Spotlight Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, the radical left-wing Socialist darling is widely thought to be way in the lead.
Nate Silver at 538 says Sanders Is The Front-Runner After New Hampshire, And A Contested Convention Has Become More Likely.
- Model takeaway No. 1: Sen. Bernie Sanders is the most likely person to win the Democratic nomination.
- Model takeaway No. 2: The chance of there being no pledged delegate majority — which could potentially lead to a contested convention — is high and increasing.
“The model needs post-New Hampshire polling to make sense of a chaotic race.“
Indeed, the polls on Real Clear Politics are so stale as to be seem useless.
February Primaries
- Nevada Caucus Feb 22: Latest Poll January 11
- South Carolina Primary: Latest Poll February 2
Super Tuesday March 3 State Polls
- California Latest: January 27
- Texas Latest: January 30
- North Carolina Latest: February 5
- Massachusetts Latest: September 5
- Maine Latest: October 21
- Virginia Latest: September 15
- Utah Latest: January 22
- Colorado Latest: August 19
- Oklahoma Latest: July 27
Problem With Models
The problem with models is they cannot think.
The polls are very stale, but if you dig, you can see some trends that are very easy to overlook. Let’s hone in on Texas and North Carolina.
Texas Polls
North Carolina Polls
What’s Happening?
While all the other candidates were spending money on ads and campaigning in Iowa, then New Hampshire, and now Nevada and South Carolina, Bloomberg has been running uncontested ads in places like Texas and North Carolina.
That is how you jump from 0% to 5% to 9% to 16% in Texas.
That is how you jump from 0% to 8% to 15% (average of overlapping polls) in North Carolina.
What’s Not Reflected?
Neither Iowa or New Hampshire is reflected in those polls. Nor is the rise of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.
I expect contributions for both to rise and contributions for Warren and Biden to dive.
But Buttigieg and Klobuchar are both going to have to spend a considerable amount of money just to compete in Nevada and South Carolina, two very unimportant states delegate-wise.
Meanwhile, and unseen, Bloomberg is running ads in numerous places in an attempt to win blacks, Biden’s strong point.
Trends
Consider the February 10 Quinnipiac University Poll.
Trend Analysis
- Biden went from 21% to 17%, topping long ago at 30%, a very poor trend.
- Sanders went from 15% to 25%, his peak. This is a good trend.
- Warren went from 28% to 14%, her low, a very poor trend.
- Buttigieg went from 10% to 10%, topping at 16%, consistent mediocrity.
- Bloomberg went from 0% to 15%, his peak and an amazingly good trend.
Second Choice
It’s hardly a surprise that radicals supporting Warren would gravitate to the next most radical candidate, Sanders.
The big surprise is that those backing Buttigieg want next to nothing to do with Sanders.
What About Race and Education?
Bloomberg tops Sanders in appealing to blacks and to moderates.
Sanders appeals to the liberals and the uneducated (an overlapping group for sure).
Bloomberg Becoming More Popular With Black Voters
Please consider Why Bloomberg is Becoming More Popular With Black Voters
As former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s past comments endorsing stop-and-frisk are reposted online by critics, new polling shows his presidential campaign is increasingly finding support among black voters. Bloomberg is currently the second-most popular Democratic candidate among black voters, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday, with his support jumping to 22% from 7% late last month. This corresponds with a significant decrease in black voters backing former Vice President Joe Biden, who is currently beating out Bloomberg in black support by five percentage points.
This trend may seem odd, given that Bloomberg is a former Republican who won only one-quarter of black voters in his last mayoral campaign. And, while his record of aggressive policing in black and Latino communities may not be widely known outside of New York, recent controversy surrounding a video of a speech Bloomberg gave at the Aspen Institute in 2015 defending that record could lead to the issue having more of an impact. “Ninety-five percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” he said in the video. “You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities (ages) 15 to 25.”
On Thursday, Bloomberg apologized for those comments, saying “It’s just not the way that I think, and it doesn’t reflect what I do every day.” He initially apologized for his support of stop-and-frisk right before the launch of his campaign in November of last year, though he had been defending the practice just 10 months earlier.
Soon after the video began circulating, Rep. Gregory Meeks, who is chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party, joined two other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to officially endorse Bloomberg. Another black elected official from New York came out in support on Thursday as well: Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren. Outside of his home state, Bloomberg has racked up endorsements from black elected officials, including Mayors Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, London Breed of San Francisco and Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, and Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who is a former Black Panther.
“For the African American community, it’s two things: one, beating Trump, and, two, progress and success – that we do admire people who are successful,” Meeks – who is now the co-chair of the campaign’s Mike for Black America National Leadership Council – told City & State. Meeks noted that Bloomberg could contrast his self-made wealth with Trump’s.
