The Hillary Coalition vs. the Bernie Coalition… in Each Super Tuesday State

The Sanders-Clinton battle has to-date been defined by two rapidly-solidifying coalitions. On one hand, Sanders takes big margins with Millennial voters (18–35) and white liberals. On the other, Clinton has demonstrated clear strength with minorities and other, often older, more moderate white voters.

These dynamics gave Sanders an early edge with Iowa and New Hampshire voters. But the playing field may shift dramatically on Super Tuesday with different populations voting.

Digging into the L2 Voter Mapping national voter file with HaystaqDNA (Obama’s re-election campaign modelers), I divided each Super Tuesday Democratic state into the key cohorts for each candidate and screened for voters with a 50%+ likelihood of turnout.

Our base groupings, therefore, are (1) Millennials — all voters ages 18–35; (2) Non-white voters over 35; (3) White voters over 35 who are flagged in the Haystaq models as “fiscally liberal;” (4) The rest of white voters over 35.

This simple breakdown gives tremendous insight into likely Super Tuesday outcomes because we can now visually the comparative size of the Hillary vs. Bernie core (simplified, of course) coalition in each state.

Deep South

Alabama and Georgia both have large minority populations and white moderates outnumber liberals. Clinton has a huge advantage in these states.

Majority White South

Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee will still have sizable minority vote, but whites have a higher share of the vote. White moderates drastically outnumber liberals in these 3 states, so the Clinton coalition stays overwhelmingly strong.

Kinda the South = Battleground

Virginia’s northern Virginia region behaves more like a mid-Atlantic state when it comes to politics. Texas is like its own whole country. In these big states with multiple big metropolitan regions, the math might be more favorable to Bernie because ~20% of the vote is white, older, fiscal liberals.

Big Blue… Bernie

Minnesota and Colorado are perhaps Bernie’s Super Tuesday saviors. White progressives dominate these states’ politics and the youth vote can come in strong too.

New England

The New England States, Vermont and Massachusetts, are the most evenly-balanced of the bunch. Both have dominant fiscally progressive, white voter populations that give Bernie an edge. But MA has a much higher minority population than Vermont, which should help Hillary.