The Contest for President

Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president on May 4, 2016. He had not yet secured the required 1,237 votes but all of the other 16 candidates had dropped out of the race. He has since surpassed the magic number.

Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president on June 6, 2016 when the AP reported its analysis of pledged delegates and super delegates. Clinton had reached the magic 2,382 delegates. This number includes 1,812 pledged delegates and 572 super delegates. On this same date in 2008 Clinton ended her campaign against Barack Obama.

Clinton has made history as the first woman nominated for president by a major political party.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on May 16th, Republican consultant Steve Schmidt made the case that these are the two most unpopular presidential candidates in history.

Bernie Sanders, the man who spent his political career describing himself as a socialist while caucusing with the Democrats, is apparently ending his campaign with the same grace that Hillary Clinton did in 2008. He is vowing as he did on June 9th to work with Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in November. He made his pledge on the same day that President Obama and Vice President Biden formally endorsed Clinton for President.

When Sanders announced his candidacy for President on April 30, 2015, no one thought he would accomplish as much as he has in challenging Hillary Clinton.

During the course of the campaign (through April 2016) Sanders raised slightly more money for his personal campaign committee than Clinton did for hers, $212 million to $211 million. He appears to have accomplished this without taking any contributions from PACs.

In the months of January through April of 2016, Sanders raised more money than Clinton. By the end of April the Sanders campaign had taken in more than 7.4 million contributions from more than 2.4 million donors. While the campaign claims that the average contribution received is $27, which is probably an exaggeration. WW’s calculation is that the average donor has given just under $90. Some contributors have given the maximum of $2,700.

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The following are a series of charts that provide basic information about the 2016 election and the candidates.

1. Select national polls

2. The money game

3. Delegates accrued through June 7th

4. The Primary Debates

5. The General Election Debates

6. The conventions

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1. Selected national polls

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2. The Money Game

Money raised or borrowed by the remaining campaigns since the beginning of their respective campaigns through April 30th.



The Trump campaign claims it will ultimately convert these loans to a candidate contribution. As of April 30th the conversion was not made. As long as it is listed as a loan it could be paid back by Trump at least through the end of the primary season.

The Clinton campaign has started to actively solicit general election contributions.

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3. Delegates accrued through June 7th and total votes received

The Republicans (1,237 needed to win)



The Democrats (2,382 needed to win)



[Note: The popular vote numbers do not count those who participated in caucuses.] Source: Real Clear Politics

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4. Here are the audience sizes for the primary election debates

Republican - Fox News, August 6, 2015, Ohio – 24 million (THURS)
Republican - CNN, September 16, 2015, California -23 million (WED)
Republican - CNN, December 15, 2015, Nevada–18 million (TUES)
Republican – Fox News, March 3, 2016 – Michigan- 16.8 million (THURS)
Democratic - CNN, October 13, 2015 – Las Vegas -15.8 million (TUES)
Republican - CNN, February 25, 2016 – Texas- 14.5 million (THURS)
Republican – CNBC, October 28, 2015 – Colorado14 million (WED)
Republican - CBS News, February 13, 2016 – S. Carolina 13.51 million (SAT)
Republican – Fox Business, November 10, 2015 – Wisconsin 13.5 million (TUE)
Republican - ABC News, February 6, 2016 - New Hampshire- 13.2 million (SAT)
Republican – Fox News – January 28, 2016 – Iowa- 12.5 million (THURS)
Republican - CNN, March 10, 2016, Florida- 11.9 million (THURS)
Republican – Fox Business, January 14, 2016 – SC – 11 million (THURS)
Democratic – NBC – January 17, 2016 – South Carolina – 10.2 million (SUN)
Democratic – CBS/WSJ, November 14, 2015 – Iowa - 8.5 million (SAT)
Democratic – PBS – February 11, 2016 – Wisconsin- 8.03 million (THURS)
Democratic - ABC, December 19, 2015, New Hampshire – 6.7 million (SAT)
Democratic – Univision, March 9, 2016 – Florida- 5.9 million (WED)
Democratic – CNN, April 14, 2016, Brooklyn, NY – 5.6 million (THURS)
Democratic – OPEN, March 6, 2016 – Michigan- 5.5 million (SUN)
Democratic – MSNBC – February 4, 2016 – New Hampshire- 4.5 mill (THUR)
Democratic – CNN – January 25, 2016 – Iowa – 3.2 million (MON)

Republican debates have drawn a total audience of 185.91 million viewers, an average of 15.49 million viewers. The Democratic debates have drawn 73.9 million viewers, an average of 8.2 million viewers.