Former Rep. Charlie Rangel, from Harlem, also praised Bloomberg’s work on gun violence as a plus for candidacy. He is still enthusiastically backing Biden but named Bloomberg as the best second choice. “Nobody that I can think of individually has done more to try to ban illegal guns and that is a big one for most of us,” he told City & State.
Overthinking the Moderate Split
Bernie has very consistent, loyal, and enthusiastic support. Once people are in his camp, they tend to stay there.
But the polls show he is not good at bringing new people into his clan.
One factor I keep reading about is the 4-way moderate split between Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg.
But what good has it actually done Sanders?
For all the “Bernie! Bernie!” brouhaha, Sanders actually trails Buttigieg in delegates.
Looking ahead, will Buttigieg be able to raise enough funds to compete with Bloomberg?
Klobuchar?
If and when Buttigieg drops out, it does not look likely Sanders would be the beneficiary.
Models, Models
I am a big fan of Nate Silver, but models don’t think and can’t think.
I see this all the time in economic analysis in which the model cannot adjust for extreme weather.
In this case, there is no history in which a Billionaire sat out the first 4 primaries and caucuses while pursuing this kind of ad campaign strategy.
Humans can think but their models depend on history that has never been modeled because it has never happened before.
Silver was was off in 2016 and I repeatedly said so.
I believe it’s happening again.
So I placed my modest bet today: I Just Made the Max Predictit Bet on Bloomberg
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
There is a lot of data on shootings and homicides in Chicago at heyjackass.com. A disproportionate share of the perps and the victims appear to come from heavily black sections of town (e.g. Austin, Garfield Park). This has been the case for years. Maybe Bloomberg’s standing in the black community is not as low as the experts think, especially among blacks who vote and are concerned about becoming crime victims themselves. Homicides went down much faster (per 100,000 population) in NYC during the Giuliani and Bloomberg years than it did in other large American cities.
“Can Bloomberg Win Texas? The Presidency? Why Not?”
I’ve already explained why not. I’d say it again, but you’d just censor it.
I’m sorry, but not having a college degree is not the same as uneducated. That’s the sort of condescension that lost Hillary lots of votes and got Trump elected.
What about the disaffected Bolsheviks when victory is snatched from
Bernie in a brokered convention? Hard to see them lining up for Bloomberg.
Well – I guess they’ll just have to live with Trump then. If they are ok with that, then Trump is the winner. If not, they’ll have to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of the evils.
The worst prediction Mish has ever made was that the debt bubble would never be re-blown. OK, that one was debunked quickly. The prediction that Bloomberg will beat Trump is the second worst of his predictions. Once the dems steal the nomination from Bernie and give it to Bloomberg, how many Bernie Bros do you think will go out and vote for Bloomberg? Even if 25% of them stay home or write in Bernie, Bloomberg has no chance. He has no chance anyway. No incumbent president with a good economy has EVER lost re-election. It has never happened. Trump will also boost his black vote from 8% to at least 12%. That alone wins it for him.
Bloomberg is the underdog 7to1. So bet on him. Personally i don’t care. I have no skin in this.
I think he can win Florida, a suburb of New Yawk.
Has anybody made on attack or even acknowledged that Bloomstink is in the race? NO. He hasn’t even been in a debate yet.
Posts like this are why I have been a loyal reader since the financial crisis. “Models don’t think” is profoundly true, necessitating for forecasting and for decision making the opinion and analysis and even intuition which wise and creative and smart humans can supply situationally. Very often one such human has proved to be Mish and some of the commentators here. This recognition I extend despite my eternal disagreement that Trump was an acceptable alternative to any candidate, even a HRC.
Depends on if you believe advertising will work or not. Especially television advertising. Personally I’m pretty good at tuning out the traditional :30, but I used to work in the industry and figure I’ve seen at least 10X more than what most people see (and I’ve seen how the sausage is made). So far I’ve heard very little of what he stands for, just that “he’ll get it done,” which for a libertarian such as myself isn’t a selling point. I’m still looking for the candidate with the slogan “I won’t do anything,” but I guess that ship sailed after the Coolidge administration.
Sanders so far looks to be the candidate most likely to personally do a good job, by following the Harrison playbook…..
Of course, the problem is never which self promoting clown happens to get enough indoctrinated Stumpies to clench their fists and cheer for him. But rather, it is the underlying structure of granting effectively unconstrained power to self promoting clowns in the first place. So, no matter how noble a sacrifice Harrison personally performed for the country, it obviously didn’t end up doing much good in the end.
Yes Mini Mike can help me drop weight by regulating the size of my Coke bottle.
Thanks Mike
Texas will not elect a gun grabber. The dems in Texas might, but not in the general.
