What Went Down In The Indiana Primary

https://twitter.com/GenderWatch2016/status/727635588761849858

Question

“How do we rate the odds of Cruz and/or Kasich dropping out after tonight?” — commenter Thomas Just

Answer

I am not a person generally inclined to parse the world using strict, numerical odds, and god knows, the last five months have baked into me an instinct to not predict anything for sure in this primary. So I’ll say this: I think after tonight, the odds are certainly increased that the Kasich/Cruz campaigns will sit down and have some long, heavy talks. But honestly, what do they have to lose by staying in it until the end? If they’re actually fixated on what increasingly looks like the pipe dream of stopping Trump, then you’d have to argue that they have the obligation to stay in. I don’t think either of them is going to be his VP, and they’ve both gone all in. They have to wait for everyone to show their cards now, even if they’ve played terrible hands. Or some general poker metaphor — you get the idea.

ABC News has projected that Trump has won the state of Indiana.

Clinton is ahead by 15 percent AND her best expected counties (Hamilton, Lake and Marion) haven’t even reported results yet. Blowout on the Dem side?

There’s down-ballot drama brewing in southeastern Indiana. Thanks to a perfect combination of factors, it’s quite possible a millennial businessman from Tennessee could win a ticket to Congress from Indiana tonight. I’ve seen a lot of cases of carpetbagging in my nine years professionally handicapping House races, but I’ve never seen an example as brazen as what we may witness in the Hoosier State. Trey Hollingsworth III, 32, is a warehouse investment businessman who recently parachuted into the state from Tennessee and is spending millions (alongside a Super PAC set up by his family) to win a safely GOP open seat in the Republican primary. It’s worth reading this good profile of the race by RollCall’s Simone Pathé. Hollingsworth moved into a luxury high-rise across the river from Louisville last year and hasn’t made himself accessible to the local media. However, he’s shrewdly exploited three facts: 1) he’s an outsider running against a crowded field of politicians; 2) this is an expensive district covered by multiple media markets; and 3) many GOP voters are turning out for the presidential race, not the congressional contest. All of these factors make Hollingsworth a considerable favorite. But his weak ties to the state might be news to plenty of southeastern Indiana’s primary voters.

Clinton is performing light years better in rural Indiana tonight than she did in rural Illinois and rural Michigan back in March. So far, of the 24 counties reporting results, Clinton is ahead in 21 – she’s only losing Bloomington (Monroe County) and two other small ones. While Democratic voters aren’t voting like the nomination race is over, there’s a case to be made — if these results hold — that some Democratic voters are consolidating behind Clinton now that she’s such a clear front-runner.

We’re hearing a lot of talk about whether Republican voters who didn’t originally favor Trump will rally behind him, assuming he eventually becomes the nominee. So here are some historical benchmarks, taken from an article I wrote in February, that might provide some helpful context:

Share of party’s voters voting against its presidential candidate

ELECTION	DEMOCRATS	REPUBLICANS
1952	23%	8%
1956	15	4
1960	16	5
1964	13	20
1968	26	14
1972	33	5
1976	20	11
1980	33	15
1984	26	7
1988	17	8
1992	23	27
1996	15	19
2000	13	9
2004	11	7
2008	11	10
2012	8	7

In recent elections, the defection rate — the percentage of a party’s voters not voting for their party’s candidate — has been historically low, ranging between 7 and 11 percent for both parties. It’s safe to assume that the vast majority of Republicans will vote for Trump later this year, and the vast majority of Democrats will vote for Clinton. But little things can make a difference. If instead of breaking 93-7 for Trump, Republican support was divided 85 percent for Trump, 10 percent for Clinton, and 5 percent for the Libertarian Gary Johnson, that would cost Trump a net of three or four percentage points overall in the popular vote, enough to turn a narrow win into a narrow loss or a narrow loss into a borderline landslide. So while we’ll see a lot of Republicans break for Trump in the coming days — and a lot of Sanders supporters break for Clinton — a few holdouts could still make a difference.

