When the filing deadline passed for major-party candidates to run in Iowa’s June 7 primary, seven Republican state senators up for re-election this year had no challengers: Randy Feenstra (Senate district 2), Dennis Guth (Senate district 4), Mark Segebart (Senate district 6), Mark Costello (Senate district 12), Amy Sinclair (Senate district 14), Tim Kapucian (Senate district 38), and Ken Rozenboom (Senate district 40). Recruitment continued, as special district conventions may nominate candidates for seats where no one filed in time to be on the primary ballot.

Based on 2012 election results and incumbent weirdness, the most potentially competitive of the uncontested GOP-held Iowa Senate seats was arguably Guth’s. Democrats announced on April 25 that Susan Bangert will run in Senate district 4. I enclose below a map of this district and details about its recent voting history, along with background on Guth and Bangert.

Also on Monday, Dennis Mathahs confirmed plans to drop out of the Democratic primary in Iowa House district 75 in order to run against Kapucian in Senate district 38. A future post will preview that race.

Five states along the east coast held primaries today. Donald Trump had a clean sweep on the Republican side of the so-called Acela primary, named for the Amtrak express train that connects Boston to Washington, DC. As of 8 pm central time, Trump had won more than 50 percent of the votes counted in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Dark days lie ahead for the #NeverTrump crowd. Even if Ted Cruz manages to win the Indiana primary next week and John Kasich wins Oregon and New Mexico, stopping Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the Republican National Convention will be a tall order. Dave Wasserman published a good analysis of Trump’s success at FiveThirtyEight.com. I’ve posted excerpts after the jump.

Networks called Maryland for Hillary Clinton immediately after polls closed. At this writing, she has also been projected to win Pennsylvania and Delaware, while Bernie Sanders is set to win Rhode Island, and Connecticut is still too close to call. Clinton’s remarks to her supporters in Philadelphia tonight sounded very much like a general-election stump speech.

Dave Weigel noted Clinton has won eleven states she lost to Barack Obama in 2008: Iowa, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Even more striking, Weigel pointed out, “After tonight, Donald Trump will have won 12 of the 13 original colonies. He’s also favored to win in the 13th, New Jersey.”

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Today the admin for U.S. Senate candidate Tom Fiegen’s social media blocked me on Twitter after I challenged one of Fiegen’s many tweets suggesting the Democratic superdelegates should switch from Clinton to Sanders. So touchy! Fiegen proceeded to block several people who had re-tweeted me or commented negatively about the blocking.

UPDATE: Added below the full text of Clinton’s speech tonight and a statement released by Sanders. Although he did not concede the nomination, he appears to be shifting to a fight about the Democratic Party platform, rather than trying to beat Clinton.

SECOND UPDATE: Clinton ended up winning Connecticut by about 5 points. Trump’s margins of victory were enormous in all five states: 29 points ahead of Kasich in Connecticut, 35 points in Pennsylvania, 31 points in Maryland, 39 points in Rhode Island, and 40 points in Delaware.

New York voters delivered the expected results today: a huge victory for Donald Trump and a solid showing for Hillary Clinton. Trump is winning by a large enough margin in all regions of New York to take the overwhelming share of delegates. He’s set to sweep every county in the state except for his home turf of Manhattan, where John Kasich led the early returns. Ted Cruz had to settle for third behind Kasich statewide. Over the past month he has whittled Trump’s delegate lead down, but tonight’s results are a blow to his hopes for keeping Trump below the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination.

Bernie Sanders carried quite a few upstate counties but Clinton crushed him in the five boroughs of New York City. She will add to her pledged delegate lead as well as her popular vote lead–which is symbolically important, even though delegates will determine the nominee. According to Tom Snee, Clinton rose to 90 cents on the Iowa politics prediction market after today’s primary; Sanders fell to 7 cents.

Several factors were working against Sanders today, besides the fact that Clinton represented this state in the U.S. Senate. As a group, New York Democrats are less white than Democrats in the states Sanders has been winning. Also, New York has a “closed” primary, meaning that independents were not able to change their registration. In several states, including Michigan, independent voters provided Sanders’ margin of victory. I prefer open primaries, though there is a case for allowing voters with a stake in a political party decide that party’s nominee.

What’s indefensible: New York has neither early voting nor same-day voter registration. Same-day registration alone is estimated to increase turnout by about 10 percent. Early voting would also boost participation in a state that has had some of the lowest turnout rates in the country in recent elections. New York Controller Scott Stringer offered other recommendations for making voting more accessible.

Excerpts from the Trump and Clinton victory speeches are after the jump. Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread.

image from House Speaker Paul Ryan’s video, “Politics These Days”

A few minutes ago, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters, “Let me be clear: I do not want, nor will I accept the Republican nomination.” According to Amber Phillips of the Washington Post, today’s announcement was the nineteenth time Ryan or someone speaking on his behalf has ruled out running for president in 2016. Yet many Republicans hope that neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz will win the 1,237 votes needed to secure the presidential nomination at the GOP national convention in Cleveland, allowing delegates to turn to Ryan as a unifying figure on the third or fourth ballot. That scenario may be the least-bad among a number of unappealing possibilities facing Republicans, as the party’s front-runner has historically high unfavorable ratings.

Ryan said today that delegates should “Count me out” if there is a brokered convention: “I simply believe that if you want to be the nominee for our party – to be the president – you should actually run for it. I chose not to do this. Therefore, I should not be considered. Period. End of story.”

Meanwhile, the House speaker is running a “parallel policy campaign,” which he calls #ConfidentAmerica. This campaign could be designed to insulate GOP House candidates from a landslide loss at the top of the ticket. But to me and many other observers, the #ConfidentAmerica materials resemble presidential candidate tv ads. I’ve enclosed one video after the jump, so you can judge for yourself.

Any speculation about what might happen in a GOP brokered convention is welcome in this thread. Whether Trump can lock down the nomination on June 7 depends on several factors Bleeding Heartland user fladem discussed here, and on whether Cruz continues to outperform late polling in the remaining primaries.

Governor Terry Branstad has so far refused to say how he would vote on a second or subsequent ballot, if he becomes a delegate to the RNC. Senator Joni Ernst has suggested that “it would be hard to get buy-in” for nominating someone who did not run for president this year.

UPDATE: NPR’s Susan Davis observed, “Paul Ryan raised $17.2m in Q1. He’s raised $23.5m since becoming speaker in Oct. This probably means he’s running for president.” Yes, it probably does.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Newly-disclosed details about the sex abuse charges filed against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert caught my attention. As Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall explained here, “Without the unending hunt into Bill Clinton’s sex life, you never would have heard of Denny Hastert. It also seems highly unlikely he ever would have had to answer, even in this limited way, for his own past.” While the Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolded, I was covering Russian politics and had many Russian colleagues. They were astounded by the Republican effort to remove Clinton from office. I remember some joking, if only our president (the rarely-seen-in-public Boris Yeltsin) were healthy enough to have an affair.

The big Iowa politics news of the weekend came out of the GOP district conventions on Saturday. Repeating a storyline that has played out elsewhere, Ted Cruz’s campaign destroyed the competition with superior organizing in every part of the state. Cruz didn’t entirely shut out other candidates here the way he did in Colorado, but his supporters took eleven of the twelve Republican National Convention delegate slots. Although Donald Trump has belatedly started to build a serious RNC delegate strategy, his campaign’s efforts leading up to this weekend in Iowa were remarkably incompetent. Cruz’s team have been preparing for a prolonged delegate battle since last summer and have executed the strategy well lately.

