Obviously Nate Silver is imperfect, but his new Super Tuesday scenarios are worth looking at regardless of who you support. The Three Super Tuesday Scenarios are 1) Biden wins big (10% or more over Bernie), 2) Biden wins narrowly (under 10% difference with Bernie) or 3) Biden loses to Sanders (any % where Sanders beats Biden).
If Biden Wins Big*:
It’s a two man race, with Biden potentially having the advantage.
An outcome like the one in the table wouldn’t be a disaster for Sanders, by any means. He’d still be projected to end up with 578 delegates, on average after Super Tuesday, counting both delegates won before Super Tuesday and on Super Tuesday itself. In other words, Sanders would still pick up 39 percent of the total delegates awarded so far. Biden would be next with 430 delegates (29 percent), with Michael Bloombeg in third with 200 delegates (13 percent).
But you can also see how momentum could start to turn against Sanders. By “momentum,” I don’t mean something ineffable, but rather the shifts in the polls that could occur as the result of Super Tuesday, as well as decisions by other candidates to stay in the race or drop out.1
In the scenario above — after a big South Carolina win — Biden would be the plurality favorite in every Southern state on Super Tuesday, namely: Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkansas. While Sanders would remain the favorite in every non-Southern state2 except Minnesota3 including — critically — California, where he has a huge polling lead and where 415 pledged delegates are at stake.
If Biden wins narrowly
Rather than trailing Sanders by about 150 delegates after Super Tuesday as in the first scenario, Biden would trail by around 260 delegates in this one. And Sanders would remain the favorite — although a narrow favorite — in Texas, North Carolina and Virginia, instead of having become an underdog in those states. Furthermore, the combined moderate lane delegate counts would longer exceed the progressive lane counts (Sanders and Warren together would have 52 percent of delegates to the moderates’ 47 percent), depriving Biden of that talking point.
What this leads to, most likely: Biden would be viable, but he would need some other breaks, namely (i) the other moderates to drop out and (ii) a really strong performance in the remaining March contests. And his goal would probably be to secure a plurality of delegates — or to at least get to a contested convention — with a majority being more of a long shot.
If Bernie beats Biden
If you like Bernie, and/or want to avoid a contested convention, you should be hoping for a Bernie upset in South Carolina. According to Silver, it would essentially end the primary.
After winning South Carolina, Sanders would be projected to end up with just slightly more than half of all the pledged delegates after Super Tuesday. Moreover, there would be no clear alternative to him.
Anyway these are worth looking at to make informed commentary. If I were Biden, I would be making calls and job offers to Amy, Pete, and Warren to drop out. Biden selecting Warren as a surprise VP might be his best strategy to blunt Bernie’s momentum and stick a nail in the coffin for Bloomberg. If I were Bloomberg, I would honestly ask myself am I in this for the nomination or to stop Bernie? The former is unlikely at this point, the latter still doable but would require coordinating with the other campaigns. All in all, this is why I am convinced Sanders will win. His opposition remains fractured and it is not coalescing in time behind an alternative nominee. It should coalesce around Biden, and his supporters are right to feel angered by Bloombergs late entry and the continued presence of Amy and Pete. They should be happy Warren is still in it to deny Sanders a monopoly on the progressive lane. They should also push to have him put her on the ticket.
Biden making a call to Warren and offering her the VP spot sounds like a very possible outcome. As much as I like Sanders and remain a supporter of Warren and as much as I find a Biden presidency more of the same old crap we’ve been getting from the party, I’d support this and think a Biden/Warren ticket would unite the party and hand Trump his walking papers.
The rare occasion in which I agree with both you and JTM. Unfortunately, I don’t think either of these candidates would win in November. Biden just doesn’t have the fastball anymore, and Sanders will get Corbyned. Alas.
It’s a possibility. Sanders has run a smarter campaign that Corbyn’s, who was all over the place on Brexit and continually at war with half of his party. I suspect Faiz Shakir will make the right olive branches to his old boss Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. I suspect Sanders will pick a moderate VP and walk back some of his more radical proposals. He wants to win this time, which has made him a much better candidate than he was in 2016. So far all we have is Nevada data-but this looks more like the Obama coalition than Clinton’s coalition.