On Monday’s elections podcast, we discussed what can and will be the legacy of the Sanders campaign. (Yes, we know that both nominations are not mathematically over. But it does seem reasonable to start talking about Clinton vs. Trump.) We wondered if he’s shown that you can still raise boatloads of grassroots money in a post-Citizens-United world; how he’s proven that “socialism” isn’t as dirty a word as it once was; and what will happen to the young voters he’s energized. The most interesting question to me is what lasting impact he’ll have on the Clinton campaign. One thing I didn’t mention on the podcast, but has been rattling around my brain since we recorded, is whether the presence of Trump will end up undercutting a lot of the influence Sanders may have exerted on Clinton. In a “normal,” more policy-driven election, you could see Clinton having to really engage with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that Sanders represented. But I wonder if Trump’s nomination means that she won’t need to shift as much policy-wise. She can remain in the center-left, parry Trump’s barbs in the media, and trust that progressives will still mobilize against Trump. In many ways, this election is shaping up to be mostly about the disintegration of the GOP, and the serious diversity of viewpoints within the Democrats may be overshadowed.

If Cruz is hoping to avoid a delegate sweep, the results so far suggest his best chance will be to win the 3rd Congressional District, which is around Fort Wayne. He’s actually winning a few counties there in early returns. So far, he’s not winning any other counties outside the area around Fort Wayne.

On Monday in Indiana, Cruz dusted off his debating shoes — the ones that never let him fall back on his heels — and on the side of a road, of all places, with a Trump supporter of all people, took a proactive approach to addressing the disintegration of thoughtful discourse in American politics. Cruz was campaigning in Marion, and a few Trump protesters were standing nearby, holding “Make America Great Again” signs and wearing sunglasses despite the gloomy skies. Cruz decided to talk to them and cameras captured the whole exchange. “I appreciate your coming out and standing up,” Cruz started off. “I’m running to be everyone’s president.” “We don’t want you,” the Trump supporter said with a smirk. “Do the math. You know, you asked Kasich to drop out, now it’s your turn.” As the exchange went on, Cruz tackled not only heckles — the Trump supporter called him “Lyin’ Ted” and asked, “what about your mistresses?” — but also some of the policy differences between himself and Trump. It continued for some seven minutes. It’s unlikely that Cruz won a vote during the course of those several minutes, but he did tackle the tete-a-tete with a certain vigor, aware that his words would be broadcast and written about by people like yours truly. It felt like Cruz’s last-ditch effort to prove his substance over the zeitgeist-y stylings of Trump, and to maybe grab a few cable headlines. Only a few weeks ago, remember, Cruz was drafting off Trump, not attacking him outright, but rather hoping to let other, less viable candidates speak up. The difference was striking. These days, Cruz is engaging in an all-out assault, but if Indiana polls are any indication, it might all just be howling into the windy abyss. But at least we’ll always have video evidence of the 2016 Republican primary’s last great debate.

As Nate just noted, Indiana is one of a handful of states that crosses time zones. My wife is from Crawford County, in southern Indiana, which is sandwiched between counties in different time zones. Further complicating matters, some parts of the state observed daylight saving time while others did not – meaning two counties might share a time zone only during certain parts of the year. How to keep it all straight? Rather than try to juggle what was effectively three time zones, locals referred to “fast time” and “slow time.” As in, “Polls close at 6 p.m. slow time.”

I’m not seeing anything in the votes that have come in so far to suggest that Trump is not going to win Indiana. He leads in nearly every county across the state and often by substantial margins. He is up 53 percent to 33 percent overall so far. Of course, there are still lots of votes to be counted.

Clinton is crushing it in early returns from rural Indiana. She’s winning Fayette County with 64 percent, Daviess with 65 percent, Whitley with 54 percent, Knox with 57 percent. These are places Sanders should be winning to win statewide. So far, the exit polls look way off and Clinton is looking pretty good.

If your knowledge of Indiana comes mostly from “Hoosiers” and John Mellencamp songs, you might think of Indiana as the archetypal Midwestern state. And in some ways it is: Indiana has one of the country’s biggest manufacturing industries, a robust agricultural sector and some 20,000 historic wooden barns. But as Farai and I discussed in our video chat earlier today, and as Craig Fehrman described in greater detail last week, Indiana is more culturally diverse than its Midwestern reputation might suggest. The southeastern part of the state, along the Ohio River, looks and sounds more like Kentucky than Michigan. Meanwhile the northwestern corner of the state, around Gary, is part of the Chicago metro area. The state varies economically as well as culturally. Gary, once a thriving industrial city, has experienced decades of population loss and economic decline. Gary’s Lake County has an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent, the highest in the state. (It is also home, along with Indianapolis, to the only large concentrations of African-American voters in the state.) The rest of northern Indiana is faring much better, with unemployment rates below 5 percent. The middle of the state, home to the Indianapolis metro area, is also doing well; Indianapolis’s wealthy northern suburbs, as Dave Wasserman wrote yesterday, could be fertile ground for Ted Cruz. Southeastern Indiana is a mixed bag: The area immediately across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, is relatively wealthy and comparatively strong economically. But the more rural counties further to the west are among the poorest in the state.