Trump still hits the magic number of 1,237 delegates (an overall majority) in most of the scenarios guest author fladem played out this week (most recently updated here). Sam Wang showed at the Princeton Election Consortium that current polling still indicates Trump could clinch the nomination on June 7–though Cruz has been over performing his poll numbers lately, which increases the chance of a brokered convention. The Cruz sweep of Colorado delegates and near-sweep of Iowa’s GOP district conventions are a reminder that the first ballot at the RNC in Cleveland may be Trump’s only chance for the nomination.

More links and commentary about the district conventions are after the jump.

The Republican National Convention delegate elections grabbed most of the attention from today’s Iowa GOP district conventions, but Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey made some news at the fourth district gathering in Fort Dodge. Kathie Obradovich reported for the Des Moines Register,

“When I think of somebody I want in the room talking with conservative congressmen and senators, a potential president, on ethanol issues, I want Steve King,” [Northey] said.

King, in turn, suggested a promotion for Northey — but not to governor, a job for which he is often mentioned as a potential candidate. He noted there will be a new U.S. Agriculture secretary next year. “We’ll no longer have Secretary (Tom) Vilsack. I think maybe Secretary Northey sounds pretty good to me.”

King touted the quadrupling of ag land values during the first 12 years he was in Congress. “We should not forget, those are the best 12 years that agriculture has ever had in the history of this state during that period of time,” he said.

You don’t have to be an economist to know the rise in Iowa farmland values since 2003 has very little connection to who represented our state in Congress. But let’s leave that aside for now. Northey and King have long had a friendly political relationship. The ag secretary cut a radio ad King aired near the end of his toughest re-election campaign, the 2012 race against Christie Vilsack in a substantially redrawn district. Click through to read the transcript of that commercial, in which Northey touted King’s record on agriculture issues and support from farm groups. I would not be surprised to see a similar testimonial hit the airwaves before King’s June 7 primary against State Senator Rick Bertrand. People linked to the ethanol industry are among Bertrand’s heavy-hitter supporters, largely because King endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for president, despite Cruz’s stand on the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Speaking of the presidential race, King discussed possible brokered convention scenarios on this weekend’s edition of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program. He predicted that “neither Trump nor Cruz delegates are going to tolerate anyone coming in from the outside that hasn’t been a candidate,” such as U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan. The full video and transcript are here; I’ve enclosed relevant excerpts below.

Northey is widely considered likely to run for governor in 2018 rather than for a fourth term as secretary of agriculture. King’s support could be helpful in a primary that will almost certainly include at least two other candidates: Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. Neither has a strong base in rural Iowa, although Corbett has tried to bolster his credentials with the farm community by touting all-voluntary efforts to reduce agricultural runoff and bashing some efforts to regulate farm-based pollution.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

Thanks to fladem for another well-informed view of Republican delegate scenarios. His earlier posts in this series are available here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Just before Super Tuesday here, I suggested that the possibility of a GOP brokered convention was rising. Just over a month later, as I will show, those odds have risen considerably. Before I walk through the math, let me start with some observations:

• 1: We are in uncharted territory.

Senator Joni Ernst has consistently pledged to support the Republican presidential nominee, whether that person is Donald Trump or someone else. She told Erin Murphy last week that she hopes the eventual nominee will headline her biggest campaign event of the year, the second annual “Roast and Ride” this August.

But in an apparent rebuke to the GOP front-runnner, Ernst made a splash a few days ago by saying women should not put up with Trump’s “nonsense,” and that she is “disappointed” by the “name calling and finger-pointing” dominating the Republican race for the presidency.

Looking more closely at what Ernst told WHO-TV’s Dave Price, I have trouble finding any coherence to her views on Trump.

Polls just closed in Wisconsin, but thousands of people are still waiting in long lines to vote. Why does this country tolerate the failure to open enough polling places in so many states? High turnout for both the Democratic and Republican primaries should have been anticipated, especially since Wisconsin has an “open” primary, where independents can change party registration on election day.

Voters had to show photo ID to cast ballots today. A federal lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s new law is pending.

I’ll update this post periodically with results from tonight. Here are a few links to get the conversation started.

Bernie Sanders is expected to win today’s primary, but he is unlikely to net significantly more delegates than Hillary Clinton will. Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains why.

Clinton and Sanders will debate next in New York ahead of that state’s primary. The New York Daily News transcript of Sanders’ recent interview with the editorial board has been a frequent topic of conversation on social media. Conventional wisdom (embodied as it is so often by Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post) holds that it “was pretty close to a disaster.” I doubt many voters will turn away from Sanders because of it.

Eric Ostermeier of Smart Politics challenged the idea that this year’s Democratic presidential contest is less competitive than Hillary Clinton’s race against Barack Obama in 2008 (emphasis in original):

Clinton has won 18 state primaries and caucuses with 14 states going for Sanders; back in 2008, Obama had won 21 of these state primaries and caucuses with just 11 in Clinton’s column. […]

Five states have already had victory margins inside of two percentage points: Missouri (0.2 points), Iowa (0.2), Massachusetts (1.4), Michigan (1.5), and Illinois (1.8). Unfortunately for Sanders he lost four of these with the only late-night close race call in his favor coming in Michigan.

By contrast, just one of the 32 states to vote thus far in 2016 had a victory margin under two points in 2008 – Missouri (1.4 points).

Overall, contests in 15 states have been more closely decided than they were in 2008 with 17 states having a larger margin of victory.

Sanders has cut into Clinton’s pledged delegate lead since March 15 but still faces long odds of catching Clinton in the delegate race. Patrick Healy and Yamiche Alcindor wrote an interesting piece for the New York Times on some strategic errors by Sanders early on, which may end up costing him the nomination.

Donald Trump had arguably the worst week of his campaign last week. The fact that he could not win a general election is starting to sink in with Republican voters. He’s let go some of his campaign staff (though not the one accused of assaulting a reporter). Ted Cruz has been rising in Wisconsin’s polls, as Trump’s prospects for winning an overall majority of pledged delegates before the Republican National Convention appear to be falling. However, Trump still has a commanding lead in his home state of New York, the next to vote, and other big northeastern states don’t look like promising territory for Cruz.

UPDATE: NBC called Wisconsin for Sanders and Cruz before 8:30 pm. All further updates are after the jump.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Happy Easter to all who are celebrating. Usually this Christian holiday falls during the Jewish festival of Passover, which is still weeks away. Kimberly Donnelly explains,

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Passover, on the other hand, begins on the first full moon of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish lunar-based calendar.

The Jewish lunar calendar occasionally adds a leap month rather than the leap day we add to our solar calendar every fourth year. Passover is late in 2016 because a second month of Adar was added before the month of Nisan (often written Nissan).

In past years I’ve posted Easter and Passover related links here and here. A false claim about a Cedar Rapids Gazette front page headline on Easter Sunday figured prominently in University of Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom‘s 2011 hatchet job on our state, which provoked strong reactions from many Iowans.

Bernie Sanders swept yesterday’s caucuses in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii by wide margins. He also won the Utah and Idaho caucuses on March 22, while Hillary Clinton won the Arizona primary. The big story out of Arizona was disgraceful voter suppression, as officials reduced the number of polling places in the state’s largest county from 200 in 2012 to only 60 this year. That’s just 60 polling places for a county with a population much larger than Iowa’s. As Ari Berman explained, the long lines to vote in Arizona were a direct consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court majority “gutting” the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Republicans didn’t hold any nominating contests this weekend. The GOP caucuses in Alaska and Hawaii happened earlier this month, and Washington Republicans will vote in a May primary. On March 22, Ted Cruz won caucuses in Utah and Idaho by huge margins. John Kasich came in second in Utah, knocking Donald Trump to third place in a state for the first time this year. However, Trump crushed the competition in the Arizona primary, grabbing all of that state’s delegates.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that John Deeth’s speculation on what went wrong in Arizona is worth a read. A few excerpts are after the jump.