Other political scientists make a compelling case that he can win as well. My own personal politics are closer to Warren, but Sanders is electable and she is not. I agree Biden will have a harder time debating Trump and getting voters excited. The conventional wisdom was that Hillary was the safe centrist and Trump the radical extremist and look what happened. We are living in a post-wisdom world, unfortunately.
Bernie will certainly be smeared, but Corbyn was a uniquely unpopular figure – Mitch McConnell levels of unpopular – for years and always polled consistently behind the Tories. That’s not Bernie where Bernie is now or has been for years, after loads and loads of attacks. There’s more to come and he can certainly go down, but the comparisons to Corbyn don’t line up at all with Bernie’s current standing and consistent levels of popularity over the past few years.
Bernie has been around for a white — long enough, that people have decided he is basically an honest guy with good intentions. So the playbook they successfully used against a newcomer like Tulsi Gabbard is only going to backfire with Bernie. Not only do the attacks boost support for him, but they open voters’ eyes regarding the true intentions of so-called ‘liberal’ media like MSNBC.
Plus I doubt Sanders can be smeared as anti-Semitic (Jewish himself after all). I’m convinced that Corbyn must give up any ambitions he might have to be PM for Labour to have any hope of forming a Government.
Sanders isn’t Corbyn.
The notion that Warren is staying in the race in order to angle for that VP slot on the ticket with Biden at the convention or that she’s already negotiated with Biden for this is an idea some Sanders supporters are convinced of. I’m a long, long, long term supporter of Bernie, and I’ve found it very lamentable the kind of ire I’ve seen towards her from some of my friends, but I have to admit that it is getting a little tricky to try to figure out what her game plan is, given the flip from condemning Super PACs and decrying the other candidates to 1-2 days later announcing the acceptance of the Persist PAC (that was actually registered last year) that will drop a reported $12 million ad onslaught for her (which her campaign will only reveal who is funding it at the end of March), and that the two recent polls for her here in MA show her down below Bernie in her own state – down by 1 point in the UML poll from a few days ago, and now down by 8 points in the WBUR poll that was released today.
All for a Hail Mary pass is quite plausible, but it also doesn’t pass the smell test as the only plausible explanation.
The thought of her playing second fiddle to Biden makes my skin crawl, especially given the quasi-mythological origin story about how it was Biden’s work for the credit card industry and against the rights of families undergoing bankruptcy which caused her to transform from stuffy academic to political fighter. Of course, there are various additional issues with that pairing, particularly that it would be two white people from blue states in their 70s. I find the idea of Georgia’s Stacey Abrams being on the ticket with Bernie Sanders vastly more promising for multiple reasons, some of which should be extremely apparent.
Remember when Warren was viewed as the Progressive who could bridge the divide within the party? She’s so thoroughly burned those bridges, that now she’s considered just another ‘Not Bernie’ candidate. For someone who is so good on policy and presentation, Warren has awful political instincts.
That’s still how I view her.
I agree re: political instincts in this particular race.
I do believe she can still be a bridge builder, but she needs to make a difficult decision in order to accomplish this. That would be to drop out and endorse Bernie to put her supporters behind his movement and help him get to 50+1% or put her weight behind Biden to make him the Stop Sanders candidate. After she loses MA, she will not have any remaining relevance as a candidate. I don’t envy her position. I only wish we saw Nevada Warren before IA and NH…
Then you misunderstand me. I mean bridge builder as the nominee. She can be the person acceptable to both Sanders supporters and supporters of more moderate candidates – everyone’s second choice. I’m not ready to write her off in MA yet. Why are you so anxious to wrap this up? If I were a voter in a May/June, or even April state I’d be resenting the heck out of these discussions.
Of COURSE Elizabeth Warren has “awful political instincts”. That’s an important reason why I support her, specifically in contrast to Mr. Sanders or Mr. Biden.
