to point to higher numbers of voters mean you set yourself up as the leader for Nevada where Sanders is already the front-runner.

This is different from the Hillary Clinton example where she simply lost, and where her loss was the end of the road. Claiming victory would have been delusional, and nothing more.
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Old 11th February 2020, 11:36 PM   #366
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There's also this handy little delegate tracker page from NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/79997...andidates-have

Or there's this one:

https://www.270towin.com/2020-democratic-nomination
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:22 AM   #367
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
I'm seeing a lot of headlines reporting NH as a win for Sanders, even though he seems unlikely to net more delegates than the next guy.

Seems weird to call that a victory, rather than a tie, given the stated rules of the overall contest.

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There's reality, and there's headlines.


You don't get eyeballs on your news channel with headlines that say, "It's a Tie in a Small State That Barely Matters"

Media coverage of primaries is more like sports than anything else, and in sports, people want to be able to declare a winner.
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:50 AM   #368
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5th for Biden ......(taps)
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:53 AM   #369
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These states matter for defining the later races. Numerically significant or not, they are first and perceptions matter.

Sanders, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar (to a lesser extent) have emerged as front runners, everyone else is looking like a loser. Primary voters may treat voting for Biden, Warren, or the others as throwing their votes away. I expect the vote totals to start coalescing around the 3 viable candidates unless some major turnaround happens.
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:58 AM   #370
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Originally Posted by Venom View Post
Sanders campaign adviser: We've 'got some tricks' to win in Nevada

Interpreted by conservative trolls in the comments to mean they're registering illegal aliens to vote.
Gods, that's all they think about, isn't it?
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:03 AM   #371
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Originally Posted by Belz... View Post
Gods, that's all they think about, isn't it?
I have no doubt that Trump will challenge the validity of the general election should he lose. The question will be how far will he go?
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:15 AM   #372
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
These states matter for defining the later races. Numerically significant or not, they are first and perceptions matter.

Sanders, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar (to a lesser extent) have emerged as front runners, everyone else is looking like a loser. Primary voters may treat voting for Biden, Warren, or the others as throwing their votes away. I expect the vote totals to start coalescing around the 3 viable candidates unless some major turnaround happens.
At this rate, it will probably be worse for Sanders if Biden drops out.
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:20 AM   #373
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
At this rate, it will probably be worse for Sanders if Biden drops out.
Have to agree. Sanders has benefited on the inability of the centrist wing to select a candidate and stop splitting their votes. It doesn't help that neither of the viable candidates for this lane seem particularly strong.

As a Bernie supporter, I hope the moderate wing jockeying continues on for some time. Unless Pete or Klobuchar really work some magic, SC will not solidify either of them as the moderate candidate and a strong-ish finish for Biden will just throw their camp back into disarray.
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:25 AM   #374
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
I have no doubt that Trump will challenge the validity of the general election should he lose. The question will be how far will he go?
Oh, I don't doubt it, either. And the thought is rather scary.
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:42 AM   #375
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
I have no doubt that Trump will challenge the validity of the general election should he lose. The question will be how far will he go?
As noted he's still challenging the validity of the election he won.

He still pretends he won the popular vote and that his win was actually a lot bigger then it was because of dirty illegal forced busing immigrant voting.
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:01 AM   #376
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Dem primaries are turning out much more interesting than I expected.
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:31 AM   #377
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Originally Posted by Meadmaker View Post
There's reality, and there's headlines.

You don't get eyeballs on your news channel with headlines that say, "It's a Tie in a Small State That Barely Matters"

Media coverage of primaries is more like sports than anything else, and in sports, people want to be able to declare a winner.
In other words, there are systemic rewards in place which incentivize sensational first-past-the-post style coverage even when those doing the reporting know full well the result is a tie on the points which actually matter, that is, pledged delegates. My point was (and remains) that as skeptics we should be promoting a more factual and grounded approach.

Originally Posted by ahhell View Post
Dem primaries are turning out much more interesting than I expected.
Indeed. Here are my takeaways so far:
  1. Moderate and centrist Dems are around twice as numerous as Democratic Socialists and their fellow travelers, but the latter group have mostly coalesced around a single candidate
  2. The odds of a contested convention have been creeping up steadily, which is horrifying fascinating
  3. With essentially two ties in a row, Nevada has become more important than ever before
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:33 AM   #378
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
In other words, there are systemic rewards in place which incentivize sensational first-past-the-post style coverage even when those doing the reporting know full well the result is a tie on the points that actually matter, that is, pledged delegates. My point was (and remains) that as skeptics we should be promoting a more factual and grounded approach.
It is factual and grounded to acknowledge that the staggered timetable of the elections means that early victories and losses change perceptions and influence voting decisions.
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:37 AM   #379
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As soon as a candidate and/or their supporters who won Iowa/New Hampshire / Super Tuesday goes "Shrug LOL doesn't matter" I'll listen.

It's just a sub-genre of the "Polls don't matter when your guy is losing, they do when he is winning" tactic.
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:44 AM   #380
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
It is factual and grounded to acknowledge that the staggered timetable of the elections means that early victories and losses change perceptions and influence voting decisions.
Because of the breathless horse race coverage (the sort which treats ties as wins) or because of solid and rational reasons?