The last few months have been such a busy time in Iowa politics, I’ve slacked off on posting mid-week open threads. All topics are welcome here, but I’m especially interested in takes on what Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post observed today:

Of all the unlikely things that have happened in this election year, the most is @tedcruz becoming the last hope of the GOP establishment.

No question, for Donald Trump-induced panic to reach the stage of Jeb Bush endorsing Ted Cruz must be among the most surprising aspects of this presidential race. Yet two developments strike me as even more unexpected:

• Trump winning almost the whole Bible belt, due to his strength among evangelicals;

• Bernie Sanders raising enough money to outspend Hillary Clinton in many of the states.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

P.S. Iowa wildflower Wednesday will return soon. Please get in touch if you’d like to contribute a guest post for that series, especially if you have pictures of early spring bloomers like skunk cabbage or pasque flower. Lately I’ve been enjoying other people’s nature photography in the Iowa Wildflower Report and Raccoon River Watershed Facebook groups.

UPDATE: I got this call myself on March 22 and recorded the questions, so was able to fill in gaps below.

A poll is in the field testing negative messages about two of the three Democratic candidates running in Iowa’s third Congressional district. I haven’t received the call, but I discussed it with two respondents, one of whom shared notes on the poll with me. I encourage all activists to take notes on political surveys, whether they are legitimate message-testing polls, like this one, or push-polls. Campaigns use message-testing to collect and analyze data about candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and which talking points resonate with voters. In contrast, as Kathy Frankovic explained here a push-poll is “political telemarketing masquerading as a poll,” designed solely to disseminate negative information.

Three Democrats are seeking the nomination in IA-03: Desmund Adams, Jim Mowrer, and Mike Sherzan. The respondents who told me about this poll heard negative messages about Mowrer and Sherzan only. Both had said on the first ballot test that they were supporting Mowrer. If any Bleeding Heartland readers receive the same call, please say you plan to vote for Adams and then let me know whether the caller presents a list of unflattering statements about him. (UPDATE: Another respondent reports that he indicated strong support for Adams but was not given negative information about him.)

It’s possible that whoever paid for this call–my hunch is Sherzan’s campaign–is more concerned about Mowrer than Adams, because Mowrer has a lot of support from Democratic insiders and more funds to raise his name recognition across the district before June 7.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The filing period for Democratic and Republican candidates for Iowa offices ended on Friday, March 18. The last-minute retirements by three Iowa House incumbents grabbed my immediate attention, but I have many other posts in progress related to statehouse and Congressional races. Meanwhile, John Deeth already finished his overview of all 125 state legislative contests, and Pat Rynard highlighted ten districts where Iowa Democrats need to field candidates, in case Donald Trump at the top of the GOP ticket produces a “massive wave that sweeps Republicans out of office at all levels.”

I couldn’t agree more. Remember, the 2010 landslide allowed Republicans to pick up three Iowa House seats where the party hadn’t even fielded challengers in 2008. They also defeated Democratic State Representative John Beard, who was unopposed at this point in the 2010 campaign, by nominating a GOP candidate in his House district at a special convention in June. The six Republicans who picked up Democratic-held Iowa Senate seats in 2010 included Mark Chelgren. No one took “Chickenman” seriously until he beat a Democratic incumbent by ten votes in an Ottumwa-based district neither party believed to be in play.

Almost anything can happen in a wave election, so finding Democratic candidates for the more promising uncontested Iowa House and Senate seats is imperative. Trump could “cause a massive electoral wipe-out,” but you can’t beat something with nothing.

Voters in five states weighed in on the presidential race today. This thread is for any comments related to the primaries in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or North Carolina. Journalists have not settled on any shorthand reference for the March 15 elections; the Des Moines Register’s Jason Noble suggested “Super Tuesday. Superer Tuesday. Supererer Tuesday. Mega Tuesday. Ultra Tuesday. Uber Tuesday. Hella Tuesday. Big Tuesday and the Delegates.”

On the Republican side, today’s looking like “Four men enter, two men leave Tuesday.” Read fladem’s latest analysis of the GOP delegate race, if you haven’t already. I will update this post periodically with results as they come in. So far Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are heading toward big wins in Florida, which could give Clinton more delegates than she needs to stay on track to win the nomination. Ohio should be much closer on both sides, in part because independents can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries.

7:45 pm UPDATE: As expected, Marco Rubio dropped out after getting crushed in his home state. I was so wrong about Trump and Ted Cruz last year, but Rubio would have done better to run for re-election to the Senate and put off his presidential ambitions until 2020 or later.

CNN just projected Kasich to win Ohio, which keeps the “stop Trump” campaign alive, barely. But fladem has convinced me that the delegate math still favors Trump.

On the Democratic side, Clinton not only won Florida and North Carolina by apparently large margins, but has been declared the early winner in Ohio, which surprised me. Waiting for more detailed results to see how she did in the white working-class areas where Bernie Sanders exceeded expectations in Iowa, New Hampshire, and most recently in Michigan.

Further updates are after the jump.

Another revealing look at the battle for the Republican nomination. Click here to read fladem’s earlier analysis of the GOP delegate race. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Before Super Tuesday I wrote a piece here suggesting that the talk in the aftermath of those contests would be a brokered convention. That was right, I think. In fact, if you look at the delegate math today, Trump is actually further from a majority than he was before Super Tuesday. As an aside, a real time delegate projection is here.

But politics is not just measured in delegates won.

Fascinating look at how investors view the electability question. One 2003 study found that the Iowa Electronic Markets were “both closer to eventual election outcomes and more stable than polls over the course of election campaigns.” According to Muller, last night’s primary results dropped Clinton slightly to 87.1 cents, while Sanders rose to 12 cents. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Supporters of both Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton are busy on social media making their respective cases for why one or the other has a better chance of beating Donald Trump in the General Election. Insofar as you’re reading this, you have no doubt heard the arguments on both sides. Sanders is a socialist, and more than half of the American electorate will never vote for a socialist. Clinton has too much baggage, and is owned by Wall Street. On the one hand, there are national polls showing Sanders may have the edge over Trump, relative to Clinton. On the other hand, all of Clinton’s baggage is already common knowledge (real or imagined), and no one has really started attacking Sanders yet.

This is all an exercise in conjecture. Even sophistry. While I generally come down on the Clinton side of this debate, it’s been little more than a general feeling. Perhaps there are actual data that might give us a reason to prefer one candidate over another, provided “Democrat Winning the White House” is an important issue for a voter. The Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) provide the data required to address the issue with a little more statistical rigor.

Lots of votes remain to be counted from tonight’s primaries, but two losers are already clear.

Republicans are overwhelmingly rejecting Marco Rubio. To my mind, that’s a bigger story than Donald Trump winning the two biggest contests. In Mississippi, Trump won nearly half the vote, Ted Cruz won more than a third of the vote, and Rubio is down around 5 percent–in fourth place behind John Kasich. Trump won Michigan with more than a third of the vote, Kasich and Cruz are fighting for second place with about 25 percent each, while Rubio is unlikely to hit the 10 percent cutoff for delegates. As Taniel noted, Rubio missed statewide delegate cutoff thresholds in Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Maine, and Vermont, and barely cleared them in Tennessee and Alaska.

