Early Results from NH

Hillary wins Dixville Notch, NH, 4-2 over Trump! (Sanders 1, Romney 1)
Hillary wins Hart's Location, NH, 17-14 over Trump! (Johnson 3, Sanders 2, Kasich/Sanders 1)
Trump trounces Hillary in Millsfield, NH, 16-4! (Sanders 1)

That puts NH currently running at Trump 48% Clinton 38%, Sanders 6%, Johnson 5%, Romney 2%.
Protest votes are spoiling the election for Hillary!!!!

(These three NH towns have midnight voting and are allowed to close and count the results after 100% of registered voters have cast their vote. One can only imagine the peer pressure if someone decided not to vote this year....)

Swing State Predictions

My analysis of the key states that pundits are talking about. Anyone that I'm missing that you're curious about? Let me know in the comments.

That puts Clinton at a solid 317 EV with a good shot at 347.

As a side note, I didn't have a lot of info to work with. Less than half what I saw 4 and 8 years ago, and almost all of it from universities and other high-variance pollsters. Big names like ORG, Fox, and Survey USA almost completely stopped polling more than a month ago, and many other reliable pollsters are totally absent this time around. Curious....

Republicans for Hillary

Apparently bipartisanship is being reborn. The past few weeks have seen a surge in the number of prominent Republicans endorsing Hillary Clinton over Trump. Below is a running list of the prominent figures that I could find. If you know of any that I have missed, write them in the comments!
(While many more have denounced Trump, indicating that they will vote third party or write-in, I am focusing exclusively on ones who have publicly endorsed Hillary.)

Prognostication and Prophecy for Mini Tuesday

A number of people have written to ask me about my predictions for today. I was going to sit this one out (for very good reasons), but I will cave to peer pressure and at least tell everyone why my best guesses are little more than casting runes.

The polls are so wrong, so often, and getting worse. Plus, no one is bothering to poll the nation, so I have no 'norm' signal to work from. Add in republican heads exploding the number of open primaries, well...

Here are the five approaches I have been looking at, including how well they have done this year. (Note: when multiple models explode on the launch pad, you have a phenomenon that is technically referred to as @%$#!)

Approach 1: Model the polls as noisy observations, each with their own bias and variance. 

Accuracy to date: Piss poor.

Computer output for Mar 15: You're lying to me. There's no way that all of those polls are coming from those pollsters, or from those races.

Approach 2: Model the whole nation using national and regional polls to treat each state as a local deviation from a norm. 

Accuracy to date: Roughly accurate, but highly uncertain.

Computer output for Mar 15: [An error 0xc0000100F has occurred transferring execution. If the problem persists, please contact your election administrator.]

Approach 3: Pick the largest outlier polls, and use momentum to decide whether you use the largest or smallest spread for the apparent leader.

Accuracy to date: Fairly decent. Which is kind of scary.

Computer output for Mar 15:

   Florida: Trump >25 (or Trump <6)

   Illinois: Trump <4 (or Trump >13)

   Missouri: No data available

   North Carolina: Trump <6 (or Trump >20)

   Ohio: Kasich >6 (or Trump >6)

Approach 4: Determine historical correlations between state results, and use exit polls and actual results from states that have already voted to predict.

Accuracy to date: Fairly good for Super Tuesday. Not a lot of data for previous states.

Computer output for Mar 15:

   Florida: No one votes like Florida. Not even a little bit.

   Illinois: None of the good correlating states have voted yet

   Missouri: Trump or Cruz by <10 (Based on states like MN, OK, TN, KS)

   North Carolina: Trump +8-14 (Difficult, since it normally votes so late, but it reflects nearby southern states)

   Ohio: They're weird. Anyone they kind of resemble hasn't voted yet. Maybe Kasich +2 (based on a bunch of weak correlations on the county level)

Approach 5: Use a Tarot deck

Accuracy to date: No worse than celebrity "statisticians" and pundits

Computer output for Mar 15:
   Florida: Justice [Justice in your future indicates that you will examine your past, and how the actions of your past have brought you to your present. In doing this, you will realize how what you do right now will influence who you become in the future.]   Illinois: Seven of Cups [Flights of fancy and daydreaming are indicated by the Seven of Cups. In the picture we see the many visions of happiness that the character sees in the cups, but they are all unrealistic goals at this time.]   Missouri: The Page of Swords [Symbolizing changing circumstances, unpredictable behaviors, and wavering opinions at the root of the situation. Flexibility and adaptability are key.]

