How The States Voted On Semi-Super Saturday

One minor note of caution about Kentucky, where Trump has a 12 percentage point lead with 26 percent of precincts reporting: the share of precincts isn’t the same thing as the number of votes. That’s especially true in Kentucky, which seems to be reporting every county as a single precinct. The counties reporting so far represent about 18 percent of Kentucky’s population, rather than 26 percent.

Kansas was just called for Bernie Sanders by the Kansas Democratic Party. And it’s worth asking whether it fits the pattern of other states Sanders has won. Kansas is white, of course, but is it liberal? Of course Kansas is not liberal, you’re saying. (Even if there is a Liberal, Kansas.) Kansas hasn’t voted Democrat for president since 1964. But Kansas also doesn’t have that many Democrats period, which means the ones who vote may nevertheless be fairly liberal. According to the 2008 exit poll from the general election in Kansas — there was no exit poll conducted of Kansas’s caucus that year, so this the best we can do — 39 percent of Democrats who voted in the general election were liberal. That’s fairly similar to the percentage of Democrats nationwide who identified as liberal that year, 42 percent. Furthermore, Kansas holds a caucus, which tends to attract a higher share of liberal voters than primaries or general elections do.

If you’re looking for hints ahead of the Ohio primary on March 15, look at the map of Kentucky tonight. You see that Kasich is pulling decent numbers along the Ohio/Kentucky border. He’s at 21 percent in Gallatin county and 26 percent in Campbell county. That could be good news for Kasich as we head into a must-win primary for him.