Rubio and his surrogates continue to express confidence about winning the Florida primary a week from today, but the way he’s been hemorrhaging support, that scenario seems highly unlikely. Furthermore, Taniel observed, “Michigan & Mississippi (from which Rubio is probably being shut out) have as many delegates combined as Florida. Can’t all be about 1 state.”

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders trailed by double digits in every recent Michigan poll but is leading by 50 percent to 48 percent with about half the results in. Although Hillary Clinton may be able to win the state narrowly once all the votes from the Detroit area come in, pollsters need to ask themselves some tough questions. For instance, did they underestimate how many independents would vote in the open primary? CNN’s exit poll suggests Clinton won Michigan Democrats by double digits but Sanders is ahead by more than 40 percent among independents. Whatever the final results, Sanders will be encouraged going into next week’s contests.

Clinton won Mississippi in a rout, with nearly 83 percent to just 16 percent for Sanders, at this writing.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Trump’s victory speech/press conference was one of his most absurd yet–more like an infomercial than a political event.

UPDATE: Referring to the Michigan Democratic primary, Harry Enten pointed out that the difference between winning or losing narrowly means little in terms of delegates awarded to Clinton and Sanders. Psychologically, a win is always better than a loss, though.

SECOND UPDATE: One key factor for Sanders in Michigan was cutting down Clinton’s margin with African-American voters. She is still winning the black vote, but “only” by about a 2 to 1 margin. Nate Silver pointed out that Michigan results have confounded pollsters before.

THIRD UPDATE: Shortly after 10:30 pm, the Associated Press called the Michigan primary for Sanders. With a little more than 90 percent of the votes counted, he leads by 50 percent to 48 percent. Clinton is still above 80 percent in Mississippi, which is remarkable, but the Michigan upset is clearly the bigger story on the Democratic side.

Cruz leads in the early returns from the Idaho primary (Democrats didn’t vote there today) and has edged in front of Kasich for second place in Michigan.

According to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network,

Here’s a run down of spending in support of each candidate in Michigan as of March 6:

Bernie Sanders, $3.5 million
Hillary Clinton, $2.6 million
Marco Rubio (Conservative Solutions Super PAC), $1.2 million
John Kasich (Kasich campaign, New Day For America Super PAC), $770,353
Donald Trump, $184,636
Ted Cruz, $1,112

Likely final delegate allocation from Michigan: 25 for Trump 25, 17 for Cruz and Kasich, zero for Rubio.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Many people on social media have shared anecdotes about Democrats in Michigan who crossed over to vote for Kasich, thinking (based on polls) Clinton would easily win the Democratic primary. Nate Silver called the Sanders win the biggest upset since Gary Hart winning the New Hampshire primary in 1984. However, Bleeding Heartland user fladem worked on that Hart campaign and showed why Silver is wrong.

Cruz won Idaho’s primary with 45.4 percent of the vote, to 28.1 percent for Trump, 15.9 percent for Rubio, and 7.4 percent for Kasich. Trump took the Hawaii caucuses with 42.4 percent, to 32.7 percent for Cruz, 13.1 percent for Rubio, and 10.6 percent for Kasich. Neither Rubio nor Kasich will win any delegates from Idaho or Hawaii.

Former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina endorsed Cruz at a rally in Miami on March 9.

I haven’t seen a definitive delegate count yet, but fladem and Taniel have both updated their tables.

On the Democratic side, Mark Murray calculates that Clinton now leads Sanders by 761 to 547 in pledged delegates and by 1193 to 569 when superdelegates are counted. The overwhelming majority of superdelegates (including in Iowa) have endorsed Clinton.

After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from three early attempts to explain why Sanders won Michigan.

Democrats and Republicans are caucusing today in Kansas and voting in the Louisiana primary. Republicans are also caucusing in Maine and Kentucky; Democrats will caucus in Maine tomorrow. Democrats caucused in Nebraska today, while Republicans will hold a primary there in May. This thread is for any comments about the presidential race. I will update throughout the evening.

Ted Cruz won the Kansas caucuses, which went to Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008. Speaking from Idaho about his latest victory, Cruz told supporters, “The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington DC, is utter terror at what We the People are doing together.”

Trump is still on track to win the Republican nomination, but a brokered GOP convention can’t be ruled out, especially if Cruz wins states dominated by social conservatives, John Kasich wins Ohio and possibly Michigan, and Marco Rubio wins the Florida primary. Ben Carson has ended his campaign, which could help alternatives to Trump win other states. Cruz just won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a sign of his continuing strength with hard-core activists.

Pat Rynard previewed the Democratic caucuses in Nebraska and in Kansas (where some voters will have to drive very long distances to participate). His account and others suggest that Bernie Sanders will win those states. However, Hillary Clinton is favored in Louisiana and has already built up a substantial pledged delegate lead. Unless Sanders can overtake Clinton in pledged delegates, the superdelegates are expected to go overwhelmingly for Clinton (Iowa is no exception).

UPDATE: Further updates are after the jump. It’s a disastrous night for Rubio: a distant third in Kansas, where most of the establishment was supporting him, and fourth place in Maine. He pursued a flawed strategy over the past couple of weeks, culminating in Thursday night’s debate in Detroit. Rubio went after Trump by getting down to Trump’s maturity level. Cruz had a much better debate, attacking Trump on policy and mocking him as childish. After some particularly un-presidential comments by Trump, Cruz scored his best points, asking the viewers at home whether this was the kind of debate they want to see play out over the summer.

Not only did Cruz dominate the field in Kansas, he won the Maine caucuses, a rare victory for a social conservative in New England and a rebuke to Governor Paul LePage, who endorsed Trump on February 26, less than a week after trying to mobilize GOP governors to stop Trump. So far, Trump leads the vote count in Kentucky and may carry Louisiana as well, but Cruz took a big step toward cementing his position as the viable alternative to Trump. He has called on Rubio to promise to drop out if he doesn’t win the Florida primary on March 15.

Polls have closed in a few of the Super Tuesday primary states, so here’s a thread for any comments about the Democratic or Republican presidential contests. I will update this post periodically with results. So far Virginia and Georgia have been called for Hillary Clinton, while Vermont was called for Bernie Sanders. In his victory speech, Sanders vowed to take his fight to every one of the 35 states that have not yet voted.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump is the early winner in Georgia and is expected to win most of today’s primaries and caucuses. However, the size of his delegate lead will depend greatly on how many other candidates exceed the threshold for winning delegates in various states. Guest author fladem’s post on Republican delegate scenarios is essential reading, in case you missed it yesterday.

UPDATE: A disappointing night for the “Stop Trump” forces. (By the way, who was it who said, “whenever you hear about a ‘Stop X’ campaign, bet on X?”) Ted Cruz won Texas and Oklahoma, Marco Rubio won Minnesota, and Trump looks likely to sweep the rest of the states. John Kasich and Rubio split enough moderate votes to give Trump the win in Vermont and perhaps also in Massachusetts. Rubio may not hit the 20 percent threshold needed to win any delegates in some of the southern states. Trying to put a good spin on the results, Rubio told CNN that “this was supposed to be Ted Cruz’s big night” and depicted himself as the only person who can stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination. The look on his face when Jake Tapper asked him whether he was in denial was priceless.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie didn’t look very happy at Trump’s victory party. The times being what they are, Christie’s face spawned immediate memes and caption contests. So far this is my favorite: “That moment when you realize you misunderstood literally every Bruce Springsteen song.”

Clinton had a very big night. Sanders is on track to win just four states: Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Massachusetts was probably a must-win for him. According to Nate Silver, “Clinton is running ahead of her benchmarks by an average of 16 percentage points tonight, which is equivalent to her holding a 16-point lead over Sanders in national polls.”

