Tag Archives: Arkansas

Super Tuesday Week

Tuesday is Super Tuesday — the first Tuesday of the primary cycle in which any state can hold a primary contest.  As most states use state-run primaries, there will be a large number of states on Tuesday.

But, before Super Tuesday, several states that are using party-run contests will be holding Republican contests as the “window” for the Republicans opened yesterday.  (The “window” for Democrats opens on Tuesday.)  As discussed last week, one of the contests today is the second half of the Republican’s Michigan two-step with the Republican state convention which will be allocating the “district” level delegates.  In addition to Michigan, today will see events in Missouri and Idaho.

The Missouri Republican rules are somewhat ambiguous.  It looks like they are doing a traditional caucus with a 15% threshold and an unspecified winner-take-all kicker at local option.  But rather than allocating delegates based on today’s vote (which is what the national rules appear to require), they are merely binding the delegates chosen today to vote the same preference at the district conventions (which should effectively have the same result).  Missouri is using a caucus because our current Secretary of State repeatedly lied and claimed that the state-run primary was nonbinding (when the rules of both party made the primary binding) and a repeal of the primary was slipped into an omnibus election bill which passed despite the unanimous opposition of Democratic legislature).  The Democrats will be holding a party-run primary in three weeks with a mail-in option. Continue Reading...

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The Midterms — Preview (Part 3)

By the time that polls close in Arkansas at 7:30 p.m. Central ST, we should be starting to get votes from the early states, but most of the key races will still be classified as “too early to call.”  Arkansas has become so red over the past two decades that none of the races are likely to be close.  The big races will be the ballot issue.  From the right is a proposition to require supermajorities for propositions in future elections and a provision enshrining a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the Arkansas Constitution.  As we have seen at the federal level, this Free Exercise Clause on steroids will cause significant problems in Arkansas as everything will become somebody’s religious belief.  Arkansas will also vote on legalizing marijuana.

At 8:00 p.m. CST, polls will close in the remaining parts of Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas (with those races covered in Part 2 of the preview).    Polls will close for the entire state in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Arizona will feature several key races.  At the state office level, Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State are all open seats.  The Republicans have nominated Trumpist candidates for these positions who refuse to commit to recognizing the election results in 2024.   Particularly for governor, they have nominated a media celebrity who is not qualified.  But these races are currently too close to call.  For Senate, the Republicans have also nominated an extremist.  It looks like Senator Mark Kelly will hold onto the seat, but the seat is probably the third most likely pickup for the Republicans after Nevada and Georgia.   If the Republicans have a good night, that seat could flip. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part 2 (8 PM to 9 PM EST)

As noted in the previous post, by 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we should have a significant amount of precincts being reported in the two earliest states (Kentucky and Indiana) and should be starting to get some counties reporting votes in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Vermont.  During this hour, the counts in those states should be increasing.  By 9 p.m., we should be seeing either some projection in those states or an indication that the states are too close too call.  We may also be getting an indication in some of those states of how many absentee votes might remain to be counted (which could determine whether it will be possible to make any projection in those states on election night).

While it would be nice if we could get calls in a state like Virginia early in this hour, the bigger question as the hour goes will be the types of swings that we are seeing in these states.   Virginia in 2016 was a leading indicator as we were just not getting strong results compared to 2012.  So as this hour goes along and the networks start looking at the maps of the state, the key thing to pay attention to is how the numbers are comparing to 2016.  Even if the networks aren’t comfortable in calling a state yet, if the results are showing that Trump is underperforming in red parts of a state (i.e. rural counties) and Biden is overperforming in the suburbs, then that is a good sign for the rest of the evening as Trump only one by the slimmest of margins in 2016 and any erosion in his support could prove fatal.

This hour has the most states close.  You have partial closures in Florida (the rest of the state closed an hour earlier), Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas.  While a significant part of South Dakota will close an hour later, the polls close for most of the population in Kansas, Michigan, and Texas at 8 p.m. Eastern.  In addition to these states, polls for the entire state close at 8 p.m. Eastern in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 3 — Late States)

Aside from the big two states (California and Texas), there are three states that will close their polls after 7:00 p.m. CST — Arkansas, Colorado, Utah.   Arkansas and Utah are small red states.  Colorado is a medium-size purple-blue state.  Between these three states, there are fifteen congressional districts with between two and nine delegates each.

A basic reminder, the rules of the Democratic Party requires each state to have district level delegates (roughly 65% of the state’s total), at-large delegates (roughly 22% of the state’s total), and party leader delegates (roughly 12% of the state’s total).  The district level delegates are split between the districts (usually congressional districts) in the state typically based on votes in past elections.  Each of the pools of delegate (each district is a separate pool) is based on the results in the area covered by the pool (the individual district for a district-level delegates and the state-wide results for the at-large and party-leader pools).  It usually takes 15% of the vote for a candidate to be viable.  And the delegates are allocated proportionately based on the percentage of the qualified vote (the total vote for all viable candidates) that each candidate receives.  The percentages below assume that only viable candidates receive votes,  As the early states have shown, with this many candidates, a significant portion of the vote will go to non-viable candidates.  As such, it is likely that candidates will earn additional delegates despite not reaching the target numbers described below.  Covering all possible situations (number of viable candidates, percentage of vote that goes to the viable candidates, etc.) would, however, lengthen these posts by a significant amount.  As long as we still have seven candidates qualifying for the debate stage and potentially qualifying for delegates in a district, we will have to go with this oversimplified calculation.

With Mayor Pete Buttigieg deciding on Sunday to join Tom Steyer on the sidelines, we are down to six major candidates, four of whom have won delegates in prior contests and two of whom have not.  One of those two, however, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg who is almost certain to win delegates.  So in most districts, we are probably looking at somewhere between two and five viable candidates. Continue Reading...

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2018 Mid-Term Election Preview — The South

The South is probably the region in which there are the fewest competitive races in the country.  The extreme gerrymandering in these states means that outside of Texas, competitive House races are practically non-existent.

Starting with Alabama, while the governor’s mansion and seven U.S. House seats are on the ballot, none of these races currently look close.  This should not be a surprise to anybody.  While Doug Jones was winning the U.S. Senate seat in a close race last year, he only carried one of the Alabama’s seven congressional districts.  With Republican incumbents running in the six districts that Roy Moore carried and none of them a known bigoted pervert, Democrats are not expected to win any of these seats.  Despite the corruption that led to the prior Republican governor resigning, and Kay Ivey taking over last year, the expectation is that Kay Ivey will hold the seat by a comfortable margin.

In Mississippi, the Republicans hold a 3-1 advantage in U.S. House seats now and there is no reason to expect that to change after the election.  There are two Senate races on the ballot.  In the regular election, Republican Roger Wicker should be re-elected.  The interest race is the special election.  Like some other states, Mississippi holds a “jungle primary” (really a general election with a potential run-off) in which all candidates  from all parties run against each other.  Barring a major surprise, this race is headed to a run-off.  And, while Mike Espy is likely to make the run-off, he is unlikely to get his preferred opponent.  There is always a chance that in a lower turnout run-off that Mike Espy might defy expectations and win this seat, but — if this seat becomes important in light of the other results on election day — the money that would pour into Mississippi would make that difficult. Continue Reading...

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