Thirteen Observations on Super Tuesday 2020

On Mar. 3, 2020, there were 15 contests in the nomination process for President of the United States. Primary elections took place in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, while caucuses took place in American Samoa. Collectively, this is known as Super Tuesday because more delegates are awarded on this date than on any other date in the nomination process.

The delegate count from these contests as of this writing is 627 for former Vice President Joe Biden, 548 for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 74 for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 61 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and two for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). 91 more will be awarded as vote totals are finalized. Thirteen observations follow on these events and the likely path forward.

1. Biden exceeded expectations. Forecasting predicted a regional breakdown, with Biden succeeding in the South and Sanders winning Northern and Western states. But Biden won the Southern states by larger margins than expected and managed to win states that were predicted to go to Sanders. Minnesota can be explained away by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) dropping out and endorsing Biden days earlier, and Massachusetts likely went for Biden due to the progressive split between Sanders and Warren, but Biden was given only a 25 percent chance to win Maine. This suggests that while progressives are more vocal in the national discourse, especially on social media, there is a massive bloc of moderate Democrats who do not seek the sort of radical transformations advocated by Sanders (or Warren). Biden probably owes the most to Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) for his Super Tuesday success, whose endorsement in the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29 was critical for revitalizing his campaign.

2. Likewise, Sanders underperformed for understandable reasons. Though Sanders won California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont to almost keep pace with Biden in the delegate count, none of these contests were ever truly in doubt. As in South Carolina, Sanders had demographic issues with Black voters, who overwhelmingly chose Biden, even more so for Black voters over 30. Biden, for all of his obvious flaws, is better known and understood by this essential Democratic voting bloc. Those who prioritize defeating Donald Trump over making fundamental changes and view even meager efforts as nearly impossible in this environment are choosing to play it safe. That being said, the contest is far from over, and Sanders' inroads into the Latino community and Blacks outside the South may produce more favorable results in upcoming contests.

3. Bloomberg failed more for his inept strategy and track record than for anything involving money. A common talking point about Bloomberg's dismal showing is that he spent $570 million and has next to nothing to show for it, therefore money in politics is far less relevant than it used to be. Let us brush aside this cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and look deeper to understand other reasons why he failed. First, he decided to skip the early states and start with Super Tuesday. This left him an untested and unpolished candidate going up against those who had withstood the rigors of the campaign trail for months or years. It also treated voters as pawns to be manipulated rather than listened to (which is accurate, but unpopular to say out loud in a democratic society). Second, he carefully crafted an image of himself in his massive advertising campaigns and was unable to maintain this image in debates, town halls, and other public appearances. Had he either started earlier or remained scarce in such arenas, he might have been able to solve this problem, but it still would have been difficult, given his record as a meddling authoritarian from his time as mayor of New York City and his history of controversy with women.

4. Psephology should be denounced as pseudoscience and seen for the tool of Power that it is. Polling results leading up to Super Tuesday were significantly different from voting results in many states. This is the latest in a long history of polling failures, including the Brexit vote and Trump election in 2016, and the British general election in 2015. “Unrepresentative samples” is always the excuse given for such failings, but this is a catch-all term that includes sampling bias, response bias, the closet Tory effect, inaccurate and/or loaded questions, and lack of polling. The only poll that (possibly) matters in the end is the official one taken on Election Day, and every poll leading up to that is invariably erroneous to some degree. Indeed, the pollsters who question political betting markets as being generally (but not always) more accurate should be invited to use their supposedly superior methodology to gamble and win, which they curiously do not tend to do. Polls are best seen as tools used by the political establishment to try to steer democratic processes toward their desired results by portraying some candidates as heavily favored and others as non-viable. This can be bolstered by using polls to determine which candidates are allowed on debate stages, which are powerful free media opportunities that make and break campaigns.

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