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5. 2016 General Election debates

The nonpartisan, nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has announced sites and dates for three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate during the 2016 general election.

First Presidential Debate:
Monday, September 26, 2016
Wright State University, Dayton, OH

Vice Presidential Debate:
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Longwood University, Farmville, VA

Second Presidential Debate:
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

Third Presidential Debate:
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV

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6. The Conventions

For quite some time the working assumption was that the Republican convention would include considerable fireworks while the Democratic convention would be relatively calm.

It now appears that both conventions could be entertaining but for different reasons. For the Republicans there could well be tensions relating to the public postures of its presumptive nominee. In the case of the Democrats there could well be tension around the question of how far left the party’s platform will go.

Republicans: July 18-21, Cleveland, Ohio

Democrats: July 25-28, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At both conventions there will be efforts made to change the rules under which the nominating process will be conducted.

The Republicans

The four states that voted first in the current cycle may not retain their place on the electoral calendar. Their position may be diluted by the addition of states being added to their position on the calendar. The state of Nevada is the most threatened.

An argument will be made to limit participation in the primaries and caucuses to registered Republicans only and close the proceedings to Independents.

Another proposal is to have a different set of states go first in each presidential nominating cycle.

The Democrats

Consideration will be given to a change in the primary calendar. While there are few serious problems, one proposal will be to move the four states that start the primary seasons on to a single day so that all parts of the country will have an early say.

The issue that will get the most attention is that of the role of Super Delegates.

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The following are a couple of pieces about Super Delegates.

The History of Super Delegates

"The Democratic Party created its firewall of “ex-officio delegates” as a hedge against the kind of electoral disaster the party suffered in 1972 when candidate George McGovern lost in a landslide.

McGovern had won the nomination in a grassroots uprising energized by opposition to the Vietnam War and social movements for civil rights and women’s rights. Republicans dubbed him the candidate of “amnesty, abortion, and acid”. At the Democratic Convention in Miami, divisions in the party were highlighted when McGovern ousted Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, once the consummate powerbroker, seating instead an Illinois delegation headed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

In the wake of McGovern’s historic defeat, the Democratic Party bigwigs shunned in Miami looked for a way to regain some of their lost influence. Three blue-ribbon commissions followed before a compromise was struck between liberal reformers, who wanted zero party officials as delegates, and state chairs and party officials who wanted 25 percent representation. In the current cycle, there are 715 supers out of 4,765 total delegates. Of the supers, 473 are pledged to Hillary Clinton, 32 to Bernie Sanders, and 1 to Martin O’Malley, who left the race after Iowa. The rest, 209, are uncommitted.

Ideally, the super delegates affirm the will of the people, moving in large numbers toward the candidate who receives the most votes in the party’s primaries and caucuses. That’s the argument that Tad Devine, now working for Sanders, made in a 2008 op-ed recalling how worried he was as Walter Mondale’s delegate counter in 1984 when he realized the morning after the last primaries that they were 40 delegates short of a majority. After a frantic round of phone calls, the supers put Mondale over the top by noon.

Devine made the point in his article that this mass of uncommitted convention voters “should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.”

Who are these super delegates? They are major elected officials (including senators and members of the House of Representatives), notable party members (current or former presidents and vice presidents) and some members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—put simply, the Democratic elite. After 1968, the Democrats produced some relatively weak nominees: George McGovern carried only one state, plus the District of Columbia, in his loss to Richard Nixon in 1972, and in 1980 Jimmy Carter lost reelection to Ronald Reagan by only a slightly less humiliating margin. In the wake of such losses, leading Democrats decided to reform the nominating process so that the party’s elite members could play more of a role in selecting nominees, and choose candidates they believed would fare better in the general election. Theoretically, super delegates could change the results of a nominating process, but in practice they rarely have. Since the reforms were adopted in 1982, all super delegates have followed the results of the popular vote in the primaries at the convention. The only time super delegates directly exerted their influence was in 1984, when they pushed Walter Mondale to the nomination after he won the pledged delegate count by too narrow a margin to secure victory. (Mondale would win.)"

