Five Scenarios For How Super Tuesday Could Go - FiveThirtyEight

Earlier today, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich and I wrote about the final FiveThirtyEight forecast before Super Tuesday. There are basically two big themes there. First, yes, the model has shifted strongly to former Vice President Joe Biden in recent days because of his big win in South Carolina and a major bounce for him in polls of Super Tuesday states. But second, there’s a lot of uncertainty, both in terms of what happens tonight and for the rest of the race. The most likely outcome is still that there’s no pledged delegate majority on June 6, once all states and territories have finished voting.

I’m going to focus more on the uncertainty in this story. Let’s stress test the model and see how its Super Tuesday projections might change if various candidates perform better or worse than our projections expect. (If you want to do your own version of this, you can! Please see our Super Tuesday scenarios interactive here.)

Scenario 1: The model is all-knowing

First, let’s establish a baseline case. Here’s how delegates would be allocated tonight under the DNC’s rules if our forecast is exactly right in every state and Congressional district. If this happens (it will not), I’m going to buy myself a really nice steak dinner tomorrow night. (Also, it will probably mean we’re living in a simulation, so this is not necessarily something to root for.)

Scenario 1: If Our Projections Are *Exactly* Right

Super Tuesday delegate projections based on final FiveThirtyEight forecast

State	Biden	Sanders	Bloomberg	Warren	Klobuchar
California	120	155	77	63	0
Texas	83	81	55	9	0
North Carolina	52	32	24	2	0
Virginia	52	27	17	3	0
Massachusetts	21	28	17	25	0
Minnesota	19	20	9	13	14
Colorado	17	22	14	14	0
Tennessee	26	19	14	5	0
Alabama	27	13	11	1	0
Oklahoma	13	9	8	7	0
Arkansas	14	7	9	1	0
Utah	9	9	6	5	0
Maine	6	8	6	4	0
Vermont	0	13	0	3	0
American Samoa	2	2	2	0	0
Total	461	445	269	155	14

In the base case, we have Biden finishing just slightly ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 461 delegates (34 percent of the total possible tonight) to Bernie’s 445 (33 percent). But our baseline projections also have Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren picking up decent numbers of delegates. Heck, they even have Amy Klobuchar staying just above 15 percent of the vote in Minnesota and thereby getting delegates there, even though she dropped out. So basically, the base case for tonight is that one-third of the delegates go to Biden, one-third go to Sanders and one-third go to “other,” which is why we could be headed to a no majority (and possibly contested convention) outcome.

Scenario 2: Biden overperforms

Let’s say, though, that Biden has a really good night — even better than our forecast shows. That’s certainly possible; as aggressive as the model has been in trying to account for his bounce, he keeps moving up in the model every time we feed it new polling data. Even the latest, freshest polls may not sufficiently account for Pete Buttigeg and Klobuchar dropping out and endorsing Biden, which is one way he could beat his forecast, for instance.

To do this, let’s add 6 percentage points to our Biden forecast in every state and district. We’ll take those 6 points evenly from the other major candidates — so Biden gets 2 points each from Sanders, Warren and Bloomberg.

Scenario 2: A Big Night For Biden

Super Tuesday delegate projections based on final FiveThirtyEight forecast, adding 6 points to Biden while subtracting 2 from Sanders, Bloomberg and Warren

State	Biden	Sanders	Bloomberg	Warren	Klobuchar
California	178	159	61	17	0
Texas	103	76	45	4	0
North Carolina	62	31	17	0	0
Virginia	61	24	13	1	0
Massachusetts	30	27	14	20	0
Minnesota	30	26	2	1	16
Colorado	23	21	13	10	0
Tennessee	32	18	14	0	0
Alabama	29	12	11	0	0
Oklahoma	23	12	2	0	0
Arkansas	15	7	9	0	0
Utah	11	9	8	1	0
Maine	9	10	5	0	0
Vermont	5	11	0	0	0
American Samoa	3	2	1	0	0
Total	614	445	215	54	16

In this case, Biden would finish 169 delegates ahead of Sanders. That’s hardly an insurmountable lead in a race with 3,979 pledged delegates total. But, the narrative of the evening would be quite poor for Sanders, perhaps leading to further Biden gains in subsequent states. That’s because, in this scenario, Sanders’s wins would be limited to Maine and Vermont, with Biden pulling off upsets in Massachusetts, Utah, Colorado and — most importantly, and only by the slimmest of margins — California.

Again, this is a dream scenario for Biden and very much not the base case. But the point is that Biden is surging so much that we can’t rule outcomes like this out. Even in states like California, Sanders’s lead has slipped into the high single digits, to the best we can determine based on the few polls available.

As a slight silver lining for Sanders, note that he actually wins exactly as many delegates here (445) as in the base case. That’s because Biden’s gains would take away votes from Bloomberg and Warren, knocking them below the 15 percent threshold in many districts, leaving Biden and Sanders more delegates to divvy up for themselves. Still, I’m sure Sanders would prefer to avoid this outcome.

Scenario 3: Sanders overperforms

But what if things go really well for Sanders instead? Here’s what the delegates look like if Sanders beats our forecast by 6 points across the board, taken equally from Biden, Bloomberg and Warren.

