Bernie Sanders Likely To GAIN 2-6 Net Delegates in AZ

[Segami]

The purpose of this diary is not to comment on the voter suppression in Arizona. (It is my opinion that this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, possibly by allowing late voting). I just wanted to point out that in the days since the AZ primary, Sanders has quietly closed the gap.

On the night of the election, news agencies reported that Clinton had won 59.1%-40.9% (ignoring other candidates). Indeed, sources continue to report those numbers. And on the basis of these numbers, sources project that Clinton netted 13 delegates in AZ (44-31).

However, as the provisional ballots have been counted, Sanders has slowly improved his numbers. Sanders has added 26,187 votes — while Clinton has added 24,806. Thus, the new total stands at 57.9%-42.1%. Sanders’ gains have been strongest in Maricopa County (i.e. Phoenix) and Pima County (i.e. Tucson). In both of these counties, Sanders has gained 1.4%. It remains to be seen how many more votes will be added.

The reason these small gains are so important is that Hillary Clinton just barely won three delegates (or more accurately, she was barely projected to win those delegates).

* In CD-1 she received 58.73% of the vote as reported on election night — just surpassing the threshold of 58.33% required to win 4-2

* In CD-2 she received 57.22% of the vote as reported on election night — just surpassing the threshold of 56.25% required to win 5-3

* In CD-6 she received 60.35% of the vote as reported on election night — just surpassing the threshold of 58.33% required to win 4-2

It remains to be seen exactly how much Sanders improved in each of these congressional districts (and how much more he will continue to improve), but these three congressional districts include parts of Maricopa and Pima counties. As such, Sanders is highly likely to gain at least one delegate (a net gain of 2, since she loses one). In fact, he will probably net four delegates — and possibly even six.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/29/1507858/-Sanders-likely-to-gain-2-6-net-delegates-in-AZ

[Segami]

1. The Fish stink from the head....

KEEP GOING BERNIE........

[paulthompson]

2. I wouldn't be surprised

I wouldn't be surprised if Sanders ends up gaining even more than that.

Consider that the numbers for Maricopa County were within a percentage point of the numbers for Arizona as a whole. That means neither candidate has any special edge there. And for Arizona as a whole, Clinton did very well in early voting - winning about 2 to 1, and Sanders did well with election day voting. Some reports say the election voting was about 50-50, while others say Sanders did even better than that.

We also know there's a big pile of uncounted provisional ballots for Maricopa County. Republicans in charge of the election have egg on their face over how badly the election was run. Oftentimes, provisional ballots never get counted. But yesterday, those officials announced they're going to count as many of those provisional ballots as they can.

One can debate if more of the people who didn't cast their ballots were Clinton voters or Sander voters. But we know that Sanders did much better with election day voting, and all the provisional ballots are election day votes. So the more provisional ballots are counted, the more the final total vote count will move towards the 50-50 or so election day numbers and away from the 66-34 early voting numbers. That's why we're seeing him gain already (as these latest numbers show), because some of those provisional ballots are being counted.

Just how much the numbers will change depends on how many provisional ballots there are and what percent of those end up being deemed valid. But I haven't seen any solid numbers on that.

However, we do know the numbers for Maricopa were way way off. The number of polling places there were down about 70% from the last election, but the number of votes counted on election day were down about 70% from the last election too! That doesn't make sense, because everyone knows there were long, long lines. And Maricopa County alone makes up more than half of Arizona's population, so there could be a lot of provisional ballots still waitng to be counted.

Remember on the night of the election, some official from the Sanders campaign made a statement saying that the results in Arizona had to be way off? I forget the exact details, but that person claimed the numbers should have been much more favorable to Sanders. Now we're starting to see what was meant by that claim. And if lots of provisional ballots do end up counting, there could be a big change.

[paulthompson]

4. Okay, I found some more numbers

I found some interesting numbers from this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511575727

Nobody will make me believe that the crazy long lines in Maricopa County were only comprised of 32,000 voters. In Maricopa County in the 2008 democratic primary, there were 113,807 votes at the polls, in 2016 only 32,949, which is a turnout difference of -71%!