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
As a Bernie supporter, I hope the moderate wing jockeying continues on for some time. Unless Pete or Klobuchar really work some magic, SC will not solidify either of them as the moderate candidate and a strong-ish finish for Biden will just throw their camp back into disarray.
You'd prefer an anti-majoritarian outcome?
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:00 AM   #381
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
In other words, there are systemic rewards in place which incentivize sensational first-past-the-post style coverage even when those doing the reporting know full well the result is a tie on the points which actually matter, that is, pledged delegates. My point was (and remains) that as skeptics we should be promoting a more factual and grounded approach.



Indeed. Here are my takeaways so far:
  1. Moderate and centrist Dems are around twice as numerous as Democratic Socialists and their fellow travelers, but the latter group have mostly coalesced around a single candidate
  2. The odds of a contested convention have been creeping up steadily, which is horrifying fascinating
  3. With essentially two ties in a row, Nevada has become more important than ever before
Had I bet on who would be leading at this point, I would have lost, along with almost everyone else. I'm encouraged mostly because I think either Amy or Pete are better than crazy uncle Joe and Sanders is at least more authentic than Warren. If this trend continues, my choices in the primary will not suck.
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:04 AM   #382
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Originally Posted by ahhell View Post
Sanders is at least more authentic than Warren.
I never had the impression that Warren was anything but authentic. What do you mean?
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:08 AM   #383
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Because of the breathless horse race coverage (the sort which treats ties as wins) or because of solid and rational reasons?
For reality based reasons. Voting does not take place in a hyper rational world. It's fine to base your personal opinions on that, but extrapolating that to the larger population is divorced from reality.

The nature of FPTP is that many voters engage let some game theory to inform their votes. Voters may opt to vote for a lower preference candidate if their top tier is not viable. The staggered voting schedule means that voter preference is an iterative process as front-runners emerge and weaker candidates fall off.

People often change their mind about how they will vote if it becomes clear their preferred candidate cannot win. You can categorize this as irrational horse-racing, but this is the context in which the race will be decided.

I also suspect that having more centrist candidates with no clear front-runner hinders the ability of party elites to effectively express their anti-Sanders bias.


Quote:
You'd prefer an anti-majoritarian outcome?
I suspect that prolonging the race between the moderates will improve the chances of Sanders becoming the majoritarian candidate. The jockeying among the centrist wing highlights the differences between them and Sanders.
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:09 AM   #384
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It's "The Spoiler Effect" and it's what turns two party first past the post systems into.... *gestures at everything* this.
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Old 12th February 2020, 09:03 AM   #385
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
The nature of FPTP is that many voters engage let some game theory to inform their votes.
Democratic nominating contest is not FPTP, and therefore the press should stop covering it as such.

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
Voters may opt to vote for a lower preference candidate if their top tier is not viable.
With a rather small fraction of the primary votes in so far, can we make a rational assessment of general election viability?

Seems to me that would be "extrapolating...to the larger population" in a "divorced from reality" way, unless the first two states happen to be representative of the general voting population.

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
People often change their mind about how they will vote if it becomes clear their preferred candidate cannot win.
People often engage in the fallacy of hasty inductionWP as well.

As of now, we've seen 64 delegates pledged in a race to 1,991.
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Old 12th February 2020, 11:22 AM   #386
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Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey View Post
I have no doubt that Trump will challenge the validity of the general election should he lose. The question will be how far will he go?
He'll challenge the validity of it well before that. Just as he did in 2016. If he loses, he'll take it to the Supreme Court, 4/9 of which would happily declare him President for Life.
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Old 12th February 2020, 01:30 PM   #387
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Post-NH the 538 primary model has Bernie tied with a contested convention.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...mary-forecast/
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Old 12th February 2020, 03:36 PM   #388
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Post-NH the 538 primary model has Bernie tied with a contested convention.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...mary-forecast/
Quote:
First, consider the rather precise phrasing that our model uses. It forecasts the chance that a candidate wins “more than half of pledged delegates.” To be more exact, it forecasts the chance a candidate wins a majority of pledged delegates as of the end of the day on June 6, when the last state or territory (the Virgin Islands) votes.

Winning a majority of pledged delegates is not quite the same thing as winning the nomination. Nor does the failure of any candidate to win the majority of delegates by June 6 necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention.
Linky.
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:02 PM   #389
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This is a fair correction, Tsukasa, and I appreciate the linky.

That said, I don't have a adjective for "the sort of convention that requires pledged delegates to break their (surprisingly non-binding) pledges in order to make things work," which may or may not be technically brokered or contested.
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Old 12th February 2020, 05:59 PM   #390
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
Post-NH the 538 primary model has Bernie tied with a contested convention.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...mary-forecast/
I have tons of respect for Silver and his stats, but I do wonder if we aren't quite a bit off the beaten path in this primary, with Steyer and Bloomberg looming ahead. If you look at his projections for the upcoming primaries and caucuses, he has Bernie winning every state (scroll down).