   North Carolina: The Fool [The Fool indicates that the root of your issue lies in a time when you needed to look at your situation with optimism. You had to make a leap of faith, taking only the baggage that benefited you, with the ultimate trust that you would make it alright. You went beyond your boundaries, and worked past your fears. From this experience, you learned to believe that anything is possible.]

   Ohio: The Star [The Star in represents your hopes and dreams. This may indicate the moment that you realized what you wanted to become, or it may remind you of dreams you used to believe could be your future someday.]

Super Tuesday Results

No Surprises on Super Tuesday
The last of the Super Tuesday results are trickling in now, and the net results are about what we expected. Many pundits and campaigns are generating much sound and fury over who "won" the different states. However, I am a pragmatist and the only winner to me is someone who gets closer to winning their party's nomination. With that in mind, it doesn't matter if Trump got 32.7% to Kasich's 30.4% of the vote in Vermont when they both get 6 delegates. With our eyes on the prize, let's see how the candidates on each side did:

While we could quibble over the particulars, this is basically what we were expecting. Although there are several delegates still not decided until all of the results come in, Clinton took approximately 60% of the available delegates, which is exactly what we predicted. The Republicans split the delegates three ways with Trump at 42%, Cruz at 38%, and Rubio at 16%.  Our predictions were Trump at 43%, Cruz 29%, Rubio 25%. While Cruz stole a lot of the delegates we expected to go for Rubio, it was almost completely due to Rubio narrowly missing the threshold in Texas, and being denied all of the 46 delegates (8% of the overall total) that we were projecting there. We talked about that risk, and honestly it was a coin toss whether he was going to make it or not. From the perspective of a data geek and number cruncher, yesterday's vote merely fulfilled expectations.

From here, we can expect Clinton to maintain course, and head into the convention with about 2/3 of the Democratic delegates. Trump is likely to capture 45%-50% of the delegates, depending on how things go in some of the bigger winner-take-all states, like Ohio and Florida. Exactly where he falls along that continuum will decide whether there is a contested convention. If that happens, we are out of the world of statistics and into the realm of psychology/sociology, which makes my ability to predict the outcome somewhat akin to a magic eight ball.

The Polls Still Suck
The total results for Tuesday may have hit the mark, but the individual polls continue to be pretty poor.

• In Texas, twelve polls were taken in the past two weeks, predicting a Cruz win by anywhere from 0-15%, with an average prediction of 8%. He ended up winning by 17%.
• Three polls in Alabama had Trump ahead by 13, 17, or 23%. He ended up winning by 23%.
• In Virginia, the polls claimed Trump leading by 13, 14, or 23%. His final result was just +3%
• Polling the Democrats in Texas looks better at an average of +26% for Clinton versus an actual result of 33%, until you realize the polls were fairly uniformly distributed over 10-42%. An estimate at +/- 16% is not a prediction, it's a guess.
• Georgia was predicted at 28-39% for Clinton, who ended up getting +43%
• Alabama was polled twice in the last two weeks, at +28% and +48% for Clinton. Final result: +60%

Across the board, the polls were awful at doing their job, with individual errors well beyond double the margin of error. In fact, in most cases your best bet is to take one the most extreme outlier poll you can find, and go with that result. 

So how can we still make any sense of this data at all, much less make meaningful predictions like we saw yesterday? Solid modeling from the bottom up. We learn the correlations, we account for evidence, and we keep track of the aggregate uncertainty. The data quality is nuts, and the net result is a much softer number than it has any right to be, but eventually a signal can be extracted from the noise. Which leads us to our two lessons for the day. First, don't trust anyone who is quoting a single poll or telling you how an individual area is going to turn out. Second, fire the pollsters. 

Chris Christie is Taken Hostage Behind Enemy Lines
In the midst of Super Tuesday results rolling in, Trump called a press conference. It started about 45 minutes late, and was basically just a chance for Drumpf to gloat. However, the one very odd component of the whole thing was Chris Christie's introduction. That was the most unenthusiastic introduction I have ever seen, with Christie looking beaten and depressed, mouthing his lines with the same intonation and body language I have seen from hostages and POWs trotted in front of the cameras by their captors. A televised confession from a foreigner in North Korea has more sincerity. It makes you wonder what is the gun that the Trump campaign is holding to his head.