I think Ms. Warren is where she is because of who she is. I think that for each issue, she gathers the best information she can find. I think she collects the best interpretations of that data that she can find from the best experts in the relevant domains. I think she then works with her advisers to craft her response.
To the extent that she looks at the politics, I think she does that at AFTER she has understood the space. I think her process is:
1. Look at the facts and find the best approach
2. Understand the implications, challenges, and risks of the result
3. Formulate the best way to present the result from a political perspective.
I frankly can’t imagine Ms. Warren participating in any sort of you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours horse-trading with anybody. Have you ever met her? Were you paying attention while the CFPB was being created?
Do you think it was her political instincts to absolutely skewer officials of the Barack Obama administration about policy decisions? When the CFPB finally started to happen, do you think it was coincidence that Ms. Warren was almost immediately ruled out as its head? Do you think it was “political instincts” that led her to support it nevertheless?
This rock-hard to commitment to doing what’s right — to the best of her ability and independently from the politics — is what sets her apart from the other candidates.
That’s why I support her.
My fellow Revere speech and debate coach made the same argument. He always votes for the candidate whose character he likes the best. He voted for McGovern in 84′ since he thought he was the most honest and authentic candidate knowing full well he had little shot at winning the nomination that year, let alone, winning the presidency. He stuck with Warren. I admire that position.
I switched for two reasons:
1) I want to avoid a contested convention
If Warren is knocked out in MA, she’s bound to drop out. That will help the winnowing process that IA, NH, and NV failed to provide. If the race comes down to my vote, I can live with putting Bernie over the top and could not live with a contested convention.
2) I genuinely like Bernie Sanders
Many Warren supporters do not (you and my dad for instance), and I would not ask them to vote for a candidate they do not like in a primary just to follow rule #1. I am making an effort to convince people I know who like them both to follow rule #1 (like my mom).
I think you’re overlooking what was meant by political instincts.
It’s having all of the qualities you cite and then running an identity-focused campaign similar to Hillary’s. It’s reacting to questions and doing things like the DNA test or rolling out the complex Medicare for All funding. Letting the press coverage control your campaign rather than sticking to your message. I like her for so many reasons and think she will make a great President, hopefully soon, but she thinks that the best policy arguments are the way to win in our current political environment, and that’s why she’s sitting below the viability threshold in most Super Tuesday states and why she might lose or just narrowly win her home state.
@doubleman:
I agree with all that. This is all why I said, at the very beginning, that my preference was for her to remain the senior Senator from Massachusetts, because I think she can accomplish more of her agenda in that role.
She made the decision to enter the primary, and she will retain her Senate seat even she does not win the nomination. That’s why I feel good about supporting her, and that’s why I’ll vote for her without regard to her chances of winning.
I joined many of us here during the 2016 campaign in saying that Mr. Sanders continued candidacy was good and important even if he could not win (and it was clear from very early on that he would not win) because his continued presence steered the party agenda.
I think the same is true about Ms. Warren, in spades. I think we need her voice. I think we need her perspective. Even if she is ultimately not the nominee, I think that her continuing contributions are vital.
I agree with much of that, but if the only way for her to reasonably continue after Super Tuesday is from spending by a billionaire-backed SuperPAC and by an argument that she should win a brokered convention with 10-15% of pledged delegates over someone with around 40%, then I think her campaign becomes a huge disservice to the process and to her political career – it will overshadow her ideas.
I had hoped that we might have a race where Sanders and Warren are combining for 60-70% in many states. Nothing close has happened.
@Sanders and Warren are combining for 60-70% in many states:
Agreed. I think the sad reality is that we progressives do not enjoy that level of support even among Democrats.
America as a whole remains a nation where about half of our active voters still support Donald Trump and the Trumpist party.
That, frankly, terrifies me. I think it will take decades and generations to recover what we have lost — if we do at all.
She’d be a very strong contender in 2024. One of the reasons Bernie did better this time around is because he learned and grew from his first run. I think an open presidential race post-Trump would be a perfect opportunity for her brand of leadership. Even 2028 since she’d be the same age as her older opponents this year haha.