I see Bloomberg ads on your website. Are you on his payroll as a mini influencer? I don’t think Micro Mike is going to survive that Aspen audio even though I agree with him. Telling blacks they need to be ‘thrown up against a wall’ and searched isn’t going to play well once it is featured in GOP ads coast to coast. Also Bloomberg has an atrocious record for feminists. Sixty plus! sexual harrasment suits plus his own boasting about having a girl in every city. For all of Trump’s reputation as a Playboy he really wasn’t that promiscuous. Ivana, Marla Maples and Melania were the women in his life over the past 50 years not Stormy Daniels.
I have no control over ads. I am likely a target simply because of the title of the post and the mention of his name.
The reason Bloomberg has a chance of winning it all is the same reason Trump won in 2016 – every opponent is fatally flawed – and Trump ceiling is around 45%. It also doesnt hurt that Bloomberg literally punched Trump in the mouth on twitter today unlike anyone else. FWIW I believe Bloomberg felt similar to Howard Schultz but realized that running as a Democrat would be the only way to win after seeing how flawed the other Dem candidates were. Bloomberg can also attract the anti Trump vote with his take no shit attitude and independents with his views on guns and the economy. The superdelegates would tip the floor fight in favor of the candidate who has the best chance to win against Trump. Trump has neutered Biden. Sanders would have no shot as a self described socialist. Buttigieg is a small town mayor that would look overmatched against Trump. A Bloomberg/Klobuchar ticket would have the best shot against Trump and his machine.
Bloomberg is a game-changer operating at a level way beyond anything Trump – a lesser level real estate billionaire – ever conceived:
Essentially, he represents a naked buy-out of one of the two major political parties in an adversarial system (which I personally deplore btw) who may very well effect the end of that system and engender a fundamental rethink of the Republic’s core structures. Put another way: no way the traditional setups can survive such an extraordinary individual-controlled intervention.
(PS: Good thing Trump will still probably win: he has a movement; Bloomberg will never have anything more than money.)
Really impressed by our host’s commentary, I seriously thought Mish cut and paste this from some political pundit! Minor correction: “But the polls show he [Sanders] is not good at bringing new people into his klan” should read –clan–not klan, unless that pun was an intentional joke.
Thanks – Klan was unintentional.
Fixed
And yes, that analysis was mine other than the lengthy clip in Block Quotes which I found by looking for Bloomberg Black support.
Humm one billionaire for nyc does not like another billionaire from nyc. Is what it sounds like to me.
Gotta say, if Bloomberg gets the nomination, it will be fun listening to the silence from people who have spent years screaming about money buying American elections.
Felix, I don’t think there will be silence. That crowd may be noisier than ever because their point is well made in a billionaire vs billionaire ballot.
Remember this spot-on analysis?
Fascinating. Like reading old newspapers and magazines.
I found comments from a couple of people who are commenters now:@Carl_R
@wootendw and @joelg5 . Probably missed other(s).
Thanks for noting that. It is, indeed, fascinating.
I said I’d move to Oregon if Hillary won because she would get US into a nuke war.
She didn’t win so I ended up in Oklahoma – where home prices are much cheaper.
This was just about the time I made a dinner bet with an old friend in the DC suburbs of Maryland. I picked Trump to win. My friend said no way.
Only a week before the election, when I was back in AZ, he called me to tell me he could almost smell the delicious dinner I was going to buy him. Well, now we know how that turned out.
My friend is still recovering from TDS.
No. A New York liberal cannot be elected president.
Yes, but: It is extremely difficult to defeat an incumbent president in this country. The last time it happened, in 1992, Ross Perot siphoned away 19% of the vote running as an independent, and most of it from Bush senior. That, combined with James Carville’s snarky, “It’s the economy, stupid” campaign theme enabled the Clinton clan escape from Arkansas. He was sworn in during the second quarter of the Bush recovery due to an appallingly incompetent Bush campaign.
I think it’s Trump’s to lose, but today’s events prove he’s fully capable of doing that if he persists with the damn Twitter storms. Even his own AG is kicking his ass over it, rightfully so.
“The last time it happened, in 1992, Ross Perot siphoned away 19% of the vote….”
Which also happened to be the last time a billionaire self funded a major campaign……
“… Twitter storms. Even his own AG is kicking his ass over it, rightfully so.”
Trump is right to speak up. The foreman of the Stone jury was a rabid democrat operative who tweet stormed against Trump. There is no way that person should have been on the jury.
The gang of four prosecutors is also corrupt.
It’s obvious to all that the jury foreman was profoundly biased and should never have been allowed on the jury. She’s also a lawyer, so obviously knew to keep her mouth shut outside the jury room.
