Monday, June 27, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election Part VII

Yes, a new one already.  The last one was rather obviously very long, and the GOP now appears to have a candidate with a sufficient number of delegates so as to be able to take the nomination on the first ballot.

The current results:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,305 (537 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,539 (42 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,238 (of which 88 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary 

Washington's May 24 results, Republican only, have pushed Trump barely over the top to the required number, although 88 of his delegates are unpledged and therefore could change.  Nine unpledged delegates that had been pledged for Cruz switched over to Trump recently.  Surprisingly, Kasich picked up one delegate since our last tally while Rubio lost one.
The GOP race is therefore more or less over, although a large amount of dissent remains.  As recently as last weekend one of the conservative pundits was still urging an independent or third party run.

The Democratic race, amazingly, remains in contest.  Clinton is very close at this point, but only due to Superdelegates.  There's every reason to believe that Sanders will continue to contest the election all the way to the convention.  This has to be frustrating to Clinton who now clearly faces Trump in the fall but who cannot ignore Sanders.  At the same time, the email issue has revived.

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May 30, 2016 

Presumably reflecting changes in pledged delegates the tallies have changed a little; adding a few delegates for the front runners.


Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,309 (540 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,539 (42 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,239 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary 

The only actual reason I bumped this up today is to note that the Wyoming Democratic Party has indicated its going to protest the DNC's allocation of Wyoming's delegates.  Sanders won the Wyoming primary, but the delegates were equally split between Sanders and Clinton. The Wyoming party feel that rather than a 7/7 split, it should be 8/6.


That would make no difference, unless it really comes down to the last vote, in the Democratic contest, but it does demonstrate why the Sanders campaign has been frustrated.  In spite of winning some late primaries, and picking up delegates as a result, the Democrat's process operates such that Clinton picks up nearly the same number, or in the case of Wyoming, she actually did pick up the same number.

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June 6, 2016

 After a couple of weekend Democratic territorial races, the tallies are now as follows:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,383 (571 of which are Superdelegates)  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Clinton is the Democratic nominee
Sanders:  1,569 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,239 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

So Clinton is now the unofficial Democratic nominee.  With these results she achieves, but only just achieves, obtaining enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, assuming the 571 Superdelegates that are pledged to her remain pledged to her.

Depending upon tomorrow's votes, the question of the loyalty of the Superdelegates may become moot, as over 800 Democratic delegates are to be chosen tomorrow.   The amazing thing, of course, is by this point both parties have chosen very unpopular candidates.  Having said that, the  Democrats chose the highly unpopular candidate they were anticipated to have chosen right from the onset, while the Republicans chose one that they were not anticipated to choose.

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June 8, 2016 

The primaries, except for Washington D.C.'s Democratic primary, are now over.  Indeed, while this has been an odd election season to be sure, the election itself is effectively over as well.

The standings.

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,755 (571 of which are Superdelegates)  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Clinton is the Democratic nominee
Sanders:  1,852 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,536 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Sanders took North Dakota and Montana, and South Dakota was a tie.  He did not take, however, California which was really his last hope.

Clinton is only the nominee right now, of course, due to the Superdelegates.  But Sanders would need nearly 500 Superdelegates to bolt Clinton and join him in order to reverse these results and that won't be occurring. Trump, for his part, received all the late delegates in spite of his earlier competitors largely remaining on the ballots of those states choosing yesterday.

The candidates now go on to their conventions in late July.  The campaign of the two main candidates against each other, however, started a couple of weeks ago.

There remains some items up in the air, most significantly a lingering threat that the Never Trump wing of the GOP will bolt for a third party candidate or give their support to the Libertarian candidate in protest.  Likewise, there's a small threat that the Green Party will appeal to Sanders supporters, and even the Libertarian Party might a bit.  This might, therefore, turn out to be a surprisingly good year for both those parties, even though neither has any serious chance of winning.  A good showing, however, might propel those parties into serious parties that have to be contended with.