BTW, professional wrong person, Markos Moulitsas, is convinced that Warren is the only option left to stop Bernie.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/24/1921456/-Elizabeth-Warren-is-the-only-candidate-who-can-stop-Bernie-Sanders-if-that-s-really-your-goal
In a two-person race, that may be true. But that’s not the reality we’re in. It looks like she could be below viable in more than half the states on Tuesday. That ain’t a path to victory.
He actually makes a good argument, I just think it would have been more persuasive before Bernie, Biden, Mayor Pete, and even Klobuchar outperformed her in her backyard.
I think Nevada Warren going full blast after Bernie, not on the woman running for President conversation which backfired, but something like “A socialist clown to the left of me and centrist jokers to my right, here I am stuck in the middle with you”. That’s the pitch now-but it’s 4-5 weeks too late.
@That’s the pitch now-but it’s 4-5 weeks too late.:
I think it’s a fine pitch, then and now. I think it’s a fine pitch because I think it’s an accurate and succinct summary of where we stand.
I think that the results of the MA primary are irrelevant to the accuracy of that pitch. I think that’s especially so given that Massachusetts Democratic Primary voters are arguably among the most extreme radical voters in the nation. I think it’s a serious mistake to assume that the MA primary results will be representative in any way.
If she cannot win her homestate she should drop out. I see no reason for her to drop out before Massachusetts votes, and no reason for her to stay in if we vote for another candidate. No animus toward Warren, I think Pete, Amy, and Mike should also follow this advice.
I don’t think any candidate should drop out until it is clear that the candidate cannot prevail.
I don’t agree that losing in the Massachusetts primary has any national significance, because I don’t believe that Massachusetts is representative of the larger picture.
I think Mr. Bloomberg is still a wild-card. He’s been all over the map with his policies, donations, and activism. Several of his proposals are closer to Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren than to any of the center/moderate candidates. I think Mr. Buttigieg, Ms. Klobuchar, and Mr. Biden are splitting the center/moderate field.
I’ve been struck by the argument James Carville is making — he says that the premise that Democrats will win by turning out new voters is like climate change deniers arguing against the entire body of climatologists. Mr. Carville argues that virtually every journeyman political scientist rejects the turn-out-new-voters strategy as unrealistic. I just saw a piece (I don’t have the URL at hand) presenting current polling data that suggests that first-time and infrequent voters split between Trumpists and Democrats.
You (JamesConway) are much more a political scientist than me. I’m not sure that any of the Democratic candidates can do what needs to be done in November. I think both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will be soundly defeated if nominated.
If Mr. Carville is correct, then I think three candidates might get where we need to be (in alphabetical order): Mike Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. I find don’t trust Mr. Bloomberg at all, and I’m not at all confident that he will do what needs doing if elected. I don’t think Ms. Klobuchar is nearly ready for the office. I think she’s a likable Senator who means well. I just don’t see her as presidential. I think Elizabeth Warren is the best of the lot.
If a Democratic victory in November means attracting voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016, then I think Mr. Biden has too much baggage with corruption. I think Mr. Sanders is way too easy to smear as “too radical”. I think Mr. Buttigieg combines the unpreparedness of Ms. Klobuchar with the added baggage of his gender preference (I think that still matters to Trumpists).
All of this leads to my bottom line that no candidate should drop out at this stage of the race, and I think no one state should be viewed as decisive — up or down — with the possible exception of California.
There is plenty of polling suggesting either Biden or Sanders could defeat Trump.
@ polling:
Understood.
I’m truly gun-shy because the polling so confidently predicted a Clinton win — electoral and popular — in 2016.
Oh, and by the way — just what is the plan if Mr. Trump and Senate Trumpists declare a national emergency because of the corona virus pandemic, and use that to make the two national conventions illegal?
We’ve already seen the appointment of the completely incompetent Mike Pence to lead the effort, the muzzling of scientists who are competent, the completely botched handling of the tourists brought home to CA, and the attacks and persecution of the whistleblower who had the courage to reveal what happened.