Momentum

Trump Winning the Racist Endorsements
Trump continues to earn the backing of the most racist and xenophobic political figures out there. After scoring big wins from Liberty University's Jerry Falwell Jr. and Maine's controversial governor Paul Le Page, Trump has now scored back-to-back "wins" of KKK leader and former presidential candidate David Duke and the French equivalent and former leader of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen. It is considered unusual for foreign politicians to get involved in American elections, so the last one is a bit of a coup.

Super Tuesday Updates
Several new polls have come out for Super Tuesday races, and most of them are basically in line with the estimates I gave in the last post. However, this is an election where seeing polls swinging 10% in both directions is considered normal variation. There are some swings in both directions, but there's nothing that surprises me. Of course, this is an election where refined polls and the eventual results only bear a superficial resemblance to each other, so I'm just reporting, not predicting.

Clinton Beats the Spread in South Carolina
Hillary Clinton won decisively in the South Carolina primary yesterday. This win, by itself, should not be news even worth mentioning. Every poll and gut check said that a Clinton loss there would be virtually impossible. What is big news, is that Clinton won by 73.5% to 26%, creating a huge margin that is more than double the spread that was expected. Exit polls show that she won almost every group across age, race, gender and income, leaving Sanders only his stereotypical base of 18-24 year olds and white males. Minorities turned out in record numbers to support her. In Sander's own words "We got decimated." This indicates that the entire South is likely out of play for Sanders, with delegate margins even worse than his campaign was planning for. While it is too early to call this one event "The End of Bernie" (which, yes, many political commentators are wont to do), he will have to beat the current margins on Super Tuesday, or drastically change his strategy. We have two days before we find out.

Super Tuesday

Republican Civil War
I'm hearing a lot of hype about how Trump will "sweep Super Tuesday" or how he could become "the unstoppable nominee" after March 1. Cries of how Trump "has no ceiling" after Nevada, as if fulfilling what we have been seeing since Iowa is somehow shocking. True, no one has managed to take him down yet. However, no one has seriously even tried (parting shots of doomed candidates not withstanding).

The reality is that Trump's support continues to hover at a steady 33-35% nationally, where it has been since the middle of December. The race for the other 64% has been VERY dynamic, however, and may be starting to coalesce into two other candidates in time for the real fight over the primaries. As I wrote before, in order to avoid a brokered convention, Trump would need to at least cross that 40% national support line, which remains out of reach. When we break down the Super Tuesday states, using state-wide polls and the proportional allocation rules of each state, we see this prophesy is being fulfilled.

Due to proportional allocation rules, Trump gets about 43% of the delegates, well shy of the 50% he needs to avoid a potentially nasty fight on July 18th in Cleveland.

There is a lot of assumptions put into this delegate assumption (including how congressional districts split and whether pollsters have any business predicting primary elections), but it gives a good estimate of what we might expect March 1st. However, there are a number of edge cases here that are within the sampling errors of these polls (and well within the de facto margins of error). The delegates are awarded proportionally among the candidates who meet the minimum threshold. If you don't meet 20% in Georgia, you get nothing. Some things to keep an eye on:

• If Trump comes in 4% lower in Alabama, that could be a major blow as he would no longer qualify for "winner-takes-all" at 50%. If Rubio gets gets half of that, Trump would lose 22 delegates to be split among Rubio and Cruz.
• Cruz is close to the threshold in Georgia, potentially costing him 20 delegates.
• Rubio is close to the threshold in Alaska, Tennessee, Vermont, and the very important Texas. This could cost him as much as 75 delegates. That's half of his expected winnings on Tuesday. He needs to make a serious play for Bush's supporters, and some of Kasich's. If you live in one of these states, expect to see ads for Rubio popping up everywhere.

Democrats Get To Vote, Too!

For all of you Democrats out there, you may not realize it from the media coverage, but your party votes on March 1st as well. Like every comparison between the Democratic and Republican primaries, it just isn't nearly as exciting as a three-way battle for the heart and soul and future of the party leading to a possible floor fight at the convention. Sadly, adults conducting business in a respectful manner simply isn't as interesting as grown-up kids throwing temper tantrums. C-SPAN could never compete with Toddlers in Tiaras.

For what it's worth, here's the breakdown on the Donkey Race:

Clinton is expected to win, pretty much across the board on Super Tuesday, racking up 2/3 of the available delegates for a net gain of nearly 200. The only cliffhangers are:

• Will Clinton manage to get past the 15% threshold in Vermont?
• Which states will the pollsters get horribly wrong?