I had an idea: why not take a look at all the conventional wisdom we've heard repeated endlessly and apply it to the states that have yet to hold primaries. There aren't many polls out for the rest of the states since everyone thought Super Duper Tuesday would be outcome-determinative. As we now know, the cookie didn't crumble that way and everything before today results in a draw.
Welcome back to square one. Let's get crunching.
Clinton does well with Hispanic voters. Using census data to generate a percentage of Hispanics in a state and then sorting by that number, we get the most Hispanic states in the union: New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Only Texas has yet to vote. It's big, but with proportional delegate allocation, it still looks like her latin lovin' is mostly in the past. If only because of the size of Texas, Clinton gets a smallish edge here. Hillary people can take heart in the long odds faced by any candidate set to lose New York, California and Texas.
Obama does well with African-Americans. Nobody has been able to figure this one out. Run another sort, and we have a the states with the largest percentage of African-American voters: D.C., Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina and Delaware. Five of those have yet to vote, and Louisiana is next week. This is very good for Obama.
The Starbucks crowd goes for Obama. I found a list of states sorted by the number of Starbucks per capita. The most expensively caffeinated states are D.C., Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Arizona, Alaska (eds note - whaaa??) and Illinois. Four of these states have yet to vote and of the six that have, they split 4-2 for Hillary, although Obama won more delegates in Nevada, so it's really more like 3-3 with a footnote. Let's call this a draw.
Obama is better in caucuses than primaries. A relatively large portion of the states that have already voted did so in caucuses. Most of these have gone to Obama, notably Iowa and yesterday's small western state caucuses. Only five remain, or six if you count Texas's hybrid system. Advantage Clinton.
Obama does very well among students. The kids these days, with their rock music and targeted canvassing... Which states have the most students per capita? It's D.C., Utah, North Dakota, Arizona, Iowa, Rhode Island, Kansas, Wyoming and New Mexico. Seven have voted, all but one for Obama (assuming he holds on to New Mexico). The remaining states are tiny. The states with the fewest students per capita are New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alaska, South Carolina, Maine and New Hampshire. Of these, Hillary won 5 of 9 (Nevada caveat still applies) and only Maine is left. We'll call Maine for Obama since it's a caucus and give him a tiny, tiny advantage here.
The bottom line. Only the racial and student demographics really show anything, but to draw any conclusions other than that it will be close would be irresponsible. I suppose we'll just have to watch the debates, listen to the speeches and check out the ads without any inkling of what will happen next, just like last week. It's enough to make you go crazy.
NOTE: This is not a statistical analysis with confidence intervals, weighted averages and all that. It's just some late night musing.
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