Well, of course if that happens it's Sanders easily, even if he doesn't end up with a majority of delegates. But Steyer has been registering significant support in South Carolina, and Bloomberg has the money to face Sanders, who seems to be the exact candidate he entered the race to beat.
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Old 12th February 2020, 06:13 PM   #391
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Originally Posted by Brainster View Post
I have tons of respect for Silver and his stats, but I do wonder if we aren't quite a bit off the beaten path in this primary, with Steyer and Bloomberg looming ahead. If you look at his projections for the upcoming primaries and caucuses, he has Bernie winning every state (scroll down).

Well, of course if that happens it's Sanders easily, even if he doesn't end up with a majority of delegates. But Steyer has been registering significant support in South Carolina, and Bloomberg has the money to face Sanders, who seems to be the exact candidate he entered the race to beat.
It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.

If Sanders wins, Biden might limp on to Super Tuesday, but he will be finished.

As for the billionaires and their big spending ways, isn't it the case that after a certain level of money, you get massively diminishing returns?

For example, if you have seen Bloomberg's ads 500 times, how much more likely are you to vote for him if you see his adverts another 100 or 200 times?
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Old 12th February 2020, 07:07 PM   #392
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.

If Sanders wins, Biden might limp on to Super Tuesday, but he will be finished.

As for the billionaires and their big spending ways, isn't it the case that after a certain level of money, you get massively diminishing returns?

For example, if you have seen Bloomberg's ads 500 times, how much more likely are you to vote for him if you see his adverts another 100 or 200 times?
Also worth digging deeper into the high pay rates Bloomberg is often cited as having. Yes, he's hiring lots of people connected to state-level parties and giving them generous sums for consulting/strategic work. This is wonk-speak for "opening doors and doing certain favors for me."

I will admit this is not a new or particularly insidious thing, but neither is it an admirable or respectable thing.

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Old 12th February 2020, 07:16 PM   #393
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
It's pretty amazing that Sanders has pulled ahead in Nevada and South Carolina especially given that the latter was seen as a Biden stronghold.
He hasn't, maybe. If you are looking at the 538 projections, they are based on a lot of other things like national polls. NV hasn't had a poll since January, and SC polls were before IA, and Biden was still leading. NV is particularly hard to poll, as well. We don't have any actual updates based on recent events.
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:05 PM   #394
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
If Sanders wins, Biden might limp on to Super Tuesday, but he will be finished.
It's too early for Super Tuesday predictions, but I'm predicting a 3 or 4-way split between the non-DSA candidates on that day.
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Old 12th February 2020, 08:22 PM   #395
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Originally Posted by d4m10n View Post
It's too early for Super Tuesday predictions, but I'm predicting a 3 or 4-way split between the non-DSA candidates on that day.
There’s bound to be pressure on them to choose a single candidate. Splitting the vote is how Sanders will win the nomination. If they leave it to late, the mass of voters might just get behind the leader.
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Old 12th February 2020, 11:22 PM   #396
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Originally Posted by Tsukasa Buddha View Post
He hasn't, maybe. If you are looking at the 538 projections, they are based on a lot of other things like national polls. NV hasn't had a poll since January, and SC polls were before IA, and Biden was still leading. NV is particularly hard to poll, as well. We don't have any actual updates based on recent events.
This. Part of the problem (or maybe not) is that it assumes a bounce (slight or big, depending on certain factors) for the winner of each primary or caucus, but it does not make some rather obvious assumptions about who will drop out (or more complicated ones about who will pick up votes from the drop-outs' supporters).

I think he's way underestimating both Steyer and Bloomberg. He doesn't even have Klobuchar broken out separately (she's still in the 100-1 field) although it seems obvious that she will outlast Warren.
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Old 12th February 2020, 11:47 PM   #397
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BTW, the turnout in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire broke the 2008 record by about 3% (296,222-287,527). Not sure how to interpret that especially since 2008 had very competitive races on both sides unlike Tuesday.

One thing I am hearing from pundits but have not seen polling on is that Buttigieg is doing well among younger voters that he is blunting some of Bernie's advantage in that demo. And that younger voters did not come out en masse in New Hampshire. Again a big part of Bernie's message is that he can get the youth vote out.
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Old 13th February 2020, 08:33 AM   #398
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The fact that 5 territories have primaries when they can't vote for the President is weird to me.

71 delegates out of 3,979 isn't like enough to skew any numbers or anything so it doesn't matter, it's just weird.
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Old 13th February 2020, 08:58 AM   #399
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
The fact that 5 territories have primaries when they can't vote for the President is weird to me.

71 delegates out of 3,979 isn't like enough to skew any numbers or anything so it doesn't matter, it's just weird.
Its also weird that territories can elect people to congress, but those people are unable to vote, only engage in 'debate'.
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Old 13th February 2020, 09:13 AM   #400
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Originally Posted by Brainster View Post
BTW, the turnout in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire broke the 2008 record by about 3% (296,222-287,527). Not sure how to interpret that especially since 2008 had very competitive races on both sides unlike Tuesday.
The population grew around 3% in those intervening years, so per capita turnout is pretty close to the same.
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