Author: Mike Jurney

So a lot of folks are like “if Cruz still had a chance before yesterday’s Indiana primary, why doesn’t Bernie have a…

So a lot of folks are like “if Cruz still had a chance before yesterday’s Indiana primary, why doesn’t Bernie have a chance? He has 45% of the pledged delegates and Hillary has 55%, and he won Indiana and a whole string of other states recently, so clearly it’s still really close except GAHH, SUPERDELEGATES WE HATES THEM”

Here’s the problem for Bernie, though: Democratic primaries don’t have winner-take-all states. This is a huge difference from the Republican primaries. With winner-take-all states, there’s a lot more chance for a relatively small number of votes to cause a large swing in the number of pledged delegates for a candidate. Bernie “won” Indiana last night, but he won it by 5%, which only nets him +6 delegates over Clinton. He’s behind by ~250 (non-super) delegates, so winning Indiana by only 5% actually put him further behind in terms of probability of winning the entire contest.

In order to close the gap on pledged delegates (again, we’re ignoring superdelegates here), Bernie needs 70-75% of the remaining primary votes. [1] Sanders “winning” a state by anything less than 70% of the vote is actually losing ground to Clinton.

We like to talk about people “winning” states because it makes for a nice clean media narrative, but the media mostly ignore this huge difference between the Republican and Democratic primary systems. To an approximation, the Republican system is closer to the general presidential election (Electoral College), and the Democratic system is closer to a national popular vote. It’s a simple fact of math that Bernie could “win” every remaining state and still lose the nomination, because that’s how far behind he’s been in the “popular vote” from all the previous Democratic primaries.

With Cruz dropping out, the primaries are effectively over: the next president of the US will either be Clinton or Trump.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/30/upshot/trump-clinton-delegate-calculator.html
[2] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-is-even-further-behind-in-votes-than-he-is-in-delegates/ — note that this article is a ~month old, and he’s effectively fallen further behind since then.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgeGaxyWsAIN443.jpg:large

Sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

There’s been a lot of coverage over the last 24 hours on the Cruz/Fiorina announcement, and it’s sounded a universal note of confusion.  The consensus seems to be that it’s a weird decision that doesn’t make any sense, but… it’s not.  It’s neither of those things.

Two things seem to be at the top of the wtf list:  1) Why Fiorina? 2) Why now?

1) To peel as many votes away in California as possible.  She’s from there, she’s got non-zero Republican support there, and Trump needs every California delegate to clinch the nomination.

2) Because after Cruz’s poor performance on Tuesday, he can no longer clinch the first ballot.  His only path is to deny it to Trump.  See point 1.

From the article: ‘Ted Cruz is the champion of “constitutional conservatism,” which is what we’re calling the losing…

From the article: ‘Ted Cruz is the champion of “constitutional conservatism,” which is what we’re calling the losing side at Gettysburg this century.’

There’s a baked-in assumption in our current discourse that Cruz’ manifest unctuous awfulness means there’s no way he can secure the Republican nomination, but I feel like nobody’s remembering that this country elected Richard Nixon.  Twice.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a44109/press-ted-cruz/?click=my6sense

Diamonds and Pearls was an incredibly important album for me.

Diamonds and Pearls was an incredibly important album for me.

I know that’s a little weird, for a couple of reasons, but there was a very formative year for me where that tape was in my walkman every day. In that narrow slice of time, that particular work of his was as close to my heart as any music before or since.

The world is different without Prince in it.

http://www.tmz.com/2016/04/21/prince-dead-at-57/