Six candidates made it past the first four political contests for the Democratic Nomination. While election prognosticators had it relatively as the had to evaluate pols for only one state at a time, Super Tuesday present a much greater challenge. With eleven States and one U.S. Territory elections on a single day, polling analysis becomes a bit more complicated.
First, there are much fewer polls available for each of the contests. In South Carolina there were no less than twelve polls in the last week before the primary that provided lots of information to look over. For us, South Carolina was a relatively easy contest to predict. We have been watching South Carolina for the last six (6) election cycles. Our offices are in the State. And it is the state where we go to debates and actually rub elbows with the candidates and their surrogates.
Our momentum model contains not just polling analysis, but also positive or negative comments on mainstream media outlets, endorsements, social media mentions and the inflow of contributions to candidates to determine a candidates positive or negative momentum going into election day. This is how we determine where a candidate will perform on election day not the day the poll was taken.
In South Carolina for instance, we looked at pre/post debate polling to see if the debate gave them a positive or negative bump and high level endorsements like Joe Biden scoring House Majority Whip Jim Clyburns nod just days before the election. Biden took a pretty big hit following New Hampshire and was dropping like a rock in the polls. Just a week before the South Carolina Primary, Biden was only leading Sanders by four (4) percentage points. While he didn’t have his best debate performance in Charleston of Tuesday, it didn’t hurt him. The biggest bump in the polls came after Clyburn endorsed Biden and his polling numbers began to rise substantially. The day before the election, the last two polls had Biden besting Sanders by sixteen (16) and twenty-one (21) percent. We decided to be conservative and predict a Biden win with at least ten (10) percentage points. Biden outperformed nearly every poll with 29.5 point lead above Sanders.
Politisite also noted two other momentum changes. We noticed that Steyer was going to under perform and Buttigieg was surging so we thought that Buttigieg could potentially beat Steyer and take second place. Steyer did under perform as expected but Buttigieg also under performed and took fourth place. We also saw Klobuchar under performing the polls based on what we saw on the ground in South Carolina and predicted her coming in sixth (6th) with less than four (4) percent.
Now, lets move to Super Tuesday Projections
Super Tuesday Political Projections
California
Sanders +16, Warren, Biden
Texas
Sanders +8, Biden, Bloomberg
North Carolina
Biden +3, Sanders, Bloomberg
Virginia
Sanders +5, Bloomberg, Biden
Check Back on for additional Super Tuesday Projections following our completing analysis in the coming days