This administration knows no bounds, and I haven’t yet seen evidence that the Democrats have a clue about how to handle what’s already going down.
While we’re arguing about our candidates, this administration is conducting a genuine purge on several fronts.
I know this is a rambling answer, but all of this Democratic Party back-and-forth increasingly strikes me as completely irrelevant to the events happening at a rapid pace in the real world.
You’re engaging in conspiracy theories again! The coronavirus does not nullify the first amendment right to peaceably assemble and I doubt the parties themselves would be so afraid of it as to cancel.
I invite you to learn more about the emergency powers already granted the federal government with regard to quarantines. For example, this CDC slide show from 2009 includes the following (page 13, emphasis mine):
The CDC already has the power and that power has already been tested in court.
We have given our federal government enormous discretionary power over the years, because our federal government has by and large shown great restraint in its use of such power.
The current administration has shown not just a willingness, but outright ZEAL to abuse such power. Have you ever heard of a president publicly attacking an individual juror BY NAME? Do you really think the GOP leaders in the Senate would stand up to resist federal quarantine orders that might well be popular with a panicked electorate and might well ensure their continued majority?
I must ask you to please show a bit more courtesy before making rash accusations of “conspiracy theories”. In my opinion, you are FAR too trusting of an administration and party that has already showing itself completely undeserving of such faith.
There’s no way what you bolded passes constitutional muster, especially for something at the very foundation of our political life. I could see getting away with something like concerts that do not have political import. The pushback would be amazing, plus I’m sure Trump would want his own four day televised rally. We will NOT become the dictatorship you fear, and I do not respect that fear – period!
Also, while I’m obviously not an expert on this I strongly suspect the coronavirus will be yesterday’s news by the time conventions roll around.
I hope your optimism is warranted.
Just because you say something doesn’t make it so. I invite you to use Google to find some cites to back up your opinion about the provisions I highlighted. I say that because I started from the same faith as you and landed in a different place after looking at the precedents already in place.
I’m citing a 2009 publication of the CDC. There’s been ten years to correct it, and it remains unchanged. I’m happy to back that up with other precedents if you like. I really don’t think you appreciate how much power we have already ceded to the federal government.
By what process do you suggest that the pushback would have any effect at all? Do you think Mike Pence will say “no” if Mr. Trump gives the order? Once Mr. Pence has given the order, how do you see it being countermanded?
It would be an illegal order and would have no force and effect. If I’m Tom Perez and Pence calls me up and says I can’t have the convention, I would nod and smile, thank him for his input, then call my balloon vendor and double the order for the final evening. If we could have a full election process in 1864 certainly we can now.
Really, who’s been winning primaries here for years. It’s generally mainstream Dems, not radicals of any type. I mean, we chose Coakley in two major primary races.
@doubleman: Yeah, I hear you. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.
I have a suspicion that Abrams is the one with which a deal could be made to announce some kind of early ticket – either with Biden or with Bloomberg (if Biden doesn’t do well on Tuesday).
I don’t get the infatuation with someone who has only been a state legislator.
Yeah the Times piece I linked to up thread makes the same argument. I think it’s a strong ticket, although I know some here question her experience or national exposure. She has given the best SOTU response I’ve seen and can hopefully deliver GA or at least NC.
Contrary to the endless repetition among pundits, Biden does not have to win South Carolina, although he will.
Why not? Because even if he were not to do so, he would remain the only candidate capable of bringing the various wings of the Democratic Party into a coalition.
But he will.
Even with a Sanders win I’ll still wait until actual Super Tuesday results. Polls I’ve seen suggest either of your first two options is plausible.
This is looking like a big Biden win, no doubt about it. Steyer already dropping out. I think Biden could still use the Hail Mary of putting Warren in the ticket while giving Bloomberg a job to make him go away. Amy and Pete are already done, but Mike is really eating into his support and Liz on the ticket gives him the progressives who aren’t sold on Bernie.