There’s a bird biting my tongue. I know I should get it off of there but I love the taste of crow.

The primaries should be getting easier to call, but they’re getting harder right now. That’s because (1) Nevada is apparently tough to poll (and there are precious few of them) and (2) a lot of folks are still hanging around on the Red side and the South Carolina Republican electorate is supposedly more fluid than your average bear.

Trump’s going to win, of course (did I just say, “of course?”); but by how much and what happens to the also-rans is a tougher calculation. In Nevada, it’s more or less a toss-up. Still, for what it’s worth, I remain committed to analyzing and predicting the horse race for your reading pleasure. Both of you. ‘Tis my wont.

Ted Cruz’s folks claim that they have 10,000 volunteers knocking on 10,000 doors and making 20,000 phone calls per day. In other words, he’s brought his ground game that helped him so much in Iowa. What’s interesting is his innate unlikability and the finite number of evangelicals seem to be putting a ceiling on his poll numbers.  Moreover, a well organized grass roots effort is not as helpful in primary situation as it is in a caucus. Still I expect him to overperform his polls.

Rubio has had a bump in two late polls, both of which show him breaking 20% and in second place. (See here and here.) But it’s hard not to give a little extra weight to the SC Republican House Caucus poll that employs a massive sample (N=3500) and has Rubio at 18% in third.

Trump, I believe, will probably underperform his numbers. But the open primary there helps him. He’s currently at 33.9% on Pollster and at 32.5% at fivethirtyeight. So, my guess is that we will see Trump come home in the 28%-32% range and I expect Cruz and Rubio to both be in 20%-24% range, fighting it out for second, with Cruz prevailing.  Jeb and Kasich will be battling it out for fourth, both hovering around 10%-12% and Dr. Ben brings up the rear at around 5%-8%.

Nevada is shaping up to be a donnybrook. Hillary was ahead in the last poll 53%-47%, but that was with Gravis which Nate Silver only gives a C rating to as a pollster. Still, he says Hillary has 71% chance of winning there. I’m going to go with the buzz that Clinton’s folks are very nervous about their chances in the Silver State and the fact that the Sanders team probably has a better grasp of GOTV for caucuses, having one under their belts from Iowa. It may be my heart talking, but I’ll say Bernie edges Hillary out for the narrow win.

But really, who the hell knows?

(Wonkish.)

All modesty aside, my calls on the New Hampshire primaries last week were–what’s the technical term?–pretty dang good. I said it would be Trump, then Kasich with a close race for third. And I predicted a big win for Bernie Sanders. Granted, I did not expect it to be 22 points big, but it was clear to me from being there who had the boots on the ground and who didn’t. That made a difference.

So, what happens now? The Dems move to the Nevada caucuses, where a recent poll surely has sent shivers up the spine of the Clinton campaign. Target Point has the race at 45/45, but these figures should be viewed with a degree of suspicion since this firm polls primarily for Republicans. They are not even listed on the polling firm rankings at fivethirtyeight.

The Republicans vie for the winner-take-all South Carolina delegates, 50 in all. Recent, post-New Hampshire polls there have confirmed Trump’s lead remains unchanged or is improving. He’s polling at 35%-37%, pretty much where he was in the last January poll. Cruz follows at 20%, which also where he was. Rubio at 15, Bush and Kasich getting a NH bump to around 9.Read More »

From New Hampshire. Sort of.

(This post was started while I was still on the ground in NH, but was interrupted by travel.)

At about 11:00 AM, faithfully “on the doors” in the GOTV effort, I get a call from a local Sanders coordinator who tells me to get to the Ward 5 Community Center polling station by 11:45. A number of canvassers, like me, are being pulled from the doors for a photo op with the candidate who was due to show up there at noon for a polling place visit.

The media is there and about 60-70 canvassers line both sides of the the walk into the polling station waving Bernie placards. We wait. And wait some more. I am still confident about the campaign’s GOTV effort, but the field manager inside me starts mentally calculating the number of doors that weren’t being knocked on. Read More »

From New Hampshire.

Okay, kind of a shorthand post here because I want to get back out on the doors.