This was a slam dunk reversal and re-trial…AT WORST until The Donald indulged himself in yet another twitter attack, coming over the top of his legal hired help and enabling the leftist idiots to distract the country from the criminal FISA gang that I’m really interested in jailing.
Bloomberg has no chance other than being strictly anti-Trump. He represents the status quo, the red team media has already tarred him over the soda ban and other weirdness, and he has no discernible personality. Trump is a skilled WWE-style entertainer, Bloomberg has none of that charisma.
People are taking the “if Trump can win, anyone can!” idea waaaay too far. Trump knows how to work a crowd and how to play to the cameras, most politicians don’t. Most importantly, Trump also represented change (in theory, anyway) and only three blue teamers can claim this mantle- Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang. Of those, only Bernie remains.
If the Democrat base, including a chunk of Sandersites, are willing to hold their nose and vote against Trump, Bloomberg should be as good as any, at getting middle-of-the-road moderates away from Trump.
Problem becomes the Democrat base, though. There’s just too many of them, for Trump to be beatable, if a big enough share of them decide to just sit it out. And they’re mostly young, hence statistically more likely to stay home instead of voting for some least of evils in the first place.
Trump starts off with a base that is going nowhere. Even if Trump is also a New York Liberal from an NRA/GOA POV; against openly gun grabbing Bloomberg, anyone who ever watched a Western and played with a water pistol as a kid, will drag themselves off the couch to vote GOP. Bloomberg cannot overcome that, unless he can rely on at least a decent chunk of Sandersites coming out for him.
It’s quite likely that the DNC will shoot itself in the foot by trying to sabotage Sanders again. The Sandersites will lose their mind of this happens, and it’s extremely unlikely they’ll go for Bloomberg
” change (in theory, anyway)” Trump has made a lot of positive changes that you did not read about in CNN or MSNBC. For example, name another president that has been eliminating un-needed regulations.
I’m talking change in the “end the wars”, “lock her up”, “build the wall”, “big fat ugly bubble” stuff he talked about in 2016. Spare me the 4D chess analysis, I’ll follow Q if I want to start deluding myself. Cheerleading for lower rates isn’t remotely what he campaigned on.
I know I know, he’ll do everything he promised in his 2nd term, and shame on all of us who ever doubted him. He surrounded himself with neocons to keep his enemies closer, after all.
If Trump was playing 4D chess the Chinese were playing 5D Hungry, Hungry Hippos. The negotiations have humiliated Trump and Navarro. Should have listened to Stockman.
Every President removes some unneeded regulations. While at the same time, adding lots and lots more.
It’s the net that counts. No matter how many piddly little “regulations” affecting two of his golf buddies by letting them save a buck fifty, Trump has “removed,” he has made up for it at least thousandfold by tariff idiocy alone. Ditto a few million in tax cuts, made up for by a few billion in added borrowing… Call back when a President leaves with a smaller, and less invasive, US government than he entered with.
The last President who net removed regulation, was Washington. By getting rid of tea taxes, gun restrictions and other childish, braindead nonsense. After him, it’s been nothing but downhill, no matter which party has nominally been in charge. A trend Trump has done exactly nothing to change.
Bloomberg headline today, he blames the 2008 crisis on bank loans to black people. This guy got to 15 fast but is going to flame out at 20 max. He is a bad max bet Mish.
Not nearly that complex: if Trump can, ANYONE can.
On a side note, does ANYONE believe Trump’s tweets make Barr’s job impossible?
“the lady doth protest too much methinks”.
I stated my case in a comment in the previous thread.
The only thing I have to add to that is I cannot believe that the electorate in this country, in a time of record-breaking income and wealth inequality is going to elect a Jewish billionaire from NYC/Wall Street to be their next President. No. Not going to happen. He may be the nominee of the totally dysfunctional and on-their-way-to-oblivion Democrats, but he is completely un-electable on a national level.
Exactly. As a Jew myself, I will believe America capable of electing a Jewish President when it elects a Jewish President and not a second before.
Trump doubled the incumbent president vote in New Hampshire.
Is that remotely meaningful?
Only if you think the NH primary vote amounts to anything. The MSM seems to think it’s a big deal.
“Is that remotely meaningful?”
Yes.
Of course it is meaningful. It shows just how fired up his base is, which is a sign of great turnout for the election.
It’s meaningful if it reflects the enthusiasm on the part of likely Trump voters.
A sitting President typically has no primary opponent, so turnout in his party’s caucuses & primaries (absent a hot statewide race) typically is low. In 2020, though, the 32,000+ Iowa caucus-goers on the GOP side was a record-setting number for an incumbent seeking re-election. Similarly, Trump got about 125K votes in the NH GOP primary, more than double the haul that GWB or Obama got when running for re-election.