Scenario 3: Sanders Beats His Polls And Holds His Ground

Super Tuesday delegate projections based on final FiveThirtyEight forecast, adding 6 points to Sanders while subtracting 2 from Biden, Bloomberg and Warren

State	Biden	Sanders	Bloomberg	Warren	Klobuchar
California	136	203	60	16	0
Texas	78	101	45	4	0
North Carolina	51	42	17	0	0
Virginia	49	36	13	1	0
Massachusetts	21	31	14	25	0
Minnesota	22	35	2	1	15
Colorado	16	25	13	13	0
Tennessee	22	28	14	0	0
Alabama	24	17	11	0	0
Oklahoma	18	17	2	0	0
Arkansas	13	10	8	0	0
Utah	9	13	6	1	0
Maine	8	10	6	0	0
Vermont	0	16	0	0	0
American Samoa	2	3	1	0	0
Total	469	587	212	61	15

This scenario has Sanders beating Biden by 118 delegates tonight. A few days ago, this might have seemed like an above-average outcome for Biden — one that left Sanders favored but Biden still in the running.

Now, it might seem like a big moment for Sanders instead. Biden’s wins would be limited to North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkasnas — not nothing, but he’d yet to have proven he could win anywhere outside of the South. Meanwhile, Sanders would penetrate into Biden’s territory by winning two southern states, Texas and Tennessee.

Scenario 4: Voters decide it’s Biden vs. Sanders

Next up is a scenario that intuitively seems plausible to me. Let’s imagine voters take the hint that it’s a two-candidate race and gravitate further toward both Biden and Sanders at the expense of the rest of the field. If you add 3 points to both Biden and Sanders’s numbers in every district and subtract 3 points from both Bloomberg and Warren, here’s what you get:

Scenario 4: Biden and Sanders Pull Away From The Pack

Super Tuesday delegate projections based on final FiveThirtyEight forecast, adding 3 points to Biden and Sanders while subtracting 3 from Bloomberg and Warren

State	Biden	Sanders	Bloomberg	Warren	Klobuchar
California	173	212	19	11	0
Texas	95	94	39	0	0
North Carolina	64	42	4	0	0
Virginia	60	34	4	1	0
Massachusetts	29	30	12	20	0
Minnesota	27	32	0	0	16
Colorado	23	30	11	3	0
Tennessee	28	22	14	0	0
Alabama	28	14	10	0	0
Oklahoma	22	15	0	0	0
Arkansas	14	10	7	0	0
Utah	9	14	6	0	0
Maine	9	10	5	0	0
Vermont	3	13	0	0	0
American Samoa	2	2	2	0	0
Total	586	574	133	35	16

Note that the overall margin between Biden and Sanders has barely changed — but their proportions have improved relative to the field. Biden gets 44 percent of Super Tuesday delegates instead of 34 percent as in Scenario 1, and Sanders gets 43 percent instead of 33 percent. This type of outcome would greatly reduce — though not entirely eliminate — the chance of “no majority” or contested convention. It would also undoubtedly put a lot of pressure on Bloomberg and Warren to exit the race.

Scenario 5: Bloomberg and Warren overperform

Finally, suppose just the opposite happens and Warren and Bloomberg each beat their projections. I don’t necessarily see this happening but who knows! Maybe Warren’s voters are tired of their candidate being discounted and dig in their heels. And maybe Bloomberg’s expensive Super Tuesday ground game has a bigger effect than polls are showing. In accounting for uncertainty in a forecast, it’s important to be prepared for the forecast to be wrong in all directions — not just the directions you intuitively expect.

Scenario 5: ChAoS!

Super Tuesday delegate projections based on final FiveThirtyEight forecast, adding 3 points to Bloomberg and Warren while subtracting 3 from Biden and Sanders

State	Biden	Sanders	Bloomberg	Warren	Klobuchar
California	102	138	87	88	0
Texas	70	68	52	38	0
North Carolina	44	24	26	16	0
Virginia	43	21	21	14	0
Massachusetts	18	26	20	27	0
Minnesota	15	18	15	15	12
Colorado	14	22	17	14	0
Tennessee	22	16	15	11	0
Alabama	25	9	12	6	0
Oklahoma	13	9	8	7	0
Arkansas	9	7	9	6	0
Utah	6	9	9	5	0
Maine	6	8	6	4	0
Vermont	0	11	0	5	0
American Samoa	2	2	1	1	0
Total	389	388	298	257	12

This would take us far down the path toward a contested convention. Biden and Sanders would essentially tie on the evening with 389 and 388 delegates respectively, but Bloomberg (298 delegates) and Warren (257 delegates) wouldn’t be that far behind. (Note that, because Warren is in danger of failing to meet the 15 percent threshold in more places than Bloomberg is, slightly overperforming her forecasts would be a bigger deal for her than for him.) Nobody would have more than 30 percent of the total delegates.

The tricky part for Warren and Bloomberg is that, although it isn’t that hard for them to accumulate quite a few delegates tonight, winning states is another story. Even in this optimistic scenario, Warren’s only win would come in Massachusetts, her home state. And the best Bloomberg would do would be to tie for the pledged delegates win in a rather odd pairing of states, Arkansas and Utah. I honestly have no idea how such an outcome would be interpreted by voters, the media and the candidates. But it would mean that we were probably in store for a very long and bumpy race.

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