The Big Swing States Vote on March 15… Here’s the Breakdown of Each One

For Super Tuesday I created a very simple model, published here on Medium.com, of Hillary’s core coalition vs. Bernie’s coalition in each of the 11 states.

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.

The simple model predicted 10 of 11 states correctly. Only Oklahoma bucked the trend, where moderate white voters went with Sanders over Clinton. AL, CO, GA, MA, MN, TX all saw final results extremely close to the “base coalition” calculations.

On March 15, a huge number of delegates are up for grabs, as five big states go to the polls. More importantly, four of these five states are major swing states that will determine the election.

We should note: dynamics of the race have changed in the last two weeks. It now seems generally accepted that Clinton will be the eventual Democratic nominee. This could suppress enthusiasm for Sanders, or it could affect the media buying strategy for the campaigns, and tweak results. Nevertheless, three of our five base coalitions still track closely with FiveThirtyEight.com’s polling average…

Illinois, Florida, and North Carolina

These states all have very similar minority vote shares, but Illinois has more white liberal voters thanks to Chicagoland progressivism. Team Hillary is well-positioned to win these states.

Ohio

The OH voter population is whiter, but those white voters are often blue collar moderates — think rust belt. If they rebel against the establishment, like in Oklahoma, the results could buck my calculations. Otherwise, Ohio should see a 60–40 result for Hillary, like the other above states.

Missouri

The Show Me state is the weirdest of the five. It’s particularly tough to figure out because there isn’t polling to benchmark against. Missouri has performed less Democratic than the other 3/15 states in federal elections, and has been subject to controversy over race. Perhaps in MO, compared to the other states, a greater proportion of white moderate Democrats have just outright switched to Republican voting. Anything could happen, but Bernie might find some love here if young voters turn out.