Twitter user Xenocrypt (who long ago posted a fascinating piece here) commented tonight, “A socialist won in Oklahoma! Just like old times. Really, really old times.” Turns out Oklahoma had one of our country’s strongest socialist parties a hundred years ago.

Clinton won the four states awarding the most delegates by large margins. Nate Cohn commented, “The biggest lesson of the Sanders campaign is that there is no progressive/left majority in the Democratic Party without black voters.” Farai Chideya speculated, “Pragmatism about black political interests and how the game is played is likely the primary factor [in Clinton’s overwhelming margin among African-Americans], since Sanders has also spoken to issues of core interest to black voters.”

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: In the UK, they would call this “a right royal mess” for Republicans. By splitting the establishment vote, Kasich and Rubio allowed Trump to win Vermont and Virginia by narrow margins. Trump also barely won Arkansas. Cruz picked up Alaska, despite Sarah Palin’s Trump endorsement. Rubio missed the cutoff for at-large delegates in Texas and Alabama. Cruz outperformed his recent polling numbers to win Texas by a wide margin. One unofficial delegate count puts Trump at 338, with 233 delegates for Cruz, 112 for Rubio, 27 for Kasich and 8 for Carson; full spreadsheet here.

According to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, Clinton easily surpassed the number of delegates she needed to put her on track to win the Democratic nomination.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 2012 and is doing so again this year, said in a statement I’ve enclosed below that he “may have won Super Tuesday,” because more voters will be looking for a third-party alternative to Clinton or Trump.

A counter-intuitive take, grounded in a close look at GOP delegate allocation rules. -promoted by desmoinesdem

To date, Donald Trump has appeared to be an unstoppable train. He has a significant lead in delegates, and leads in virtually all of the polling on Super Tuesday. There would appear to be little drama.

And yet in fact there is. The reason for this is to be found in the delegate selection rules. In state after state (Texas is the notable exception) the polling is reasonably stable: Trump between 30 and 40, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio hovering around 20%. When you actually project these polling numbers into delegates however, two things became very apparent:

1. Many states award delegates only to candidates who win 15 or 20%. In state after state both Rubio and Cruz’s polling shows them within a few points of these numbers. As a result a few percentage points can have an enormous effect on the results.

2. With each poll that is released, it is becoming less and less likely that Trump will get a majority of delegates on Super-Tuesday. In fact, while he will win a plurality of delegates on Super Tuesday, it will be very far from decisive. My current projection shows Trump getting 274 delegates on Super Tuesday, about 50 less than the other candidates combined.

As Donald Trump appears increasingly likely to win the Republican nomination, more elected officials are supporting him. This past week, two U.S. House representatives became the first current members of Congress to back Trump. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine Governor Paul LePage endorsed Trump on Friday. The LePage about-face was hilarious, coming less than a week after he called on GOP governors “to draft an open letter ‘to the people,’ disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics.” On Sunday, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama went public supporting Trump–a embarrassing turn of events for Senator Ted Cruz, who has repeatedly cited Sessions as cover for his stance on immigration reform.

Before the Iowa caucuses, only one GOP elected official in our state publicly supported Trump: State Senator Brad Zaun. That endorsement didn’t reflect any coherent ideology, since Zaun had backed Mitt Romney before the 2008 caucuses, Michele Bachmann before the 2012 caucuses, and was a co-chair for Scott Walker’s campaign last year, saying “we needed someone with some executive experience.” The pivot to Trump had a certain logic, though, as all the presidential candidates Zaun endorsed as a state lawmaker were leading Iowa Republican polls at the time he jumped on the bandwagon.

High-profile endorsements may drive a news cycle or two, but whether they influence a significant number of voters is another question. Join me in taking a close look at how Trump did in Zaun’s Iowa Senate district, which covers much of northwest Polk County.

Having spent most of the last month catching up on other political stories, I realized today that I never tabulated the results from Bleeding Heartland’s 2016 Iowa caucus prediction contest.

Follow me after the jump to find out who has bragging rights, at least until the June primary prediction contest. Spoiler alert: it ain’t me.

As expected, Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucuses tonight. I’ll update this post later with details on the size of his victory and whether Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio took second place. Either way, the odds on anyone stopping Trump from getting the GOP nomination are getting longer.

Conservative talk radio host Steve Deace has used his megaphone and his access to national media to promote Cruz’s campaign since last summer but has lately been frustrated by the Cruz campaign strategy.

Deace said the voters in South Carolina were responding to Cruz’s reluctance to fight with Trump and his apologies to Rubio and Carson: They are “sending Cruz a message, and I think that message is that they want him to go back to being that alpha male conservative leader that people fell in love with.”

Deace believes “At first Team Cruz was brilliant not to attack Trump from a position of weakness, like so many others did early and failed.” However, in his view, “once Cruz won Iowa, the sole focus should’ve been on Trump instead of worrying about Rubio doing an end-run.” He summarized last week’s Republican political combat as “Cruz-Rubio bicker over bronze medals, mailers, and robocalls. Trump debates the pope and Islam.”

While I see where Deace is coming from, there was a logic to the strategy of trying to eliminate the main competition to be the last man standing against Trump, as opposed to taking on the front-runner first. What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread. Incidentally, the Nevada caucuses were much more poorly organized than Iowa’s. But that won’t help us keep our place in the nominating process. Rather, the widespread problems and mismanagement in Nevada will become ammunition for those seeking to ban all caucuses for presidential selection.

UPDATE: Republican strategist Adrian Gray posted some data yesterday that explains why the GOP establishment is terrified of Trump at the top of the ticket. First look at how Hillary Clinton’s favorability numbers compare to other presidential nominees since 1992. Then look at the eye-poppingly low favorables for Trump.

SECOND UPDATE: A crushing victory for Trump. With 96 percent of results in, the billionaire has 45.9 percent, Rubio 23.9 percent, and Cruz 21.4 percent. I wonder whether Ben Carson’s 4.8 percent was enough to keep Cruz out of second place. Bringing up the rear, John Kasich had 3.6 percent.

THIRD UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Trump’s victory speech. The full transcript is available at Quartz. It sounds like a Monty Python routine.

A record number of South Carolina Republicans turned out to vote today, a solid majority of whom were evangelicals, and a plurality went to Donald Trump despite (because of?) recent comments by the billionaire that defied all conventional wisdom about what conservatives can and can’t say. Major news organizations called Trump the winner early in the evening. Bitter rival Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are battling for second place, at least ten points behind Trump, despite having lots of things going their way over the past week. Trump gave Cruz an opening to highlight the businessman’s past “pro-choice” position and positive comments about Planned Parenthood. Rubio was endorsed by South Carolina’s popular Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, bolstering his case that he represents a bright future for the Republican Party.

Exit polls indicated that Cruz had strong appeal for the most conservative Republicans but was way behind the leaders among other ideological groups. In contrast, Trump won self-identified moderates (as he did in New Hampshire) and held his own among conservatives. It’s getting harder to see how anyone can stop Trump from winning the nomination.

While huge numbers of Republicans are drawn to the substance of Trump’s message–bigoted comments about immigrants, an ugly enchantment with torture, and outlandish promises about the economy–I am convinced that Trump’s speaking style is an equally important factor in his success. Cruz and Rubio deliver their stump speeches and handle themselves in interviews reasonably well, but when you listen to them, you can’t forget that they are politicians sticking to a script. Trump often sounds like he is talking off the top of his head. You know his comments weren’t drafted by a speechwriter or approved by campaign strategists.

