The state of the presidential primaries-political scientists weigh-in

The presidential primaries are underway and the math is still fuzzy                                      (Source: The Washington Post)

The Republican presidential primary in South Carolina will take place tomorrow and a caucus will be held for the Democrats in Nevada.  Then, the parties will switch states, with the GOP holding their Nevada caucus on Tuesday, Feb. 23, followed with the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday, Feb. 27th.

Who wins the primary comes down to which candidate from either party gets the most delegates.  And according to the Washington Post, counting delegates can get a little tricky. With different rules for each party and varying delegate allocations per state, the electoral math can get a little fuzzy.  This is further compounded by the order of states in the primary schedule, which has been shown to winnow out the field after the first few contests.

The question of the possibility of the major parties changing Iowa and New Hampshire as the first caucus and primary is raised every four years and to some political scientists, like Charles Anthony of The University of California, Irvine, the change is a possibility because of its negative affect on the Republican Party.

According to Anthony, the present primary schedule is more damaging to the Republicans than the Democrats, unless Bernie Sanders wins the primary, in which case John Kerry and Joe Biden will jump into the race at the convention.

He said, “For the Democrats of late, it really doesn’t hurt them for those to be the first two.  There’s not really any particular motivation for Democrats to change it because, well, it really hasn’t hurt anybody yet.”

On the other hand, Anthony says that the winners of the first two caucuses in either state on the Republican side have been problematic for the GOP:

“But on the Republican side, Iowa now keeps choosing people who go on to be problematic for the party.  Whether it is Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee, or whoever, the Evangelical Right has captured Iowa for the Republicans.  With New Hampshire, while they are both these lily white states, they don’t really look like any other state and you can imagine all sorts of problems. This may get reformed a bit with Trump as the leading contender.”

Charles Taber is a professor of political science at Stony Brook University.  He agrees that the current Republican primary schedule helps Donald Trump, which may eventually serve as an impetus for the GOP to switch up the schedule.

“I think it helps him,” he said of Trump.  “I think that at least having New Hampshire early really helps him.  Cruz performed surprisingly well in Iowa because of that state’s fundamentalist Christian population, especially west in the state. But, once you get to New Hampshire, it’s really a fairly secular state so Cruz didn’t have that. So it helps Donald Trump to have that state earlier.”

Helmut Norpth of Stony Brook University said Donald Trump’s presence in the debate is troubling to many mainstream Republicans.  “It upsets a lot of Republicans who think he shouldn’t get that support and they don’t know what to do,” said Norpoth, between fits of loud coughing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinton and Trump take the lead in polls of the South Carolina primary

Arguably one of the most important states this presidential primary season, South Carolina’s primaries are right around the corner. The results of this primary could be a major turning point for many of the fledgling presidential candidates from either side of the aisle.  It could also set the tone for the front-runners in the subsequent months. The Republican primary in the state is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 20th and the Democratic primary will take place a week later on Feb. 27th.

The most recent presidential primary poll of South Carolina, conducted by CBS News in association with YouGov has Donald Trump in the lead with 40% of the vote, followed by Ted Cruz with 21% and Marco Rubio at 13%.

The results listed above were from a poll conducted over the internet from Jan. 17th to 24th, and the frequencies were obtained from a sample of 805 likely Republican voters in the state.  The poll was conducted with a 5.3% margin of error, meaning that the results could be within a range of 5.3 percentage points above or below the percent listed.

A one-tailed t-test for statistical significance indicates that at a 95% confidence level, all of the differences between the candidates’ results (i.e. Trump’s 40% to Cruz’s 21%, and so on, are statistically significant).  This means that the probability the difference in the numbers is due to statistically random events is only five percent.  The results of this poll, mathematically, will therefore most likely mirror the actual election unless some unforeseen occurrence throws a new wrench into the equation.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is expected to win in South Carolina with 67% of the vote, according to another recent CBS/YouGov poll that was taken over the internet from December 13th to 17th of last year.  Bernie Sanders is expected to get 31% and Martin O’Malley is trailing the two with 2%.  The poll had a 5% margin of error and the sample size of 308, is of likely voters who are registered Democrats.

Akin to the Republican results, a one-tailed t-test indicates that the differences in frequencies for the Democratic contenders represents a statistically significant difference at a 95% confidence level.

