What Went Down In The New York Primaries

If Clinton significantly outperforms exit polls showing a close race tonight and wins by a fairly comfortable margin instead, will it be part of a broader pattern? Not really. We’ve been keeping track of how Clinton’s and Sanders’s actual results have compared to initial exit polls, and the differences have been pretty random over the course of the campaign. With that said, sometimes a candidate whose supporters are more enthusiastic can be overrated by exit polls because of response bias — this was sometimes an issue for Obama during the 2008 campaign, and it’s plausible we could see something parallel happening with Sanders. Furthermore, pre-election polls showed a wider lead for Clinton than the exit polls did, and it’s usually worth taking a blend of exit polls and pre-election polls even when you have exit polls in hand.

It seems clear that Trump is on track to be under 50 percent in the 10th District, and could possibly lose there. Cruz is strong in Borough Park, Kasich is strong in Lower Manhattan.

As Trump cruises towards victory in New York, he may have some delegate leakage occurring in Manhattan. In the 12th District, he leads by only 3 percentage points over Kasich. If he falls to second there, he’ll finish with only one delegate there. He’s also below 50 percent in the 10th and 13th Districts, which are primarily in Manhattan.