[Excerpted from an article by Eleanor Clift in the Daily Beast]

[WW note: There is an important reason for the creation of Super Delegates that is not mentioned above. It was the desire of many public officials to avoid having to run against their constituents for convention delegate’s status.]

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“… nominations are party business. It’s not a public race. Political parties are not in the Constitution, but they are protected by the First Amendment’s right of free association. There’s no constitutional guarantee that you can participate in the activity of a party. They’re a funny, semi-public organization. And for most of history, super delegates were the only ones picking nominees. You couldn’t go to a convention unless you had some kind of tie to the party, either being elected on its ticket or worked really hard in the party. The notion that voters would pick the nominee was foreign all the way from 1831 to 1972. And in most democracies in the world, voters don’t get to choose the nominee of the party. Because this has become such a public process here, people have forgotten that, in the end, the parties get to decide who is a Democrat and who is a Republican." [Elaine Kaymark - Think Progress 5/11/2016]

The following is a description of the current Democratic Super Delegates based on their positions. Total 713, U.S. Representatives 193, U.S. Senators 47, Governors 21, Distinguished party leaders 20, DNC members 432. 58% of the current Super Delegates are men and 32% are women. [PEW Research 5/5/16]

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About Polling

The following is an excerpt from an article by Norman Orenstein and Alan Abramowitz in the New York Times:

“The demographic composition of the American electorate is changing rapidly, becoming more racially diverse with every election cycle, and these changes are most evident among the youngest generation of voters. Because there is a deep racial and generational divide between the parties, underrepresenting younger voters and racial minorities can seriously bias poll results. This problem is likely to be exacerbated by the presence at the top of the Republican ticket of Mr. Trump, whose electoral strategy is based on appealing to older white voters.

“At the same time, we have no strong sense of how to sort out likely voters from nonvoters when a relentlessly negative campaign can frighten people into voting or depress them into staying home.

“Smart analysts are working to sort out distorting effects of questions and poll design. In the meantime, voters and analysts alike should beware of polls that show implausible, eye-catching results. Look for polling averages and use gold-standard surveys, like Pew. Everyone needs to be better at reading polls — to first look deeper into the quality and nature of a poll before assessing the results.” [NYT 5/20/16]

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In the June 2nd edition of the FiveThirtyEight Newsletter, Nate Silver published their rating of pollsters. The ratings are “calculated by analyzing the historical accuracy and the methodology of each firm’s polls on an A, B, C, D, and F scale.” The ratings are regularly updated. The results are included in an article entitled “The State of The Polls, 2016”.

The analysis done by Five Thirty Eight is based on various numbers of polls, spanning from 782 for Survey USA to a single poll for a variety of entities. The list is ordered from the highest to the lowest number of polls analyzed. The following pollsters with 25 or more polls analyzed received grades of A+ to B+.

50 or more polls analyzed

(A+) ABC/WP and Monmouth University
(A) Survey USA and Marist College
(A-) Quinnipiac
(B+) Mason-Dixon; Public Policy Polling; U of New Hampshire; CNN/ORC: CBS/NYT

25-50 polls analyzed

(A+) Selzer & Company;
(A) Sienna College; U of Cincinnati; Grove Insight
(A-) Ipsos; Research & Polling, Inc.; NBC/WSJ
(B+) EPIC-MRA; RT Strategies; LATimes; Princeton Survey Research; Angus Reid Global; Market Shares Corp; RKM Research

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The Washington Watch relies on the following sources of political data: Cook Political Report; Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report; Sabato’s Crystal Ball; Ballotpedia; Real Clear Politics.com; The Green Papers.com; Huffpost – Polster.com and Polling Report.com.

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