We now have substantial returns from Johnson County (a suburb of Indianapolis). Trump leads by 20 percentage points there, while Clinton leads by 12 percentage points. I would not call those particularly good numbers for either Cruz or Sanders.

Question

Answer

Two aspects of this stand out. First, high levels of name recognition from both probable nominees. (I’m not there yet with presumptive nominees. Give me time.) Both Trump and Clinton have been in the public eye for a long time, and the information about them has not always been favorable. Trump is a businessman and an entertainer, and the publicity he’s generated isn’t always exactly in line with what politicians seek. Clinton was an unusual first lady in some ways, and her time in public life has come to symbolize a new role for women. And, of course, there are the ever-present Clinton scandals, from Whitewater to Lewinsky to Benghazi. Furthermore, because Clinton has been in politics for so long, and Trump has been such an unconventional nominee, the public knows a lot about their policy positions (or lack of same). This means there’s probably a lot less discovering to do during the campaign. Trump remains a bit of a curiosity because his policy views are so… underdeveloped in some areas. But I’m honestly hard-pressed to think of a general election in which two people who were such well-established national figures ran against each other. The other dimension is polarization. Chances are, the numbers also reflect the voters’ dislike of politicians from the other party, just as we’ve seen with presidential approval (which has led to a general decline in presidential approval most of the time). This leaves open the question, as we think about what the campaign might be like, of who is left to convince. A battle to turn out the parties’ committed supporters might take an even more negative turn.

There’s plenty of chatter at news networks of a large Sanders lead in exit polling. But so far, the first few precincts in rural Indiana look pretty good for Clinton. She’s ahead with 64 percent in Fayette County and 65 percent in Daviess County. Those are the kinds of places Sanders should be winning if he’s to win tonight. It’s still early, but as HuffPost’s Ariel Edwards-Levy just tweeted, relying on exit polls to project a winner is a lot like using a spoon to cut your hair.

We’re seeing some preliminary results reported in Indiana, but keep in mind that 12 counties and about 18 percent of the state’s population is in the Central Time Zone, where polls are still open through 7 p.m. Eastern. The networks won’t release any exit polls or make any projections until then.

The first results are coming in from Indiana, and Trump and Clinton are cruising with just a few precincts in. Both have over 60 percent of the vote, though that will almost certainly change as more ballots are counted.

Just about the only drama left tonight is whether Trump will sweep all nine congressional districts and win all of Indiana’s 57 delegates. The arbiter of that may well be upscale Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis — the population anchor of the 5th Congressional District. Perhaps fittingly, the county’s GOP organization has been in turmoil recently. As a bedroom for Indianapolis’s elite professional class, Hamilton County is the highest-income, best-educated suburb in the Hoosier State. Going by FiveThirtyEight’s “quadrants” analysis, Hamilton is “HighRed” — a heavily Republican county with a high level of white socioeconomic status. That’s Cruz’s best quadrant, and Cruz would need it to play a role similar to that of Wisconsin’s Waukesha County if he is to have any hope of a miracle upset tonight. However, a big problem for Cruz is that winning Hamilton County might not even be sufficient to carry the 5th District. While Hamilton is the largest single county in the 5th, the district also includes Anderson, Marion, and parts of Kokomo — all mid-sized manufacturing towns that are culturally worlds away from Hamilton ‘burbs like Fishers and Carmel and should be terrific for Trump. A Trump win in Hamilton would be icing on the cake and would seal a sweep. On the other hand, Trump’s best district in the state should be the heavily industrial 1st District in the northwestern corner of the state. The 1st District falls into the “LowBlue” quadrant — by far Trump’s best quadrant — because it’s a heavily Democratic district with low white socioeconomic status. The 1st District also falls into the Chicago media market, which means it’s been shielded from the vast majority of anti-Trump television advertising. While a Cruz win in the 5th District would save him the embarrassment of a Trump delegate sweep, it probably wouldn’t make a meaningful difference in Trump’s odds of reaching 1,237 by June 7. _

Trump is favored to win Indiana — and if he does, the Republican campaign may begin to wind down. But in terms of interpreting the results, and understanding why the anti-Trump campaign fizzled so badly in the past few weeks, it will be worth watching turnout tonight. A low turnout, in comparison to similar states like Wisconsin and Missouri, coupled with a Trump win, would suggest that Cruz and Kasich voters had given up on the campaign and stayed home.