After the jump I’ve enclosed two videos of Trump, dubbed in a Cockney and in a posh British accent. Besides making me laugh, the clips are a good example of Trump’s stream of consciousness style. His rhetoric is hateful and scary, but his thinking out loud is more appealing than the safe and boring way most candidates express themselves.

Tonight’s results are the end of the road for Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after finishing a distant fourth (possibly fifth), in the single digits. Bush’s presidential bid will be studied for many years as proof that money and insider support can’t overcome a candidate’s fundamental weaknesses.

John Kasich will hope to inherit the more moderate voters who had favored Bush, but it’s hard to see any path for the Ohio governor.

Ben Carson told his supporters that he will continue his campaign, despite an apparent sixth-place finish. His persistence will disappoint Cruz, who would be more likely than anyone else in the field to pick up the values voters who favor Carson. But after the Cruz campaign spread false rumors about Carson dropping out on Iowa caucus night, I’m not surprised Carson isn’t eager to step aside.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

P.S.- The winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the GOP nomination in every cycle since 1980, except for 2012 (when Newt Gingrich carried the state).

Who watched the six remaining Republican presidential candidates debate in Greenville, South Carolina last night? It was such a free-for-all that the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri had trouble satirizing some of the exchanges: “nothing I can say is actually more ridiculous than what the candidates in fact said.”

The New York Times posted the full transcript here. I’ve enclosed some excerpts below.

What struck me most about the debate was how Donald Trump kept playing to the nationwide audience, ignoring the crowd that booed many of his comments. In contrast, Ted Cruz seemed to do better with the house, but I’m not convinced he came across as well on television. Jeb Bush continues to gain confidence on the debate stage, but where he can start winning states remains a mystery. Marco Rubio seemed relieved to have most of the attention on others and neither reverted to “robot mode” nor lost his cool in a heated exchange with Cruz over immigration policy. Carson and Kasich failed to make any case for their candidacies. The Ohio governor’s whining about negative campaigning won’t win any votes, nor will his defense of expanding Medicaid–though I agree with him on that issue. Carson’s only memorable comment was a Joseph Stalin quote that turned out to be fake.

As has so often occurred since last summer, pundits quickly concluded that Trump “went too far” and would be hurt by some of his attacks, especially denigrating President George W. Bush’s leadership. I’m not so sure. A sizable number of Republicans may share Trump’s views: Bush didn’t “keep us safe” on 9/11, the Iraq War was a disaster, and the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction. The only comment likely to do significant harm to Trump with the GOP base is his admission that Planned Parenthood does “wonderful things” for women outside of its abortion services.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Polls have closed in most of New Hampshire, though people waiting in long lines to vote will still be able to cast ballots. Turnout appears to be record-breaking in some parts of the state.

All recent polling has indicated Donald Trump will win the Republican primary and Bernie Sanders the Democratic primary. The only question is by how much. Although Hillary Clinton did well in last week’s televised town-hall meeting and debate, the last few days of media coverage have been brutal for her. Controversial remarks by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright have been spun as attempts to “shame” women into voting for Clinton, and I suspect they will drive many late deciders to Sanders. I would not be surprised to see him win tonight by 20 points or more.

On the Republican side, the big question is whether Marco Rubio can hang on to second place after his disastrous debate performance over the weekend. (Speaking of which, David Frum’s comments on that malfunction were particularly insightful.) John Kasich or Jeb Bush could contend for second place–and while we’re on the subject, why did Bush’s super-PAC not go up on New Hampshire television in the summer, when the pro-Kasich super-PAC started running ads?

Although social conservative candidates have typically done poorly in New Hampshire, Ted Cruz may pick up enough support from Rand Paul’s former supporters to finish second or a close third. Chris Christie has faded in the polls but may not drop out if he ends up in the top five and not too far behind the second-place candidate.

Any comments about the primary or the presidential race generally are welcome in this thread. I don’t believe in the convention scenario for Republicans; unless Rubio comes out of New Hampshire strong, Trump still looks like the favorite to wrap up the nomination by May. Clinton should still be favored to win the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary, because the electorates in those states are far more racially diverse than in Iowa and New Hampshire. On the other hand, public opinion in many states swung against her quickly during the 2008 primaries.

UPDATE: As I suspected, Sanders is crushing Clinton by more than 20 points. (Her share of the vote so far is almost exactly what it was in 2008, but with a more fractured field that year, 39 percent was enough to win.) I think we have just experienced our last cycle with Iowa and New Hampshire going first in the process, regardless of who wins the nomination. Sanders should get a big bump out of this win, but it may not be enough to win states that are not overwhelmingly white and don’t allow independents to vote in primaries.

Kasich finishing second to Trump is a terrible outcome for the establishment, which was just about ready to unite behind Rubio until the debate disaster. Bush barely making it to double digits after at least $35 million was spent on his behalf in New Hampshire is unimpressive but will keep him in the race. It will be very interesting to see whether Cruz can knock Rubio out in South Carolina.

SECOND UPDATE: Christie is heading to New Jersey rather than to South Carolina, as planned. He spent tons of time campaigning in New Hampshire and had the endorsement of the state’s largest newspaper, but couldn’t manage better than sixth place. Like their Iowa counterparts, Granite state Republicans just weren’t buying what Christie was selling.

The Des Moines Register’s longtime pollster Ann Selzer identified the surge of first-time Democratic caucus-goers who would carry Barack Obama to victory in 2008. Her final poll before the 2012 Republican caucuses caught the strong upward momentum for Rick Santorum. Her last snapshot before this year’s caucuses for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics correctly saw a close race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with fewer first-time participants than eight years ago.

But Selzer’s view of the GOP campaign was unfortunately off the mark in several respects: putting Donald Trump ahead of Ted Cruz, underestimating turnout overall and particularly among evangelicals, and missing the late swing toward Marco Rubio that some political observers sensed by watching the campaign on the ground.

Yesterday Selzer commented to David Weigel of the Washington Post,

“In all the press I did in the last two days—and it was a LOT — I talked about the fluidity,” she wrote in an email. “Up to the last moment — including inside the caucus room — campaigns and supporters are working for change! Surprise! Big evangelical turnout — no doubt the biggest.” […]

“Trump was disliked by vast majority of caucus-goers who didn’t support him,” Selzer said. “Bernie’s extraordinary strength was with first-timers, who showed up in above-projected numbers. […]

“If I’m demoted to ‘silver standard,’ I’m fine with that,” she said. “I was never all that comfortable with the hype.”

Selzer can take some comfort in knowing that the last ten Iowa polls released before the caucuses all put Trump ahead of Cruz. The most recent poll to show Cruz leading was the Iowa State University/WHO-TV survey, which uses an unconventional screen for likely caucus-goers. But Iowa State/WHO understated support for Trump and Rubio. Given the tremendous difficulties involved in polling the Iowa caucuses, especially on the Democratic side, we should expect some misses, even from the top professionals in the field. As the presidential campaign progresses, here’s hoping political journalists will focus less on poll-driven horse race coverage.

UPDATE: Selzer did some “Tuesday morning quarterbacking” of her final poll in today’s Des Moines Register. I enclose excerpts below.

Donald Trump was the obvious Republican loser last night. Despite leading in the last ten Iowa polls released before the caucuses, Trump finished more than 6,000 votes and three percentage points behind Ted Cruz, widely perceived before yesterday to have peaked too soon. Record-breaking turnout was supposed to be a winning scenario for Trump, yet a plurality of caucus-goers cast ballots for Cruz as attendance surpassed the previous high-water mark by more than 50 percent.

