Super Tuesday Part Deux

Tomorrow is Tuesday which must mean another day of primaries. Not only that, this Tuesday's primaries have enough delegates available on both sides that the current leaders can take a demanding lead or those behind can make some serious damage to the leaders.

Bernie Sanders coming off a shocking victory in Michigan looks to put a serious dent in Hillary Clinton's delegate lead. Going into last week's contest Hillary was leading most polls by 20 points or more. Voter turnout in Michigan was much higher than expected which helped Bernie pull off the upset.

Donald Trump was able to pick up a few wins across the week last week but he still is not winning by quite enough to prevent a brokered convention. Marco Rubio had a disastrous week causing many to wonder why he stays in the race. Ted Cruz has now officially won 7 states. In order for him to challenge Donald Trump in the case of a brokered convention by rule he has to have won at 8 primaries. He is leading in Wyoming and the results should become official later this month.

Coming up this week for both parties are Florida, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri.

For the Republicans Florida has 99 delegates available (winner takes all), Ohio has 66 delegates available (winner takes all), Illinois has 69 delegates available, North Carolina has 72 delegates available, and Missouri has 52 delegates available (winner takes all).

The important thing to note here is that Florida, Ohio, and Missouri has winner take all primaries. Whoever wins, whether it is by 20% or by .2% they get all the delegates.

Northern Marianas also votes for the Republicans this Tuesday and they have 9 delegates available (winner takes all).

So let us look at the polling in all these states.

The Republicans were in the news quite a bit this week as well as protests caused the cancellation of two of Trump's speeches. There has been almost universal condemnation of Trump for his rhetoric in his speeches leading up to these events. Trump himself has blamed thugs, Bernie Sanders, and ISIS for what happened. Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich all spoke out against Trump. So, whether those events the polls will be interesting.

Florida - Trump looks to win Florida with ease as he is leading the average over Rubio and Cruz 45-24-19%. Early in the month it looked like Rubio was going to challenge Trump in his home state but in recent weeks his numbers have crashed and burned and now he is barely holding onto second place.

Ohio - John Kasich's home state. He has stated if he is unable to win his home state he would drop out of the race. He leads in the average right now but barely. He out races Trump 40-37%. Cruz and Rubio are pretty much an afterthought in this race, and Rubio's campaign manager has encouraged his voters to vote for Kasich instead. Kasich has lead every poll since the early March except for two (and those were ties. It looks like Kasich should be able to win his home state.

Illinois - Trump leads over Cruz and Rubio 36-25-19%. Of note the last poll in Illinois was performed before the events in Chicago. Cruz is close enough that if the voters in Illinois were not happy with Trump then he could win the state. If not, Trump should win. However, in the last poll that was performed Cruz was within 4.

North Carolina - Trump leads Cruz 39-25%. He does look to win this state. The polling up to date has really fluctuated. The last poll, though, was taken in the days after the events in Chicago and Cleveland and saw Trump extend his lead.

Missouri - There has only been one poll in the state since the new year. Considering that this is a winner take all state that is a bit surprising. The fact that the poll was performed by Fort Hays State, which is on the other side of Kansas, it is even more odd. However, Trump leads Cruz 36-29%. The other two candidates do not even get into the double digits. An unlikely 17% reported being undecided. So this race could go either way. The day before the events in Chicago there was also a clash of supporters and protestors in St. Louis. So this will be a much watch state.

No polling for the Northern Marianas. I suspect that they will vote for whoever is in the lead, which is Trump. This is the first time for both parties that they are holding elections in the Northern Marianas.

On to the Democratic primaries. If Hillary wins all the states this race is over, whether Bernie stays in the race or not. Outside of North Carolina and Florida the rest of the states are in Bernie's core of voters. After Michigan if can not come out of Tuesday with any wins his candidacy will lose all steam.

Florida has 246 delegates available, Ohio has 159 delegates available, Illinois has 182 delegates available, North Carolina has 121 delegates available, and Missouri has 84 delegates available.

Florida - Clinton leads the average 60-33%, so this state should be a foregone conclusion for a Hillary win. However, in the last three polls performed the difference between the two has shrunk. Hillary went from a 62-34 lead to a 57-32 to a 60-34 to a 58-37 lead.

