New York Primaries: “Bernie’s Gone” Says Donald Trump, “I Love Running against Crooked Hillary, Bernie Wouldn’t be as Much Fun”.
“Bernie’s gone. You know that? Bernie’s gone,” Trump said on April 20 at a rally in Indianapolis, Indiana, the day after Hillary Clinton routed Sanders in the New York primary. “I love running against crooked Hillary,” he said. “Bernie wouldn’t be as much fun.”
Every election year promises full employment in industry sectors that serve the public with almost daily opinion polls that tell you what one- to two-thousand people (a sampling) think about every candidate and issue; and, in case you can’t think for yourself, a generous assortment of pundits (usually biased) who will connect the dots and tell you what “most Americans think”.
“Don’t statistics lie?” an insurance company retiree asked me. I replied that people can lie when answering polls and companies can lie when structuring data for public release. But poll results must meet acknowledged standards for methodology, sampling, margin of error and accuracy (if not, garbage in=garbage out). To use results selectively and without context can lead to deceptive and distorted conclusions that bolster predetermined outcomes and biases.
How accurate were New York primary election polling forecasts that were conducted from April 11 to April 18 (data sources compiled at RealClearPolitics.com)?
Final Election results from the April 19 New York Primary are:
Clinton 58, Sanders 42 (Clinton +16)
Trump 60.4, Kasich 25.1, Cruz 14.5 (Trump +35.3)
Pollster/Results/Spread
April 18 Polls:
Emerson: Trump 55, Kasich 21, Cruz 18 (Trump +34)
Emerson: Clinton 55, Sanders 40 (Clinton +15)
Gravis: Trump 57, Kasich 22, Cruz 20 (Trump +35)
Gravis: Clinton 53, Sanders 47 (Clinton +6)
April 17 Polls:
CBS News/YouGov: Trump 54, Kasich 19, Cruz 21 (Trump +33)
CBS News/YouGov: Clinton 53, Sanders 43 (Clinton +10)
April 16 Poll:
NBC 4 NY/WSJ/Marist: Trump 54, Kasich 25, Cruz 16 (Trump +29)
April 15 Poll:
0ptimus: Trump 49, Kasich 23, Cruz 14 (Trump +26)
April 14 Poll:
NBC 4 NY/WSJ/Marist: Clinton 57, Sanders 40 (Clinton +17)
April 13 Polls:
Siena: Trump 50, Kasich 27, Cruz 17 (Trump +23)
Siena: Clinton 52, Sanders 42 (Clinton +10)
April 12 Polls:
Quinnipiac: Trump 55, Kasich 20, Cruz 19 (Trump +35)
NY1/Baruch: Trump 60, Kasich 17, Cruz 14 (Trump +43)
PPP (D): Trump 51, Kasich 25, Cruz 20 (Trump +26)
Liberty Research: Trump 52, Kasich 23, Cruz 19 (Trump +29)
Quinnipiac: Clinton 53, Sanders 40 (Clinton +13)
NY1/Baruch: Clinton 50, Sanders 37 (Clinton +13)
PPP: Clinton 51, Sanders 40 (Clinton +11)
April 11 Polls:
NBC/WSJ/Marist: Trump 54, Kasich 21, Cruz 18 (Trump +33)
NBC/WSJ/Marist: Clinton 55, Sanders 41 (Clinton +14)
Monmouth: Clinton 51, Sanders 39 (Clinton +12)
Final election results (April 19):
Clinton 58, Sanders 42 (Clinton +16)
Trump 60.4, Kasich 25.1, Cruz 14.5 (Trump +35.3)
Conclusions
All polls correctly predicted Clinton and Trump wins.
All twelve polls underestimated Clinton’s margin of victory except the April 14 NBC 4 NY/WSJ/Marist Poll: (Clinton +17)
All thirteen polls considerably underestimated Trump’s margin of victory.
All eleven polls correctly predicted Kasich as runner-up.
All eleven polls correctly predicted Cruz in third place.
Note: The Reuters Polling Explorer (polling.reuters.com) is a wondrous interactive tool for finding current and historical poll results on presidential candidates that can be filtered to demographic subsets (e.g., what percentage of white, middle-class millennials voted for Bernie Sanders vs. what percentage of hi-income evangelicals ages 65+ voted for Ted Cruz vs. what percentage of unemployed whites ages 18-29 voted for Donald Trump).
On the day following the New York Primary, April 20, political pundits carried on:
Following his sweeping victory in New York, Donald Trump “was markedly more disciplined, gentler and more appealing than the version of Trump we’ve seen for much of the last year,” wrote Chris Cillizza for the Washington Post. The new Donald Trump “should scare the hell out of the GOP establishment… ”
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt: “Donald Trump Will Be Nominee on First Ballot; Will Clear 1,237 Mark By 50 Delegates”. (RealClearPolitics, April 20)
Schmidt predicted Trump will not only get the required 1,237 delegates, but will have at least 50 more. Schmidt appeared on Wednesday’s Morning Joe, following Trump’s landslide victory in his home state of New York.
“He will clear the 1,237 mark by at least 50 to 60 delegates by the time the votes are counted on June 7th in the state of California. And that presumes really Ted Cruz over performing at a level that he hasn’t been able to perform at thus far in the campaign,” said Schmidt.