Here’s what seems to be obvious from from knocking on doors this week in Conord, talking to staff and other canvassers. You only see, with any regularity, literature from four candidates left on the doorsteps here. Those would be Sanders, Clinton, Bush and Kasich.Read More »

Okay. So in a recent post I raised, through anecdote, the issue of the strength the respective ground games of the Clinton and Sanders campaigns. I gave points to the Clinton campaign for having the polish and organization to return my offer to volunteer, while I heard nothing back after multiple offers to help in Bernie’s effort.

Anecdotal conclusions are, of course, unreliable. The fact is there can be other reasons, besides lack of discipline and communication polish, that a campaign fails to get back to potential volunteers, particularly in the last week of the campaign. One of those could be that they are simply overwhelmed with people wanting to volunteer.

After three days on the doors for Bernie, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that was a major factor in the lack of a response to me. Here are some more data points regarding what the Sanders campaign has put together here.Read More »

From New Hampshire.

So the polling is starting to fly fast and furious on this suddenly wintry day in the Granite State. But there’s another poll just released that could be of more interest to those following the Dem race. Quinnipiac has a new post-Iowa sounding out showing that nationally Hillary Clinton’s lead over Bernie Sanders is down to 44%-42%. If that is not an outlier it would and should be of huge concern to the Clinton campaign. Remember that Obama did not pass Hillary in the national polls until 30 days after Iowa.

The problem for Bernie is that it probably is an outlier.  The other three polls that have data collected in whole or in part post-caucuses all have Hillary over 50 and Bernie under 40. So, everyone needs to calm down on that one. But let’s look at the New Hampshire polls, six of which have come out in the last 48 hours on D side and seven on the R side. Read More »

From New Hampshire.

So, a guy walks into a Bernie Sanders campaign office somewhere in New Hampshire…. No really, no joke. To get to the office, you drive south out of town, duck under the interstate and follow a two-lane road past car dealerships, body repair shops, tire stores and then turn left at a sign that says: “Cash for Gold.” It’s a little strip office center, nestled between a storefront financial services office (Carly supporter there) and a salon of some sort (I think).

If you have any doubt as to who the establishment candidate is in this race you need only pinpoint the Hillary Clinton campaign office: locate Democratic Headquarters a block off Main Street in the center of town and walk a mere two doors down the street. There it is. Of course, they’ll tell you at Dem HQ that they’re not supporting either candidate–at least that’s what they told me when I asked for Hillary’s and Bernie’s speaking schedule. (“Best to check their websites.”) But the geography of the situation is unmistakable and there is a reason the Clinton campaign is here at not out seeking love on the wrong side of town.Read More »

From New Hampshire.

With the limb, comes the saw, and those who prognosticate must own up to the reality of the results. With that in mind, I’m grading myself 0-2 on my calls for the Iowa caucuses. I didn’t know it was a limb and never saw the saw.

Technically, I could claim 1-1, since strictly speaking I did say Hillary would win and technically speaking, she won. To be fair though, I expected less of a contest than it turned out to be. By any measure, this was a tie. And a tie for Bernie is as good as a win, given that Hillary led in six of the last seven recent polls. Read More »

No self-respecting political junkie blogger can get away with not making predictions on electoral contests. So, here’s what’s going to happen today in Iowa. Admittedly, I’m not really going out n a limb here.

Trump has opened up enough distance between himself and Cruz, that any comparative insufficiencies in his ground game relative to Cruz are not going to matter. Solid victory for Trump here tonight. Cruz has shown signs of desperation of late, with a really bad mailer trying to rally less likely voters to the polls. Embarrassing your potential supporters is never a good GOTV strategy.Read More »

A few days ago I got to thinking about campaign schools and how message is taught in the workshops therein. This was prompted by my reflection on just how crystal clear Bernie Sanders’ message is in this race. Then I tried to suss out what Hillary Clinton’s message is, and was unable to.

I shot a FB message to a political consultant I know who does campaign schools saying something like, “What would you say Hillary’s message is? I think I could recite Bernie’s message in less than 30 seconds. Hillary, not so much.” The response: “I can’t recite Hillary’s either.” Read More »