For Iowa politics watchers, another big takeaway jumped out from the caucus results: Governor Terry Branstad’s advice doesn’t carry much weight with rank and file Republicans.

I will update this post throughout the evening. As of 9 pm, 75 percent of Democratic precincts have reported, and Hillary Clinton narrowly leads Bernie Sanders by 50.4 percent to 48.9 percent of state delegate equivalents. Martin O’Malley won less than 1 percent of the state delegate equivalents and is reportedly dropping out of the race. UPDATE: with 81 percent of precincts reporting (but not including some Iowa City and Cedar Rapids precincts), Clinton is barely ahead by 50.2 percent to 49.1 percent. Turnout seems to be considerably higher than I expected, which explains how well Sanders is doing. He could pull ahead to Clinton if she doesn’t have good counties and precincts outstanding.

The Republican race is too close to call between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, with about 75 percent of the votes counted. Marco Rubio is in third place. I noticed that Bret Hayworth of the Sioux City Journal predicted a Cruz win, as did I. On the Republican side, only Cruz was running a traditional ground game. Supposedly the Trump campaign hired out its phone banking, and I never heard much about door-knocking on his behalf.

What happened in your precinct? Share your stories in the comments. I’ve posted what happened in Windsor Heights 2 below.

9:30 UPDATE: Television networks are calling the GOP race for Cruz. Mike Huckabee is dropping out of the race; he outperformed his polling numbers but is still way behind the leaders at around 7 percent.

9:45 UPDATE: With 88 percent of Democratic precincts reporting, Clinton is ahead by only 49.9 percent to 49.5 percent. Sanders could pull ahead.

10:30 UPDATE: Clinton is speaking now, which surprises me, because she’s only ahead by 50.1 percent to 49.4 percent with 93 percent of precincts reporting. For some reason, the Iowa Democratic Party’s website is showing my own precinct (Windsor Heights 2) as not yet reporting. We were done by around 8:30.

11:20 UPDATE: With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton’s lead is down to 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent. A bunch of Polk County precincts are still outstanding, including mine. At least six precincts around the state had one delegate awarded by a coin flip.

12:00 am UPDATE: Steve Kornacki and Rachel Maddow got the coin flip story badly wrong on MSNBC, claiming the coin flips (all won by Clinton in the various precincts) accounted for Clinton’s statewide lead over Sanders. No. The coin flips resolve who would get the last remaining county delegate from a precinct. Clinton is ahead by a handful of state delegate equivalents.

12:50 am UPDATE: With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton leads by 49.9 percent to 49.6 percent. Just twelve precincts have not reported.

2 am: Make that ten precincts outstanding. I want to hear from Democrats who caucused in Des Moines precinct 43 at Roosevelt High School. There seems to have been some confusion about the count, and Sanders supporters online are accusing the precinct chair and the Clinton precinct captain of “fraud,” based on this video. It’s not unusual for there to be some confusion or people missed during the count. We had to count our Clinton group twice last night.

2:30 am: The Iowa Democratic Party released a statement a few minutes ago, which I’ve enclosed below. According to the party, statewide turnout was 171,109, much higher than I expected but nearly 70,000 below the record turnout of 2008. The party says “Clinton has been awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents, Bernie Sanders has been awarded 695.49 state delegate equivalents, Martin O’Malley has been awarded 7.68 state delegate equivalents and uncommitted has been awarded .46 state delegate equivalents. We still have outstanding results in one precinct (Des Moines—42), which is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents.”

The outstanding precinct (Des Moines 42) is on the west side, bordering Windsor Heights. There is no clear trend in the six neighboring precincts, with Sanders and Clinton winning two each and the other two ending in a delegate tie.

With all the excitement on the Democratic side, I forgot to update the Republican results. They are after the jump. The GOP turnout of more than 180,000 was about 50 percent higher than their previous record turnout in 2012.

Continuing a six-part series. Part 1 covered basic elements of the caucus system, part 2 explained why so many Iowans can’t or won’t attend their precinct caucus, part 3 discussed how Democratic caucus math can affect delegate counts, and part 4 described how precinct captains help campaigns.

Measuring the horse race ahead of the Iowa caucuses poses special challenges, particularly on the Democratic side. Those problems affect even the Des Moines Register’s longtime pollster Ann Selzer, whom FiveThirtyEight.com has given an A+ grade and called “the best pollster in politics.”

Follow me after the jump to see why polling expert Mark Blumenthal has described the caucuses as a “pollster’s nightmare.”

Photo of a Ted Cruz supporter’s car spotted in Davenport on January 30; shared with the photographer’s permission.

The final Iowa caucus poll by Selzer & Co. for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics shows a tight race on the Democratic side and Donald Trump retaking the lead from Ted Cruz among likely Republican caucus-goers. Key findings and excerpts from the Register’s write-ups on the poll are after the jump.

Ann Selzer is “the best pollster in politics,” Clare Malone wrote in a must-read profile for FiveThirtyEight.com this week, which explained Selzer’s methods and “old-school rigor.” One key part of her “A+” methodology is starting from a list of registered voters, rather than using random digit dialing to reach Iowans by phone. Nate Cohn pointed out that Iowa polls drawing respondents from a registered voter list have tended to produce better results for Hillary Clinton, while surveys using random digit dialing have produced the best numbers for Bernie Sanders. Selzer also uses a simpler likely voter/likely caucus-goer screen than many other pollsters.

Bleeding Heartland guest author fladem showed yesterday that the Iowa caucus results have sometimes been noticeably different from the last polls released. Front-runners have often seen their lead shrink, while fast-rising contenders have “come from nowhere.” I am standing by my prediction that the structure of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, where only delegate counts matter, favors Hillary Clinton and will allow her to outperform her poll numbers on Monday night. Speaking of which, there’s still time to enter Bleeding Heartland’s Iowa caucus prediction contest; post a comment with your guesses before 6 pm central time on February 1.

Last spring I was sure Cruz would peak in Iowa too soon and crash before the caucuses. Campaign news from October through December convinced me that I was wrong, and I still believe more in Cruz’s ground game than in Trump’s. However, the Cruz campaign is starting to look desperate, shifting its advertising to attack Marco Rubio instead of Trump, and sending out a deceptive mailer, which implied that Republicans guilty of a “voting violation” could improve their “score” by showing up at the caucuses. I enclose below several links on the controversy and a statement from Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate denouncing the mail piece, which “misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law.”

Pate’s predecessor, Matt Schultz, is chairing Cruz’s Iowa campaign and defended the mailing as “common practice to increase voter turnout.” As Gavin Aronsen discussed at the new website Iowa Informer, it’s rich for onetime “voter fraud” crusader Schultz to be “actively defending a purposefully misleading mailer.” The hypocrisy confirms my view that Schultz and Cruz are a political match made in heaven.

Governor Terry Branstad will introduce Chris Christie at a campaign stop today but won’t officially endorse the New Jersey governor. Several people with close ties to Branstad are active supporters of Christie, who has been stuck at 3 percent in the Register’s polling for months.

Final note: I’m so happy for all the volunteers who are able to knock doors in near-perfect (for January) weather during these last few days of the campaign. Weather conditions leading up to the 2008 caucuses were terrible.

Thanks to fladem for this historical perspective on late shifts in Iowa caucus-goers’ preferences. If you missed his earlier posts, check out A deep dive into Iowa caucus History and Iowa polling 45 days out: Let the buyer REALLY beware. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This is a continuation of an article I wrote about Iowa polling in November. At the time I noted how unpredictable the Iowa caucuses are. This article will to look at the last 48 hours. There are two lessons you can draw:

1. Front-runners beware

1. Expect someone to come from nowhere

National Organization for Money graphic created by Rights Equal Rights and used with permission.