In Pima County in the 2008 democratic primary, there were 72,863 votes at the polls, in 2016 only 19,801 which is a turnout difference of -73%!

Can you still believe that this change in turnout is possible, despite the record long lines ?

It has been published that there has been are only 32,000 votes cast in Maricopa. If this is true, why did it take 5 or 6 hours to vote for most people? More or less 3.5 times less votes and also 3.5 times less polling stations. This means the waiting time was 20 times longer than in 2008 for the same number of votes cast per polling station! This defies logic! The only rational explanation is that there were much more voters than these 32,000 and that their vote has not been accounted for.

The answer to the above mystery has to be the provisional ballots.

And here's more from that thread, where Time for Change said this:

That website shows that Clinton won the early voting part of the election in Maricopa County 118,832 to 71,019, over Sanders, a margin of 66.1% to 33.9%. The website also gives the total vote count, which also shows Clinton winning the total vote in Maricopa County, but by a little less. What it doesn’t do is specifically show us the statistics for Election Day voting. No problem. Those can be obtained by merely subtracting the early voting statistics from the total voting statistics.

The Election Day voting, which Bernie won by 19,883 to 12,802, shows us two very significant things. First, that Bernie won the voting on Election Day over Clinton by 60.8% to 39.2% in Maricopa County, quite a difference from the early voting margins. And second, it shows us that Election Day voting in Maricopa County accounted for only 14.7% of the total vote. I find that astounding! I have never heard of a presidential or any other election, where Election Day voting accounted for so low a percent of the total vote. This strongly suggests, in my opinion, that the effects of the voter suppression in Maricopa County were huge. Could it be that only 14.7% of voters who voted intended to vote on Election Day? There are three facts that strongly suggest otherwise. One is the 70% reduction in polling places, resulting in half mile lines that resulted in many people having to stand in line for several hours to vote. Another is the mis-categorization of Democratic voters as independent voters, who were therefore not allowed to vote. And the other is that, if one analyzes the data from the Arizona website, along with information on the overall Arizona data on early voting, one can calculate that Election Day voting in the Democratic primary in the rest of Arizona averaged 59.1% rather than 14.7%.

If one makes the reasonable assumption that in the absence of voter suppression, the Election Day voting percentage in Maricopa County would have been similar to that in the rest of Arizona, that would mean that more than 240 thousand additional voters would have voted on Election Day in the Democratic primary in Maricopa County. And assuming that Bernie’s margin of winning those extra votes over Clinton on Election Day was similar to the Election Day votes that were counted in Maricopa County, that would have meant that Bernie would have lost Arizona by about 2%, rather than by the almost 20% that he actually lost by in the official count. Also, keep in mind that these calculations are somewhat conservative, because they make no assumptions that the voter suppression in Maricopa County was targeted to Sanders areas.

So actually it turns out I was wrong in my above post. Sanders did MUCH better than Clinton in election day voting in Maricopa County. It's just that was masked by the massive suppression of the vote in that county, resulting in the numbers ending up closer to the Clinton-friendly early voting numbers. So we definitely could see a big shift in the final results as more of the provisional ballots get counted.

And by the way, while searching for the above thread just now, I also came across articles from the 2012 general election showing that there were massive numbers of provisional ballot then too. Two days after that election, this was reported:

More than 600,000 early and provisional ballots statewide have yet to be processed and counted, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said Wednesday. Of that total, nearly 460,000 votes still haven’t been counted in Maricopa County, and that’s complicating the ability to call several close races throughout Arizona.

So that suggests to me a pattern, and a lot of votes are still getting counted.

[paulthompson]

6. A-ha! I found it!

I mentioned in an above post that someone from the Sanders campaign questioned the Arizona numbers and said they should do better if all the votes were counted. Here it is:

Campaign manager Jeff Weaver griped Tuesday night after the race had been called for Clinton that there's "something wrong with the numbers, and I think once we see where they come down, it may end up being a split of delegates basically in Arizona."

