Hillary Clinton’s Strength Lies With the Closed Primaries (this article made me feel better)

[WI_DEM]

No matter what Bernie Sanders’s surprise upset in Michigan may mean for the contests in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Hillary Clinton is well on her way toward securing the Democratic presidential nomination.?

In the 21 contests where Democrats have allocated delegates, Clinton has won 12 states and amassed more than 1.6 million more votes and some 200 more pledged delegates than Sanders. Further, in the 18 contests where the popular vote totals have been made public, Clinton has won 10 states with an average margin of about 194,000 votes. By contrast, Sanders has won seven states, not counting his home state of Vermont, with an average margin of about 28,000 votes.?

Even more important, in the three primaries with exit polling that Sanders won, other than Vermont, Clinton won the majority of Democratic voters in two of them — 52 percent of the Democrats in Oklahoma and 58 percent in Michigan.

True, this voting pattern may not help Clinton much on Tuesday, because Illinois, Missouri and Ohio are all open or semi-open contests, when independents are more likely to affect the overall results. But the voting pattern will almost certainly become a decided advantage for her in several other states (some quite large) that have yet to cast ballots. Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, California, New Jersey, New Mexico and the District of Columbia are all closed or semi-closed primaries, in which independents participate much less.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/03/14/has-bernie-sanders-been-underestimated/hillary-clintons-strength-lies-with-the-closed-primaries

[Haveadream]

1. Thank you

for this primary breakdown. It does make me feel better about the upcoming races in the larger states which have the vast majority of delegates.

I also wanted to say, did you realize that your post here was 33,333????!!!!

That deserves a celebration!!! And, maybe it means good luck for Hillary!!

[SunSeeker]

2. K & R

[BlueMTexpat]

3. This is absolutely true and

yes, reassuring.

The things that bother me most about her narrow defeat in MI:
- open primary (GOPer-leaning indies among those who genuinely supported Bernie)
- stories that some Dems may have crossed-over and voted in the GOPer primary to vote against Trump
- Hillary-supporting Dems and indies who stayed home, believing that Hillary was a shoo-in
- Ballot snafus at precincts where Hillary had strong support (not enough Dem ballots, etc.)

I believe that the MI result will help to cause my second and third concerns to be non-existent in other open primary states. So long as my fourth concern is taken care of, I believe that Hillary still can prevail even there. She has strong support everywhere, despite what the True Believers think and say.

[kjones]

4. At the end of the day, it all comes down to GOTV

Any format of election, we'll need voters. Chug away at that, and
we'll be golden.
In my state of MI, I actually took heart in that it took so much
tilting towards Bernie (someone up the thread has a list) and
he still only got a few percentage points. Her Dem support
nearly outweighed the heavy loading of Bernie Ind/Rep voters.
Even where Bernie has a lot in his favor, he's barely making
headway.

[Chichiri]

5. A quick note on math . . .

If the scenario proposed at the end of the article came about (Hillary wins closed primaries, Bernie wins open), Hillary would have 2,151 pledged delegates at the end, much more than the 2,026 needed for a majority. When the author says that she's 231 delegates shy, she is talking about the 2,383 target that includes superdelegates.

[MSMITH33156]

6. This is an important point being made

Earlier, there was a thread on a similar topic, and I did some quick calculations...

There are 631 delegates available on April 19th and 26th. All but 24 (Rhode Island) are in closed primaries. And all they are Hillary friendly states: NY, MD, PA, CT, DE, RI. She'll clean up there.

From March 16-April 9, there are 7 states. Bernie will win a majority of those, have "momentum" and own the narrative. This will be peak obnoxiousness. Get ready for it. But, the big thing is only 373 delegates are available there.

I think Hillary expands her lead tomorrow, Bernie spends the next month after that shrinking it, and then she knocks him out on the 19th and 26th.

[UtahLib]

7. Great info. throughput this thread. Thank you, everyone.

[Gothmog]

8. This chart is interesting

This is a good article but this chart explains Michigan https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/14/why-hillary-clintons-delegate-lead-over-bernie-sanders-is-bigger-than-it-looks/


https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484