Ohio - Clinton has a 53-42 lead and outside of one poll that was in the double digits the last few polls have all been in single digits. Like Michigan who wins will be determined by how many show up to vote. If the turnout is low expect Hillary to come out on top, Bernie will win if the turnout trends the other way.

Illinois - Clinton leads the average 49-41. The polling has been wild this week with one poll showing Clinton with a 48-45, one showing Bernie with a 48-46 lead and another with Clinton leading 31-30 with an unprecedented 39% undecided. Considering that last week Clinton held a 30+% lead the fact that it has gotten this close has to be devastating for her, considering this is her home state.

North Carolina - Clinton holds a 55-35% lead. This should be another easy win for Clinton in her southern firewall. The polling really has not moved much. The closest that Bernie got was 10 in February.

Missouri - There is no average for Missouri as there has only been two polls taken this year and yes Fort Hays State was one of them with yet another high undecided number. In that poll Clinton held a 47-40% lead with 13% undecided. the other poll had Bernie with a 47-46% lead with no undecideds. Though that does leave 7% unaccounted for.

Clinton has a chance to sweep all five states, but Bernie has a chance of winning 3 of the 5. So it will be interesting to watch.

I will of course update as the night goes on and follow up sometime on Wednesday with a delegate count.

UPDATE 12:51 PM:

The Northern Marianas has been decided and has gone to Donald Trump. He received all 9 delegates.

UPDATE 7:00 PM:

With the majority of polls now closed (there are some in Illinois that are staying open later due to running out of ballots) Florida has been called for Donald Trump on the Republican side and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side. This is not too much of a shock as the majority of the polls in Florida closed at 6 PM.

This should serve as the death knell for Marco Rubio. This was his home state and as of this writing he is trailing by almost 20% to Trump.

This may turn into a sweep for Hillary tonight and would probably spell the end of the Bernie campaign as he needed to win Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri just to stay competitive.

UPDATE 7:15 PM:

Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of North Carolina for the Democrats. She is currently up by 15% which is a smaller margin than the polls were predicting which is somewhat of a surprise.

Misread what I was seeing, Hillary is up by 21% which is about what the polls indicated.

ELECTION UPDATE 7:30 PM:

Apparently I was a bit of a fortune teller with my previous post as Rubio has officially dropped out of the race, or as they call it in campaign language, suspended his campaign.

UPDATE 7:45 PM:

Hillary has been declared the winner of Ohio for the Democrats. Bernie needed to win Ohio, along with Illinois and Missouri, to stay competitive in my opinion. He is trailing in those two states, so it could very well end up a sweep for Hillary.

The polls in this state were horribly wrong as she is winning by 2-1 over Bernie and the average was showing her with a single digit lead. There is talk that quite a few Democrats voted on the Republican side as a protest vote to Trump but even if they had all voted for Bernie, Hillary still wins this state.

UPDATE 7:55 PM:

Kasich has won the state of Ohio on the Republican side. He was able to win his home state. He had said that if he lost Ohio he would drop out of the race, so looks like he will be staying for some time.

North Carolina has not been called for the Republicans and Illinois and Missouri have not been called for anyone. Trump leads in all three states, Hillary leads in the two for the Democrats.

UPDATE 8:50 PM:

Trump is now projected to win the Illinois primary. He is currently up by about 14% in that state.

In the rest of the contests that have not been declared, Trump leads Cruz 40-36% in North Carolina, in Missouri Trump leads Cruz 43-40%.

On the Democratic side Hillary leads Bernie 53-48% in Illinois and 50-48% in Missouri.

So far Trump has won all the delegates in Florida (99) and Kasich has won all the delegates in Ohio (66).

Tomorrow I should be able to update all the delegates won and also be able to dwell more on whether there will be a brokered convention for the Republicans.

UPDATE 9:00 PM:

Trump has been declared the winner in North Carolina. It is a bit surprising considering that a little more than half of the votes have come in and he is only up 50-46%, but the votes may be mostly in for Cruz areas that has led to this decision.

UPDATE 11:25 PM:

They have called Illinois for Clinton. Though I am not entirely sure why at this point. Maybe CNN's map is just not done correctly but the entirety of the Chicago area is listed as not available, no county names. However, with 96% of the vote in she is currently up by a little more than 36,000 votes.

Currently 2,000 votes separate Clinton and Sanders in Missouri (Sanders has the lead) with 98% reporting. The main areas not fully counted are the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas.