Clinton vs. Trump:The way too early edition

The title of this post is almost a spoiler, but not quite. The predictive power of the opinion polls taken this far out is weak, but the monthly posts I will make in May, June, July and August are more like snapshots of a hurricane still out over open water. You get a rough idea of where things are going and how strong the trends are, but it's way too soon to predict landfall.

I am going to be tracking the presidential race and the Senate elections. I have no data yet on the Senate and minimal information on Clinton vs. Trump, only polls from thirteen of the fifty-one races so far. Any state that is still a blank slate is assumed to have the same result as 2012 when Obama faced Romney. There are some organizations - most notably the Cook Report - that already have a baseline result different from 2012, and their assumption is the Clinton is farther ahead of Trump than Obama was ahead of Romney. I'm just one guy doing this as a hobby, so I'll keep things as simple as possible.

Here are the two main things I'm going to report in each post until early November.

Feature #1: What to expect hour by hour

This is a new idea and I'm happy with it. I've split up the data into time zones, ignoring the fact that Alaska and Hawaii are not in the Pacific zone, expecting there will be no surprises from our 49th and 50th states. Assume Alaska will go Republican and Hawaii will go Democratic and you are unlikely to go wrong.

Here is what this will look like using the way too early data I have as of this morning.

The hour after polls close on the Eastern Seaboard

Called for Clinton: CT DC DE MA ME MD MI NJ NY OH RI VT
Called for Trump: IN KY SC WV
Too close to call: FL NH PA VA

Expected in first hour: Clinton leads 122 to 33 with 97 still out.

The hour after polls close in the Central time zone

New called for Clinton: FL VA NH PA IL IA MN WI
New called for Trump: GA NC AL AR KS LA MS MO NE OK TN TX

Expected by the time the Mountain time zone starts coming in: Clinton leads 234 to 172.

Here's something I will tell you now that the folks on TV probably won't mention. If Hillary is above 192 before the polls in the Pacific close, she's going to be president. That assumption might change as the year goes on, but the Pacific states should go 84 to 3 Democratic, maybe 78 to 9 if Trump gets lucky and wins Nevada. For any readers I have on the East Coast, you have my permission to go to bed with Hillary at 234 like this.

The hour after the Mountain time zone polls close

New called for Clinton: NM
New called for Trump: AZ ID MY ND NM SD UT WY
Too close to call: CO

Expected by the time the Mountain time zone starts coming in: Clinton leads 243 to 205, 9 too close to call.

The hour after the Pacific polls close
 
New called for Clinton: CA CO HI NV OR WA
New called for Trump: AK

Final total: Clinton 330 Trump 208

As has been true with both of Obama's wins, the numbers from California will likely be the ones that push the Democratic candidate over the threshold.

Yet again, this is NOT A PREDICTION!!!!! This is more like a dry run of what to expect using very sketchy data more than five months out.

Feature #2: The Golden Spike

I'm going to live tweet Election Night and give a running tally on what I call the Golden Spike. The idea is that the states are ranked by the confidence of victory for each candidate and assuming those numbers are reliable, there will usually be one state that will be the median. (It can happen that we get a 269-269 tie, but it's very unlikely.) For example, right now the Golden Spike is in Virginia. There are many pathways to victory, but the most likely single way right now for Trump would be to win all 208 electoral votes I'm assuming he'll win and also pulling off wins in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Virginia.  

The metaphor of a Golden Spike is not perfect, because unlike the real Golden Spike in the transcontinental railroad, this spike can move during the evening. If any of these states is called early for Clinton, Trump's easiest path to victory changes, becoming more difficult. If for example Pennsylvania gets called for Clinton, Trump would now have to win all the other states listed and Colorado, Nevada and Iowa as well, and the Spike would be in Iowa.

If Clinton loses a state that was considered more likely for her win than Virginia, like for instance Iowa, that could move the Golden Spike closer from Trump.

A useful brag here: Confidence of Victory has done a really good job in the last two elections. One state was incorrectly called in 2008 (Indiana went to Obama when the opinion polls favored McCain) and one state was given toss-up status in 2012, and that state was Florida, which took four days to conclude that Obama beat Romney. Remember of course that this is the final version of my results, not what I say will happen in May.

Some people in the media will use the narrative that we have an exciting horse race this year. As of late May, not so much. Both the wins by George W. Bush were very close in the electoral college, where changing the result in a single state like Florida or Ohio would have elected a Democrat. As we know, that very nearly happened in 2000. In contrast, Obama laid an electoral ass whuppin' on both McCain and Romney. Even in the extremely likely event of Obama losing California, he still would have had more than 270 electoral votes in either race. The preliminary view of 2016 makes it look much more like the last two elections and not much at all like the two elections in 2000 and 2004.

In conclusion, to Democrats reading this: Stay calm and pay attention to people who crunch numbers. Nate Silver may have some egg on his face, but he's not the only guy doing this work. If you ask me, he's not even the best. Of people you might see on TV, Sam Wang from Princeton is much more reliable and from my experience, Wang is also a nicer guy who will actually answer e-mail and tweets.

To Republicans reading this, my best advice right now: You broke it, you bought it.

Indiana

Trump's yuge win last Tuesday makes it much harder to stop him and a win this Tuesday in Indiana would make it nearly impossible. For the Republicans, Indiana is winner take all, the last such primary this month for the GOP. (The Democrats are proportional all the way down the line.) Ted 'The Snake" Cruz is in second according to most polls, though there was one strange outlier that had him ahead by 16. The most likely result according to the polls is a Trump win by single digits, say about 7 or 8. I would not be surprised if Kasich throws in the towel later this week.

Hillary's lead over Sanders is more modest, probably in the 4 to 5 point range. It would certainly count as an upset if either of the front runners lost, a much bigger and more stinging loss if Trump gets beat. The rest of May is mostly Western states and not very large prizes, so barring some dramatic development, I'll probably wait until the big June 7th set of primaries, which is mainly a Western test (California, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota) with New Jersey just to keep things strange.

Pundits are assuming it's Trump vs. Hillary, and I have no reason to say they are wrong, which is rare for me. Once that happens, it's a question of which party can close ranks the best and get out the vote, or in the case of the Republicans most effectively suppress the vote. This is not to say it looks like a toss-up, because Trump will be hard pressed to win any state Obama carried in 2012. It hardly counts as a prediction to say Trump will continue to be ill-informed and ill-mannered. If I am to go ever so slightly out on a limb without numbers to back me up, only history. People waiting for a bombshell that destroys Hillary, either Benghazi or the e-mail server, are very likely to be disappointed.

This presidential race looks something like an anaconda digesting a pig, long, ugly and inevitable. The more interesting contest will be in the Senate, where the Republicans have to defend 24 seats out of 34 being held. Predicting the House is much harder to do, though the Republicans losing the lower chamber currently looks unlikely. It all depends on how much of a drag Trump is on the ticket.

The April 26 primaries

According to the polls, the states in the Northeast that will cast their ballots on Tuesday should not produce any surprises. In all the polls released this month in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold commanding leads. Rhode Island is also voting but there is no fresh data about how the voters feel. In such cases, the best indicator is what is happening in neighboring states, and the neighbors of Rhode Island favor Trump and Clinton as well.

As with all the races on the Democratic side, the delegate selection is proportional, which should mean Clinton will extend her lead. For all the fuss about super-delegates, it should be noted that Clinton has a commanding lead over Sanders in the popular vote count so far. A lot of Sanders fans are very passionate and will consider that shenanigans were the deciding factor in his loss. I sent money to Sanders, but I am not convinced of skulduggery. Hillary has amassed more votes.

On the other side, I am absolutely convinced of shenanigans and skulduggery, and there could easily be more on Tuesday. Of the five races, Delaware and Maryland are winner take all, but the big prize of Pennsylvania has some very arcane rules. Of the 71 delegates that will be apportioned, only 17 are bound to vote for the candidate who gets the most votes Tuesday and the other 54 are up for grabs. There is talk that his organization has finally figured out the game and will do whatever is necessary to nail down the majority of delegates in Pennsylvania, but I will wait to see what happens. Trump always talks a big game, but when all is said and done, his results are often not as yuge as he said they would be.

There are people doing more math than I am, and many of them say he will get to the magic number of1,237 delegates pledged before the convention starts in Cleveland. I am still in wait and see mode. No amount of poll aggregation can tell us what is happening in smoke-filled rooms in places like Pennsylvania.