I’ve become a broken record this primary season, but let me say it again: it’s all about delegates. And on the Democratic side, elected delegates are awarded proportionally. That makes it very difficult for one state to change the trajectory of the race. You can see that by doing the math in allocating the 83 delegates up for grabs in Indiana. If Clinton wins in Indiana by 15 percentage points, she’ll have to win 34 percent of the remaining elected delegates to capture a majority of the elected delegates by the end of the primary season. If Sanders wins Indiana by 15 percentage points, Clinton would need to win 35 percent of the remaining elected delegates to take a majority of the elected delegates by the end of the primary season. Either way, the math won’t really change after the Indiana primary on the Democratic side.

https://twitter.com/NYTnickc/status/727618322636869632

Remember when Kasich and Cruz made a pact to split off the Indiana vote, stop Trump and save democracy? Yeah, it’s a pretty dim memory for me, too. Last week, though, Kasich and Cruz basically christened themselves 2016’s Odd Couple, when they announced that they would be dividing and conquering in order to stop Trump, with Cruz “getting” Indiana in the deal, and Kasich being given dominion over Oregon and New Mexico. It was announced with great fanfare, particularly by the Cruz campaign, only to be kill-joyed about eight hours later by Kasich when the Ohio governor told a bunch of reporters in Philadelphia, “I’ve never told [Indiana voters] not to vote for me.” He went on: “They ought to vote for me. But I’m not over there campaigning and spending resources.” In addition to the messaging being mixed at best, Republican-Party-As-We-Know It-killing at worst, voters just didn’t like the idea of a back-room deal between the two pols. Turns out, the American people don’t like being strategized to. According to a Marist poll out on Sunday, 63 percent of likely Republican primary voters said that the Cruz-Kasich alliance wasn’t a factor in their vote. The indifference to the deal cut across supporters of all candidates; 63 percent of Trump voters, 66 percent of Cruz voters, and 53 percent of Kasich voters. Only about 37 percent of Republican primary voters said the deal was a factor in how they’d vote.

https://abcnews.go.com/video/55891470

Of America’s 3,141 counties, there’s only one that has voted with the winner in every November presidential election since 1956: Vigo County, Indiana, which contains the city of Terre Haute. Conveniently enough, it’s one of the first places that reports its votes on election nights, because its polls close at 6 p.m. And sure enough, in 2012 it voted for President Obama by 343 votes, foreshadowing his victory. There’s a reason Terre Haute is such a good national general-election bellwether: it’s a mix of lots of different kinds of communities. It’s got a substantial minority population (10 percent African-American), and it’s home to a large public university — Indiana State — as well as a federal correctional institution and plenty of working-class whites. However, Vigo has a mixed primary track record; it has voted with the last two GOP winners but voted for Clinton over Obama in 2008. There’s no reason to believe Terre Haute won’t be a good bellwether tonight, though: it’s the kind of place Trump should carry, and it should host a close contest between Clinton and Sanders there. The interesting question tonight may be how much larger the GOP turnout there is relative to the Democratic turnout. If GOP participation is a lot higher, it’s easy to see how Trump could win Vigo this fall while losing nationally — potentially snapping its famous streak.

I wish we’d published this a little sooner, but our demographic model suggests that Clinton isn’t all that safe in Indiana despite polls showing her with a lead over Sanders. In fact, the demographic model we published last week, which “called” all five states right in the “Northeast primaries,” would have Sanders winning Indiana by 7 percentage points, since it’s a predominantly white state holding an open primary.

Fifty-two years (minus two days) ago, Indianans went to vote in the Republican primary of 1964, choosing the eventual nominee, Barry Goldwater, by 67 percent. That year, the party was still in mid-decision, with Goldwater having won just two of the seven previous contests. Goldwater’s run, with its themes of extremism and questions over the future of the GOP, resonates in the Trump era. But Trump’s success to date far exceeds Goldwater’s at the ballot box, in part because there’s a far more compressed primary season this time around than half a century ago. There was a “Stop Goldwater” movement in 1964, just as there is a Never Trump 2016. If Trump wins Indiana, both movements seem likely to be equally ineffective.