South Carolina is a bellwether state for the presidential primary.  According to the Washington Post, more often than not, South Carolina’s electorate sides with the eventual nominee in the Republican primary.  Since Ronald Reagan’s primary win in 1980 to the present time, the only primary when the results in South Carolina did not reflect the eventual winner was when Newt Gingrich won in 2012.

 

 

 

Marco Rubio taken down by a machine of his own design

Marco Rubio speaking at Londonderry High School Photo by Genevieve DiNatale

A little less than a week before Marco Rubio lost the New Hampshire primary, he held an early morning Town Hall meeting in the cafeteria of Londonderry High School on Sunday, Feb. 7.  Flanking the entryway were demonstrators dressed as robots holding signs that said, “Robot Rubio.”  Inside the cafeteria were an eclectic bunch of largely conservative skeptics who had yet to make up their mind about which Republican they wanted to vote for in the primary.  To some, Rubio was P.T. Barnum incarnate and the Town Hall, his circus.

“I’ve come up here since 1988 for the show. I’m here like going to a restaurant, a high class restaurant, they always have good things on the menu.  Every entrée is good.  That’s what the Republicans have, a menu of good candidates,” said Glenn Fiskus, a longtime resident of Boston who came to New Hampshire for the event.

In the debate the night before, Rubio was berated by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who attacked him with the death throes of a dying candidate.  Christie took Rubio down when he called him out on his “canned,” repetitive rhetoric.  He said, “when you are president of the United States, when you are governor of a state, the memorized 30 second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it, doesn’t solve one problem for one person.”

Photo by Genevieve DiNatale

The following day, Rubio’s poll numbers drastically declined according to a statistically significant poll from a PAC affiliated with the Kasich campaign called New Day for America.  Rubio went from second place in New Hampshire to fourth, following the debate.

Yet, Rubio went on regardless and in a singsongy voice, the second-rate darling of the Republican Party towed the party line for two hours in front of a mishmash of confused voters who wanted to be convinced.  He said, “I know some of you are committed to us, I am grateful, and there are some of you who have not made up your mind and I need your vote.  I need your vote.”

Nevertheless, the hours of discussion on foreign policy, immigration and even his radical right view of the federal government failed to overcompensate for his poor performance in the nationally televised debate. That, coupled with his inability to think independently of the GOP’s talking points, most certainly contributed to his downfall.

Rubio even made a desperate appeal to young, anti-establishment voters with his statements on student loans.  He said, “I don’t believe we need a Federal Department of Education.  All the important loans, the federal loans and the Pell Grants, you can transport those to the treasury.”  But, in spite of all his research rhetoric, voters were not swayed by his appearance that day in Londonderry.

 

Kasich finds himself in New Hampshire the day before the Iowa caucus

John Kasich outside of his tour bus in New Hampshire on January 31, 2016

        A day before the Iowa caucus, all of the presidential hopefuls were campaigning in Iowa, except for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who was in New Hampshire speaking to a small crowd for his 85th Town Hall meeting at an Elks Club in Salem.
        “I would like to do ‘Town Halls’ like this everywhere I go.” He said to a handful of journalists and bloggers outside of his tour bus. “I would like to be able to put gang planks up and walk around the crowd and take questions because people need to hear you. I am not comfortable with the notion of just TV advertisements, I would really like for people to ask me hard questions.”
        The moderate Republican is known for his somewhat libertarian views of government, while also retaining a bit of liberal flair, enough to earn him the endorsements of The Boston Globe, The New York Times and seven out of eight newspapers in New Hampshire.

        A notable moment from the Town Hall meeting was when Kasich said that he will propose a bill to end all government regulation. He made this statement in front of a large green scoreboard that tallied the country’s debt down to the last digit.
        The probability of his winning the Iowa caucus was negligible according to a recent Quinnipiac poll that placed Kasich eighth among Republicans presidential candidates in the state. That may have been a contributing factor to Kasich’s bus tour of New Hampshire the day before.
        When asked why he wasn’t in Iowa that day he said, “Look the challenge of Iowa is there is five media markets, in order to go from city to city you have to fly. When I go from city to city or community to community, I take a bus in New Hampshire.”
        Governor Kasich will continue to focus his campiagn efforts in New Hampshire before the state’s primary on Tuesday, February 9th when he will face off with front runners Trump and Cruz in the Granite State.