What Went Down In The New York Primaries

Gang, jumping off Clinton’s win in New York tonight and this provocative(!) Josh Barro tweet … https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/722608472710377472 … what’s the most precise way to describe the Democratic race right now? Is Clinton the presumptive nominee? The prohibitive front-runner? Is the Democratic race over?

Earlier I cited Morning Consult polling data suggesting that voters in states that voted before today had roughly the same presidential preferences within their parties, as a group, as voters in the rest of the states. SurveyMonkey, another online pollster, sent along its data just now, and it shows a slightly different picture. In its latest poll, Clinton and Sanders were tied among voters in states that had not yet voted before today, but Clinton led by 12 percentage points in states that had voted. The data suggests Sanders’s gains in national polls have mostly come from gains in states yet to vote — where he trailed by more than 10 points in every weekly SurveyMonkey poll from the start of the year through late February. What looks like a big loss to Clinton in New York today isn’t particularly encouraging for that storyline, but SurveyMonkey includes voters who lean Democratic, while only registered Democrats may vote in New York’s Democratic primary. Still, Sanders can’t just be close to Clinton to win the nomination; he has to beat her in most remaining states, most by big margins — especially after tonight. On the Republican side, Trump leads Cruz by 22 points and Kasich by 26 points in states that haven’t voted — not far from his leads of 17 points and 28 points, respectively, in states that have voted. But Trump’s lead has declined in states that haven’t voted since the field narrowed to three candidates a month ago.