Trump strategist Roger Stone: “Even If Trump Wins 1,237 Delegates, Cruz Could Use ‘Procedural’ Means To ‘Take Away His Majority’”. (RealClearPolitics, April 20)
“Unfortunately just because Donald Trump gets the 1,237 [delegates needed to win], doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have a brokered convention,” Roger Stone told NJ 101.5 radio.
“My sources, who are pretty good in the Republican Party, indicate to me that Ted Cruz intends to work a ‘rules strategy’ to try to euchre this nomination away from Donald Trump.
“In kind of a shady, using political trickery and so on, utilizing these Trojan Delegates we have been talking about — Where Trump delegates, from the results of the primary — those seats are filled with non-Trump voters, non-Trump supporters who will vote against Trump on procedural issues in either rules or credentials that could be used to take away his majority.”
“It’s over for the Vermont senator,”
shouted Douglas E. Schoen at FOX News. (April 20)
“I in no way want to denigrate what Bernie Sanders has accomplished in this campaign, which has been truly remarkable. When he started out he was over 60 points down in New York and he made this a real race (as he has across the nation),”
admitted Schoen. “But after Tuesday night’s victory the reality is truly setting in that the delegate math just isn’t there for Bernie Sanders.”
Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki during election night coverage (April 19):
“[E]ven if Hillary Clinton secures the nomination through pledged and superdelegates the campaign would still challenge her at the convention …We’re going to go to the convention. It is extremely unlikely either candidate will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to get [the nomination]. So it’s going to be an election determined by the superdelegates,”
claimed Weaver.
As suspected by some that Bernie Sanders is a “gate keeper” for Hillary and despite gestures by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to run a third party independent campaign with her as VP, Sanders’ campaign aide says Sanders now will be Democrat for life. (msnbs & Bloomberg, April 19)
“He is a Democrat, he said he’s a Democrat and he’s going to be supporting the Democratic nominee, whoever that is,” Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on Bloomberg Politics show ’With All Due Respect.’
Trump says as President, he’d mull pursuing Clinton indictment. (FOX News & Bloomberg, April 20)
“You’d certainly have to look at it – very fairly, and I would only do something 100% fair – but certainly that is something you would look at,” Donald Trump said in interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says: (TheHill, April 20)
Donald Trump’s blowout victory in Tuesday’s New York primary makes him the presumptive Republican presidential nominee that the party should unite behind, reported Jessie Hellmann in The Hill. Gingrich asserted Trump would win the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland. “It is time for the GOP establishment to work with this new reality rather than wage war against it,” he said.
In an exclusive interview for Politico on April 6, Hillary Clinton said
“she has had enough of Bernie Sanders. She is clearly frustrated with his easy appeal to voters under 35. She even suggested for the first time (in public, anyway) that the septuagenarian from Vermont was feeding a simplistic, cynical line of argument to turn young voters against her,”
wrote Politico interviewer Glenn Thrush.
“There is a persistent, organized effort to misrepresent my record, and I don’t appreciate that, and I feel sorry for a lot of the young people who are fed this list of misrepresentations,” Clinton said. “I know that Sen. Sanders spends a lot of time attacking my husband, attacking President Obama. I rarely hear him say anything negative about George W. Bush, who I think wrecked our economy.”
The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC Priorities USA raised nearly $12 million in March, the bulk from a dozen six- and seven-figure contributions, according to Politico.
The PAC spent almost as much as it raised, with the vast majority — $10 million — marked for a digital ad reservation through Precision Network. Another $541,000 to Civis Analytics was labeled as “General Election Analytics.”
In her victory speech on April 19, Hillary Clinton asked her admirers: “I hope you will join the 1.1 million people who’ve already contributed at HillaryClinton.com—and by the way, most with less than $100—because we have more work to do.”
Hillary’s top donor during the month of March, hedge fund billionaire James Simons, contributed $3.5 million, and four other donors topped the $1 million mark. Two $900,000 donations from the Pritzker family were also listed as part of the haul.
“I love running against crooked Hillary,” Trump said. “Bernie wouldn’t be as much fun.”
Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive currently residing in New England. He has authored nine books on practical spirituality collectively titled The Cerithous Material.
Notes:
[1] “Trump declares: ‘Bernie’s gone’”. Brianna Gurciullo. April 20, 2016. Politico.
[2] Election 2016 Presidential Polls. RealClearPolitics. (caveat: site fires multiple pop-ups)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/president/
http://www.polling.reuters.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/sanders-campaign-undaunted-by-ny-loss-669591619932
[9] “Sanders Now Will Be Democrat For Life”. Chelsea Mes. Bloomberg Politics. April 20, 2016.
[11] “Gingrich: Trump is presumptive nominee”. Jessie Hellmann. TheHill. April 20, 2016.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/277016-gingrich-trump-is-presumptive-nominee
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-super-pac-222234
[13] “Full Transcript: Hillary Clinton’s New York Primary Victory Speech”. Newsweek. April 20, 2016.
http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-full-transcript-new-york-victory-speech-450349
[14] More information about polling can be learned at American Association for Public Opinion Research.