The next big primary is Indiana a week from Tuesday. On the GOP side, it's winner take all and Trump leads, though only by single digits. I'll report on that next weekend.

New York and beyond.

In my last post nearly three weeks ago, I finished with a promise to report before the New York primary, a promise which I have sadly broken. The polls clearly said Trump and Clinton were the favorites and the early results vindicate the opinion polls.  The races next week are in the Northeast and Trump looks like a prohibitive favorite in most of them, as does Clinton. I now promise a report before next Tuesday evening and I will feel like a heel if I break two promises in a row.

As for Trump's race to get 1,237 pledged delegates before the convention in Cleveland, I don't have confidence that my system can give an accurate read on that goal.

Currently, I'm reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a multiple person biography of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, the publisher Sam McClure and several of his writers. I must admit that for all I have read, Trump is still a mystery to me and I am grasping for comparisons.

Is Trump like TR? The simplest answer is superficially yes and fundamentally no, but I am personally terrified about what a superficial age we live in.  Both Trump and Roosevelt are sons of successful New York families, but Roosevelt's family history crushes Trump's on every level. They both are at a level of celebrity that is hard to imagine. It's hard to pin down the date when it started, but Teddy Roosevelt is the most famous American of his era by a wide margin and the absolute latest date you can give for the beginning of this unparallelled fame is the charge up San Juan Hill. Trump is not the most famous American - fame is scattered in many more directions now than it was more than a century ago - but his fame was enough for him to far surpass the field of politicians and non-politicians who tried to become the Republican nominee for president this year.

After we concede the similar levels of fame, Roosevelt looks like a colossus and Trump a shrimp the size of his stubby little fingers.  Roosevelt measures his manhood in strenuous activity, personal relationships, physical bravery that borders on the clinically insane and the joy of being in the arena. Trump uses the Sam Malone yardstick, counting the number of fabulous babes he has bagged. Beyond the manliness differences, Roosevelt really did love reading and the world of ideas, where Trump appears to have coasted ever since doing very well at Wharton Business School. Let us remember the words of the governor in O Brother Where Art Thou?: "We MASS communicatin' now!" As a manipulator of media, Trump understands the game as played in the early 21st Century extremely well. Roosevelt had to do his campaigning retail, and the stories of him shaking the hands of railroad men and shipworkers and giving them stories they would tell their grandchildren brought tears to my eyes several times.

So Trump isn't Roosevelt, he can't even be found in the shadow of Roosevelt.  Is he possibly Reagan?

My best guess is no. Like Reagan, he does seem covered in Teflon, but given the demographics of the era, that shouldn't be nearly enough. Like Reagan, he has made statements that erase his more liberal past. Trump speaks to the core Republican voter because he truly does hate Obama, but that can backfire if Clinton is even slightly politically savvy, which she most certainly is.

I could go on and on, but this would just get closer to punditry and farther away from math every sentence I would write. I'll do my best to do something mathy before next Tuesday. If you want a "prediction", it's Hillary vs. The Donald barring some very nasty mess, and if that's the race, Trump has to Climb Everest without a guide or oxygen and with his stumpy little fingers trying to grip the crampons. The second President Clinton is the most likely result at this point.

Preview of April

The GOP: The Democratic race is much closer than the Republican, but the Republicans have winner take all races in many states while the Democrats do not. April has three such high stakes contests, Wisconsin's 42 delegates being decided this Tuesday and winner take all primaries in Delaware (16 delegates) and Maryland (38 delegates) three weeks later on the 26th. There are also two big states, New York on April 19th for 95 delegates and Pennsylvania on the 26th for 71 delegates. Pennsylvania can be winner take all, but I do not know what the threshold for that is.

Recent polling in Wisconsin favors Ted "The Snake" Cruz. There are four polls from late this month and Cruz leads in three, while Trump is the favorite in the other. The most interesting progression in he polls is from the Marquette Law School poll, which has polled the state six times since last August. Here are the leader and second place candidates in those polls.

August 2015: Walker 25, Carson 13
September 2015: Trump 20, Rubio 20
November 2015: Carson 22, Rubio 19, Trump 19
January 2016: Trump 24, Rubio 18
February 2016: Trump 30, Rubio 20
March 2016: Cruz 40, Trump 30

I should note that Cruz was in third place in the earlier polls this year, but the numbers look like nearly all of Rubio's support switched over to Cruz when Rubio quit.