Donald Trump targeted Bob Vander Plaats on Twitter this week. He speculated that Ted Cruz, who landed Vander Plaats’ personal endorsement last month, may not know about past “dealings” by one of Iowa’s leading social conservatives. The billionaire called Vander Plaats a “bad guy” and a “phony,” claiming the FAMiLY Leader‘s front man had asked to stay in Trump hotels for free and tried to secure a $100,000 payment for himself after “begging” Trump to do an Iowa event. Jennifer Jacobs confirmed that Trump received a $100,000 fee for speaking to a real estate conference in West Des Moines last year, but Vander Plaats told the Des Moines Register “he was paid nothing” for introducing Trump to the head of the company that organized the event, and “no donation was made to the Family Leader.”

The spat reminded me of big news from the final two weeks of the 2012 Iowa caucus campaign, when Rick Santorum confirmed that Vander Plaats had asked for money to promote his endorsement.

Donald Trump’s first television commercial grabbed attention for its unsubtle race-baiting on the topic of immigration. His latest commercial hits Ted Cruz as “pro-amnesty,” citing the Texas senator’s past support for legislation that would have provided legal status for some undocumented immigrants.

In between those spots, the Trump campaign released an ad that has been in heavy rotation on Iowa tv stations since January 15. “Our Country” hammers home Trump’s promise to “make America great again,” which inspired me to look back at how Ronald Reagan used the same words in one of his 1980 campaign commercials.

Trump has communication skills, but he’s not on Reagan’s level.

With no clear leader in either party less than a week before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, this latest installment in Bleeding Heartland’s occasional series of prediction contests should be especially fun. Anyone can participate, regardless of whether you live in Iowa or have ever lived here.

To enter the contest, post your answers to the eight questions enclosed below as comments in this thread before 6 pm on February 1. Valid entries must be submitted as comments here. Predictions sent to me by e-mail or posted on social media will not be considered. It only takes a minute to register as a Bleeding Heartland user (a link is near the upper right corner of this screen). You don’t have to use your real name; feel free to choose a screen name that allows you to post anonymously. You’ll be e-mailed a password for logging in. Then you can comment here or on any other thread. To protect against spammers, your comment will be “pending” until I approve it.

It’s fine to change your mind after making your guesses, as long as you post your revised predictions as an additional comment in this thread before the deadline.

No money or prizes are at stake here, just bragging rights. This contest doesn’t work like “The Price is Right”; the winning answers will be closest to the final results, whether they were a little high or low. Even if you have no idea, please try to take a guess on every question.

Bleeding Heartland readers continue to make their case to undecided caucus-goers. -promoted by desmoinesdem

A few thought-provoking editorials/articles have come across my desk (figuratively) that have given me some further insight into my own reasons for supporting Hillary, into the reasons I sense a shift on the ground (however tentative) among folks I know as we approach caucus. I’ve sensed that Iowa caucusers–some–are on the move. There is a genuine uncertainty among folks who can’t decide between Bernie and Hillary, a crisis of conscience falling on the line between ideals and pragmatism.

The National Journal’s Matt Vasilogambros had a productive visit to Iowa recently. His feature on how immigration raids in 2006 affected the Latino community in Marshalltown is a must-read. Do click through, but prepare to be disheartened by stories of families broken apart and impacts that went far beyond the undocumented immigrants who were swept up in the raids at the Swift & Co. meat­pack­ing plant.

Vasilogambros also followed up on his story from last summer on “Why Latinos Don’t Caucus in Iowa” with a new look at the relatively poor outreach by presidential campaigns to the growing number of potential Latino caucus-goers.

If Latino participation in the February 1 caucuses exceeds the record set in 2008, credit will be due primarily to the League of United Latin American Citizens chapter in Iowa. Adrian Carrasquillo reported for Buzzfeed earlier this month on LULAC’s campaign. Highlights from both articles are after the jump.

How much do Ted Cruz’s fellow U.S. Senate Republicans not want him to be their party’s standard-bearer? So much that Senator Chuck Grassley introduced Donald Trump at a rally in Pella this afternoon, telling the crowd, “We have an opportunity once again to make America great again.”

Technically, Grassley didn’t endorse Trump for president, and aides for the senator told Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register that Grassley “will introduce Marco Rubio at the candidate’s Iowa rally next Saturday.” Still, it sends a strong message when a politician of Grassley’s stature echoes Trump’s campaign slogan at a rally for Trump. Anna Palmer reported for Politico from Pella,

“I’m excited to be invited to be here. I’m excited as I see so many large crowd at various events around Iowa,” Grassley said. “I’m excited to see the big crowds because of the big energy that comes with it and we’ve got to keep up this energy that’s shown here today and many other places around Iowa because that is what is going to take for us to win back the White House in November.”

Grassley endorsed his Senate colleague Bob Dole before the 1988 and 1996 Iowa caucuses and supported the establishment’s choice George W. Bush before the 2000 caucuses, but he didn’t pick a candidate out of the crowded GOP fields in 2008 or 2012. On January 11, Grassley told Alex Schuman,

“I’ve told all these candidates as long as eight months ago that I wasn’t going to get involved,” he said Monday. “I’ve told them I wasn’t going to back anybody. I think I’m a person who has a great deal of credibility. My word is good.”

Sen. Grassley continued, “I think it would hurt my credibility if I were to step out for that person or any other person right now.”

Speaking to Politico’s Burgess Everett on January 20, Grassley criticized Cruz’s stand on various energy issues and said he respected Governor Terry Branstad’s call the previous day for Iowans to defeat the Texas senator. But Grassley added that he “won’t get political about it” and campaign against Cruz. I wonder what changed his mind over the past few days. My hunch is that some internal polling is showing Cruz way ahead of others in the field. Although Trump is occupying an outsider niche in this presidential race, it could hardly be more clear that Cruz is the candidate most widely hated by the Republican establishment.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: On second thought, leave Grassley out of the “anyone but Cruz” establishment crowd. Shortly after the Trump event, Jason Noble reported for the Des Moines Register, “Several other campaigns – including those of candidates Ben Carson, Chris Christie and Rand Paul – confirmed they had received offers in recent days to appear with Grassley.” On Saturday evening, the Cruz campaign told Teddy Schleifer that Grassley will appear at a Cruz rally on January 29. So the senior senator appears to be making himself available to all the presidential candidates during the final days of the caucus race.

P.S.- Senator Grassley’s grandson, State Representative Pat Grassley, has not endorsed a presidential candidate this cycle. Grassley is the new Iowa House Appropriations Committee chair and widely considered a likely candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2018, assuming the current holder of that office, Bill Northey, runs for governor.

Craig Robinson is among the go-to Republicans for national press covering the Iowa caucuses. His insights are partly informed by a wealth of experience: as a staffer on Steve Forbes’ presidential campaign before the 2000 caucuses, as political director of the state GOP during the year before the 2008 caucuses, and as publisher of The Iowa Republican blog since 2009.

One salient fact rarely, if ever, makes it into the news stories quoting Robinson about prospects for Republican contenders in Iowa: his company Global Intermediate has been paid to do direct mail for or against certain candidates in the field.

Yesterday someone delivered a delusional commentary about Donald Trump’s prospects for becoming president.

But in a surprising twist, the illogical scenario came not from Sarah Palin in her Trump endorsement speech to a large Iowa crowd, but from Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.