There is just a little bit of room between Super Tuesday and March 10 for everyone to catch their breath.  Over the past seven days, over half of the candidates have dropped out, and we are left with three candidates (Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, and Bernie Sanders.)

While we are down to three candidates, one word of warning is appropriate.  As we saw on Super Tuesday, some states have no excuse early voting or mail-in ballots.  On Super Tuesday, we saw some significant differences between the early vote count and the “election day” count.  Simply put, people who voted early may have voted for a candidate who was no longer actively running.  It is unclear if any of these candidates will ultimately win a delegate, but some of these candidates did get a significant number of votes in some states.  The extra seven days should lessen this effect, but there could be — depending on the state — a significant number of voters who voted before February 28th, and some of these voters went with one of the five candidates who are no longer running.

There are seven contests which will conclude on March 10.  (I use the term conclude because one of them — Democrats Abroad — is a party-run primary in which the polls are open for almost one week and others allow early voting.)  Besides Democrats Abroad, the other six contests are Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Washington.  While nominally styled as a caucus, North Dakota is a party-run primary.  Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, and Washington are state-run primaries.  (Washington like California relies heavily on mail-in ballots which can cause a delay in getting final results.)  Under the rules of the Democratic Party, all of these contests are binding and delegates will be allocated based on the votes cast for each candidate. Continue Reading...