After taking a close look at the data from Super Tuesday's Democratic primaries, I came to different conclusions from the mainstream media. 2020 is in most aspects a repeat of 2016. There are two notable developments, which the pundits missed: (a) Sanders impressive victory in California (b) caucuses were not as bad as proclaimed.
Super Tuesday 2020 felt like a re-run of 2016
We set aside the caucuses-to-primaries states as it is impossible to compare across the two elections given the drastic change in format.
Of the eight states Biden won in 2020 (that were also primaries in 2016), seven of them were Clinton states in 2016.
(To use the media's favorite wrong analytical methodology, Biden's vote share in 2020 was lower than Clinton's in all eight states. This proves that Biden is weaker than Clinton, and has a "ceiling" that would be hard to overcome in the general election. You shouldn't believe this line of argument, nor should you when it is applied to Sanders or anyone else. It is simply not appropriate to compare vote shares in a 2-person election to one with six candidates. See here for the right analysis.)
The one state that flipped from Sanders to Biden was Oklahoma. That was one of Sanders's narrowest wins in 2016.
There were no blowout victories other than Alabama, Virginia and Vermont. All of those were easy victories in 2016 (first two states by Clinton, third state by Sanders).
This is a tabulation of the results, lifted from Sunday's post:
Sanders impressed in California
The biggest story of Super Tuesday should have been California. This is because Clinton won (Sanders lost) California in 2016. Not only did Sanders beat Biden in 2020 but the 2020 contest is rated as less competitive than the 2016 contest despite having many more candidates splitting the votes.
California has the greatest number of delegates up for grabs so it is the most significant race.
Even after one week, there are still many millions of uncounted votes in California. The turnout is expected to close in on 9 million, according to this article. compared to 5 million in 2016.
Caucuses are not that bad
The other major story should have been about Minnesota, Maine, Utah and Colorado - all of which have abandoned the caucus format and moved to primaries. The pundits had claimed that Sanders won "unjustified" victories based on a small set of unrepresentative voters participating in caucuses.
I think the evidence for that claim is extremely weak based on these Super Tuesday results.
First, the format change dramatically pumped up turnout. Across all four states, the total number of voters increased almost five-fold (from roughly 400,000 to 2 million). [Any pundit who uses these numbers to prove turnout surge rather than format change should be ridiculed. It could be both but a large chunk of the growth is format change.]
Second, in each of these four states, Sanders continued to show strength. He won Utah and Colorado handily. Maine was a toss-up. According to my competitiveness rating, Maine 2020 is about the same as 2016.
Sanders did lose Minnesota, but the assist of home state senator Amy Klobuchar dropping out of the race and endorsing Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday should be sufficient to explain the gap.
In other words, Sanders's support did not collapse in these states when they switched from caucuses to primaries. The caucuses were not as unrepresentative as the pundits made them out to be.
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