The fact that Trump continues to face internal opposition is, moreover, significant.  The thought was that the Republicans would pull together after Trump secured the necessary number of delegates but that isn't occurring to the extent it was predicted to.  Indeed, the Never Trump movement, even this late, is hinting that it will back an alternative and it clearly would have run one but for the fact that those that it approached declined to run. That fact is hugely significant for the Democrats as its heavily symbolic of this election cycle.  By choosing Trump the Republicans have chosen a candidate that even the massively unpopular Hillary Clinton is likely to easily beat and even a fair number of Republicans can't support.

This thread will continue on, unless it grows to big, until at least the Convention.  Or until something surprising happens and a new one is needed.  In a year of surprised, who knows, that could happen.

Followup

Following Tuesday's primaries, I thought there was a chance that Bernie Sanders might concede.

Nothing doing, apparently.

Indeed, he's taking a lot of heat for it, but he's contesting for the Washington DC primary, the only one left, which occurs next week.

It's a bit difficult to see what Sanders end game is at this point, and there's a lot of speculation about it.  Indeed, Democratic commentators are getting a bit spastic about it, demanding that he concede. Some are speculating that he is now campaigning for concessions from the platform, or to impact the direction that the Democrats are going in.  Maybe. But there's also speculation that he intends to angle for the Superdelegates, perhaps to drop Clinton below the assured number and cause a brokered convention.  That would seem odd, as he wouldn't win that, but who knows.  His campaign has been a difficult one to accurately predict.

In any event, the irony of it is that Sanders is doing what everyone thought the Never Trump Republicans would do, campaign to the bitter end. They basically dropped out, however, before the matter was really decided.  The hard to predict Sanders hasn't.

June 28, 2016

I never did put the final count in here, and I've been well aware of that, but I've figured everyone was so sick of this that they'd want a break.

Anyhow, after the D.C. primary, which went to Clinton, this stand as follows:

The standings.

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,811 (591 of which are Superdelegates) 
Sanders:  1,879 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,542 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates). 
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Not surprisingly, there was a time after everyone had dropped out that Trump's poll standings surged and he appeared to be more likely to win that Clinton, but that only lasted for a week and he's been on the rocks ever since.  Now experienced observers have wondered what he's been doing the past month, and he has been in the news a lot less.  Today finds him, oddly, in Scotland where he commented following the Brexit vote. Things frankly don't look good for him at all, and in a race in which he only has Clinton to take on, he's not taking her on effectively at all.

The conventions, which will cause new entries or at least a new entry in this series, will spike each candidates numbers following the respective conventions, but this now appears to be on a fairly certain trajectory.  The GOP establishment does not appear to be rallying to Trump, which pundits said it would.  The terrorist attack in Florida does not appear to have made him look like a better option, as some predicated a terrorist attack would, and mostly he seems sort of stuck. Clinton, on the other hand, doesn't appear stuck at all, even if she doesn't appear to be popular either.

I wasn't going to update this thread until the conventions, but I've done so now due to all the other political races gong on and it would have accordingly been odd not to.  Internationally we have the Brexit vote, of course, and the following resignation of David Cameron.  Locally we have a U.S. House race heating up in which one campaign manager went so far as to claim he didn't know that one of his opponents "was still running".     And around the state we did have some Democrats that were looking good, but the national party effectively murdered them this week with their childish sit in on the floor of Congress and, moreover, true to form local Democrats, or at least one, couldn't shut up long enough not to suddenly come out looking like a radical proponent of gun control, which ends that campaign even if the candidate doesn't seemingly know that.

Followup

I thought it unlikely that I'd have anything to update in this thread prior to the conventions, at which time I'd start new ones, but a surprising event did occur.

Longtime Republican columnist and intellectual figure George F. Will officially announced that he is leaving the GOP.   This is not minor news.  Will is actively opposed to Trump and Republicans themselves seem to be wavering.  Some dismiss this as the discontent Republican elite simply pouting, but its' more than that.  Trump is not gaining the support that many assumed he would after he became the presumptive nominee, and there is no indication that his support in traditional Republican quarters is going to grow.

At the same time, there's some curious speculation now amongst pundits that Trump may actually quit the race prior to the election.  This has been commented upon in more than one columnist's writings, although the writers may be feeding off of themselves in this speculation.

Recent polls show Trump behind Clinton, which is not surprising, but one now shows him far behind.  His campaign appears to have become somewhat lost and with Republican figures now actively opposed to him the campaign is in serious trouble.

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