How The March 22 Primary Elections Went Down

Is Trump’s huge win in Arizona tonight because of counties on the Mexican border? Not necessarily. He’s doing well in border countries, but not any better or worse than elsewhere in the state. So far, Trump has 43 percent of the vote in highly populous Pima County (which contains Tucson), 49 percent in Yuma County, 45 percent in Santa Cruz County, and 49 percent in Cochise County. All those results are pretty similar to the 46 percent of the vote he has statewide.

Looking ahead on the Democratic side, I’d expect it to be a pretty good weekend for Sanders. While there really hasn’t been any polling in Alaska, Hawaii or Washington, Nate’s demographic model has Sanders favored in all three states by at least 17 percentage points. Obviously those projections come with a margin of error, but Sanders fans can take delight in what should be three victories. The problem, of course, is that Alaska and Hawaii are small states with few delegates up grabs, so it’ll be difficult for Sanders to make too big of a dent in Clinton’s delegate lead.

To follow up on my own question about Utah in the general election, Harry — yeah, usually I’d be super dismissive of a poll showing Democrats with a shot there. I can vaguely remember early polls from past presidential elections showing Republicans running competitively in Connecticut, Barack Obama with a chance to win North Dakota, and so forth. You take enough polls, especially in the early going, and you’ll get a few goofy results. The thing about Utah, though, is that it’s dominated by one demographic group, Mormons, that doesn’t have a big presence in other states. And they have some plausible reasons to object to Trump — they’re a minority group in many senses, and Trump’s populist politics are potentially dangerous to any minority group. So it’s not that hard to imagine a big shift among that one group that isn’t replicated elsewhere. It’s easier to imagine Clinton winning Utah than winning Nebraska, for instance.