The Dems: There are also four polls from late March dealing with the Wisconsin race. Bernie Sanders leads in three and Hillary Clinton leads in the other. All the Democratic races are proportional, so unless his margin of victory is much larger than it currently looks at around 5 points, he will gain some press and momentum but precious few delegates. After that, the Democrats have a caucus in Wyoming on the 9th, a style contest that usually favors Sanders, then the big prize of New York on the same date as the Republican contest, April 19th.

I will report again before the New York contest.

Thoughts on March 15

I call my system Confidence of Victory. I say the Pollster website from Huffington Post use Confidence of Lead, and I wish I had thought of that first. The thing is I am not at all confident of predictions made off of polls in primaries, so I can't attach numbers to anything tomorrow, but I get still give a basic sketch of each situation, starting with the big winner-take-all contest on the GOP side.

Florida: If the polls can be trusted, and it would take a Michigan level upset for them to be wrong, Trump has smacked down Rubio just as hard as he smacked down Jeb:( earlier this year. Nearly all the polls say Trump will get over 40% of the votes while Rubio will end up with less than 30%. If you have seen Rubio on the stump this last week, it looks like he talked to his numbers guys and he believed them.

Rubio the Savior is going down in the books with Lieberman's Joe-mentum, a truly sad showing.

Ohio: The polls say Kasich is a much better favorite son than Rubio, and the race for first in Ohio could go either way, Kasich or Trump. Sam Wang, the poll aggregator I trust most, says losing Ohio helps Trump because it could keep Kasich in the game longer, diluting the anti-Trump vote. if Kasich wins then drops out immediately, then Trump's path to the first ballot gets much murkier.

Illinois: The polling is very spotty, but Trump appears to have an advantage over Cruz. What the reaction from Trump voters to all the craziness there this month is anybody's guess, but I agree with the folks that say all publicity is good publicity for Trump, at least in the primaries.


The Democrats:  No winner take all contests tomorrow on the Democratic side, so wins and losses will not be as dramatic. I would not be surprised by a Sanders victory in either Illinois or Missouri. Florida looks like a lock for Clinton and if Sanders wins Ohio, that would be considered an upset.

Back on Wednesday with post mortem.

Early March: The national polls

I took a week off after Super Tuesday, mainly because I scheduled four midterms for a single week. I also got the feeling there wasn't much left to either race, but Sanders' win in Michigan and the escalating violence at Trump rallies makes me think I wrote off the nominations too soon.

The GOP: Where did Carson's support go? Right now, it looks like it went to Cruz and maybe Kasich, who finally polls above the None of the Above nationally.  As we will see tomorrow, the polls say he is in contention to win the all or nothing primary in Ohio.

As for Rubio, the national polls make him look stronger than he actually is. While Kasich could be a favorite son in Ohio, all the polls show Trump lapping the field in winner take all Florida.

I'm pretty sure we will have no more than three candidates before the next time I report, possibly only two. I really can't say who will be favored when it gets down to Trump vs. Cruz, even though now the ratio of support for Trump is an impressive 3:2. That would mean he would lead 60% to 40% if all the folks who supported other candidates split evenly, but I don't think that's the situation. For political junkies like me, we've already made up our minds, but a lot of the general public know how they feel about Trump and maybe Clinton, but the rest of the candidates are a blur. I will now go on the record saying Trump's support is not going to get to 50% in the average of national polls on the GOP side. He might lead Cruz, but I don't think he will lead Cruz + None of the Above combined.
  

The Dems: And then there is the Democratic race. A lot of smart people said Sanders' early victories were not big enough to move forward to actually passing Clinton, but then Michigan happened. No smart person said Sanders could win Michigan or even make it close, because smart people rely on data they can trust, and no data said it was close.

Let me be clear. The complete systemic failure of all polling in Michigan does not mean all polls are complete crap. Primary contests can be very changeable, unlike the general election, where the bombardment of data for months tend to ossify people's positions. But right now, I'm not assuming much when polls put Clinton in the lead, especially if the lead is less than 5 points.

Tomorrow, the reports on the biggest races in both parties on Tuesday, especially the winner take all races in Ohio, Florida and Missouri.