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-supporters-arizona-221163#ixzz44M5mtW8z

Now, compare that to what's actually happening lately. Sanders has gained on Clinton as more votes come in. And in the above post, Time for Change said:

assuming that Bernie’s margin of winning those extra votes over Clinton on Election Day was similar to the Election Day votes that were counted in Maricopa County, that would have meant that Bernie would have lost Arizona by about 2%, rather than by the almost 20% that he actually lost by in the official count.

That's very similar to Jeff Weaver's estimate that when all is said and done, "it may end up being a split of delegates basically in Arizona."

Time will tell if that's the case. A lot depends on how many of those provisional ballots actually get counted. I understand that in most elections they're just thrown away.

[paulthompson]

8. One more thing

I just checked, and right now Wikipedia has Clinton winning Arizona by 57.6% to 39.9%, or 44 delegates to 31 delegates. That's a 13 delegate gain.

Her win was 59.1% to 40.9% if you elimate the other candidates (who don't reach the thresholds to matter for getting delegates). But the latest numbers have Clinton's lead narrowing to 57.9% to 42.1%.

If that continues, Sanders could take back a big chunk of that 13 delegate gain, which would be as good as winning another small state!

[jillan]

3. Once all the votes are counted, I bet he will gain more than that.

I didn't get a chance to follow up today on any news but all hell broke loose yesterday & you can be certain that the citizens of AZ are not backing down.

[NWCorona]

14. Do you know how many provisional ballots were in fact rejected?

[Jennylynn]

5. "We're going to count as many of the Provisional ballots as we can"

WTH? Anything the matter with counting ALL of them?

[lostnfound]

10. Votes by voters whose registrations were inexplicably flipped in the database won't count

There were reports of people whose voter cards showed democrat being told they were registered as independent and forced to vote by provisional ballot --- which won't be counted, if voter rolls show them as independent.

[Jennylynn]

13. Grrrr

[Time for change]

7. Thanks for the info, this is important info

However, the extent of Bernie's improvement from this counting of Provisional ballots will only scratch the surface of the disenfranchisement problem. That is because they have decided only to count provisional ballots where their database proves that the voter is a long time Democrat. Since Bernie's main supporters are very young, and since many Bernie voters in closed primaries are recent Democrats (who changed their registration legally to vote for Bernie), this action will miss a major portion of the votes that Bernie should rightfully have.

[paulthompson]

9. That sucks!

Where did you hear that? That's an outrage. I hope the Sanders campaign fights that.

And by the way, regardless of how many of the provisional ballots are counted, a better understanding of what the true final numbers should be shows that Sanders only lost Arizona by a small margin. And that is important because it means he must have done better with Latino voters in Arizona than is generally believed.

That in turn matters, because "experts" are claiming he won't do well in California, and especially Southern California, because he didn't do well in Arizona with its similar demographics. Maybe that's not true, and maybe he just got screwed with the Maricopa and Pima County vote suppression.

It also would put back against the narrative that he can't do well in closed primaries, like Arizona's.

[lostnfound]

11. One advantage in California is the absence of GOP government, who are pro at voter suppression

My suspicion is that if AZ had been a fair election, Bernie would have won by 60%. Just my opinion.

[paulthompson]

15. By the way...

By the way, I saw something today that said Arizona is going to count all the provisional ballots of anyone who is a registered Democrat but had their registration changed to independent recently. Some Arizona official said that. So hopefully that's true and they won't just be looking at the long time voters.

[reformist2]

12. Too many voters were turned away or got discouraged by the long lines. The results are not valid imo

I still think Arizona needs to conduct another election.

[Tarc]

16. OHMIGAWD TWO TO SIX?????????????????????????

Clinton might as well drop out now...

[Ellipsis]

18. Remember Florida 2000? Election Fraud ain't funny.

Try not to be so smug.

[Uncle Joe]

17. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Segami.