According to the latest numbers from Election Betting Odds, based on Betfair bets, bettors are pretty sure Clinton will face Trump in November — and that Clinton will win. Clinton has a 96 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination, and Trump has a 93 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination. Bettors also give Clinton a 72 percent chance of winning the presidency, to just 25 percent for Trump. A Sanders win today wouldn’t change much in the markets — in fact, bettors give that a 37 percent chance of happening. But a Cruz upset might shift the GOP nomination market, since bettors are giving Trump a 95 percent chance of winning Indiana today.

Question

Answer

I’m stealing this from Harry, but a week or so ago, we thought of the GOP primary as a 7-game postseason series in which Trump is ahead 3 games to 1. Game 5 tonight is Indiana; Game 6 is California, and Game 7 is Cleveland, with Cruz needing to win all three to win the nomination. The problem is that, if recent polls are right, he’s become a pretty big underdog to win Game 5, let alone to come back and win the series. On the Democratic side … I’m not even sure what to say. It’s more like a basketball game than a baseball game, in the sense that there might not physically be enough time for Sanders to come back. He could win by several percentage points tonight and still lose ground relative to where he needs to be to catch up in pledged delegates.

The volume of Google searches for GOP candidates on the day of voting has been a solid leading indicator of votes, including in last Tuesday’s primaries. So far today, Trump is dominating searches in Indiana — corroborating the polls showing him with big leads over Cruz.

Super PACs spent millions on a wave of anti-Trump ads before Super Tuesday last month. Since then, the attack ads have been hard to find, and were nonexistent, for example, in the Philadelphia market before the Pennsylvania primary last week. But in Indiana, which could be the last battleground of the #NeverTrump forces, a coalition of super PACs has joined what might be a last ad blitz. Club for Growth Action and Our Principles PAC are running television ads, and the new Never Trump PAC is running digital ads in Indiana. This ad from Our Principles PAC focuses on Trump’s language about women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huqrMX1t83w A survey by the Republican analytics firm Evolving Strategies found that anti-Trump messages were far more likely to hit the mark with women than with men. After women viewed one of three ads that questioned Trump’s character, their support for Trump dropped from 52 percent to 44 percent. But the needle didn’t move for men sampled.

Republican men like Trump more than Republican women do — but Trump has won many primaries by such big margins that he has won among women, too. There have been exit polls after 25 primaries. On average, Trump has won 44 percent of men’s votes and 37 percent of women’s. Cruz and Kasich have done slightly better among women than among men — if only because the women who didn’t vote for Trump had to vote for someone. (Many voted for Marco Rubio before he dropped out.) Yet Cruz and Kasich have averaged just 25 percent and 15 percent of women’s votes, respectively — well behind Trump. Before New York voted on April 19, Trump hadn’t topped 46 percent of women’s votes once. But he received at least 49 percent of women’s votes in each of the four primaries since then for which we have exit polls. Since then, Cruz has chosen Carly Fiorina as his hypothetical running mate, should he win the nomination and need one. Announcing his intent to designate Fiorina as just the third woman to run as vice president doesn’t appear to have helped Cruz much with Republican voters, though. A Morning Consult poll out today showed that roughly the same portion of Republican women said Cruz’s selection made them less likely to vote for him as said it made them more likely to. The same went for Republican men in the poll. According to the latest Morning Consult presidential preference poll, Trump was the choice of 54 percent of Republican women, compared to just 19 percent for Cruz and 11 percent for Kasich. For all that, though, the preferences of Republican women in the primaries is very different from Trump’s standing with all women voters in the general election. Most still don’t like him.

Here’s a look at the results from the most recent competitive presidential primaries in Indiana:

There’s only one primary tonight, but it’s a big one: Indiana. Why is Indiana so important? It could mark the end of the competitive phase of the Republican primary. Donald Trump has swept the past six contests and is moving quickly toward the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination. In order to stop him, Ted Cruz probably needs to win Indiana and come away with most of the state’s 57 delegates. The vast majority of polls, however, show Trump winning. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton doesn’t need a win to stay on the path to the nomination, though the FiveThirtyEight polling average gives her a clear 7 percentage point advantage. If the polling is right, it’ll be an early night. We’re getting our first look at the preliminary exit poll data now, but I don’t need to tell you that early exit polls can change (as we learned in New York two weeks ago). Most polls in Indiana — the parts of the state in the Eastern time zone — close at 6 p.m. EDT. The rest close an hour after that. In previous years, we’ve gotten results long before polls in the Central time zone parts of the state closed. But the networks will wait until 7 p.m. EDT, at the earliest, to call either race. So sit back with your TV dinner (or afternoon tea for those of you on the West Coast) and follow along with us, as we get our Hoosier on.

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