This Diary is in response to A Democratic primary scorecard: Who's won where and what by kos.
It’s a very interesting diary and I recommend everybody read it. But one of the things he posits in the Diary is that
“Caucus vs primaries” appears to be the biggest fault line here.
That makes a lot of sense at first look. After all out of the 20 primaries so far she has won 16. 10 out of 14 Sanders victories in contrast have come from caucuses. (I have also decided to ignore overseas contests, like kos and used the same Website as he did for regional divisions)
That makes it look very daunting that out of the next 19 States to vote (just like kos again I counted D.C. as a state and ignored overseas stuff) a whopping 17 of those are Primaries and only 2 are caucuses. If she does so much better than Sanders in primaries there should be no doubt she easily takes the nomination.
Fortunately I think that the idea that she does much better in primaries comes from a correlation with something else. Out of the 20 Primaries so far 12 have been in the South. And out of those 12 Southern states Clinton won 11 with Sanders only taking Oklahoma.
It’s pretty clear Clinton does very very well in the south, so I think her strength in that region makes it look like she also is very much stronger in primaries. I am not at all discounting southern voters here, or trying to imply their votes don’t matter as much for whatever reason, I just think her dominance in the south makes it pretty clear she would have also won them all if they had been caucuses. So her wins there tell us very little about her ability to win primaries.
If you take a look at primaries outside of the south Clinton wins 5 versus Sanders 3. That is much less of a disparity. Out of those 8 non southern primaries Clinton won 2 very decisively (AZ and OH) while Sanders won 2 decisively as well (VT and NH), while the other 4 were wins within 2% for either candidate.
It’s very possible that Clinton does turn out to perform better in Primaries, but I feel like so far the data doesn’t provide enough information either way.
So don’t be discouraged fellow Berners, this common wisdom as is so often the case, is only surface deep. Just because a state is a primary doesn’t mean we can’t win it!
Bernie 2016
P.S.
This is my first diary here after signing up in 2008. So please be nice about my, without a doubt numerous, spelling and grammatical errors, which I will blame on my not actually being an American.