Titanic Tuesday (March 7, 2000) Primaries
Predictions and Analysis

Russell D. Renka
Department of Political Science
Comments to:  rdrenka@semo.edu 
March 6, 2000

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State Date of primary Type of primary Repub delegates Dem delegates predicted R winner predicted D winner Rationale and discussion
CALIFORNIA 7-Mar closed 162 367 Bush Gore Closed means Bush except possibly in New England
CONNECTICUT 7-Mar closed 25 54 McCain Gore This is New England, not the South.
GEORGIA 7-Mar open 54 with 33 district wta delegates* 77 Bush Gore This is the South, not New England.  McCain loses to cultural conservatives despite open primary.
HAWAII 7-Mar caucus   33   Gore  
IDAHO 7-Mar caucus   23   Gore  
MAINE 7-Mar closed 14 with majority-vote wta** 23 McCain Gore New England, again; but Bush might win here due to closed primary
MARYLAND 7-Mar R open, D closed 31 with 24 district wta 68 Bush Gore Maybe a McCain upset since Rep. primary is open.
MASSACHUSETTS 7-Mar open 37 93 McCain Gore New England, again
MINNESOTA 7-Mar caucus 34   Bush Gore Caucus equals zero for McCain.
MISSOURI 7-Mar open 35 75 Bush Gore No McCain organization at all here.
NEW YORK 7-Mar closed 101 with 93 district wta 243 Bush Gore It's near New England, but is a strong-party organizational state with solid Bush backing.
NORTH DAKOTA 7-Mar nonbinding   14   Gore Bush in the prairies
OHIO 7-Mar open 69 with 57 district wta 146 Bush Gore A strong-party organizational state; only Bush has one.
RHODE ISLAND 7-Mar open 14 22 McCain Gore New England, again
VERMONT 7-Mar open 12 15 McCain Gore New England, again
WASHINGTON 7-Mar caucus 25? 94 Bush Gore Bush here
               
N delegates:                          613            1347 511 Bush,
102 McCain		 1000 Gore,
347 Bradley		 As New England goes, so goes nobody else.

* Note:  The term "wta" refers to winner take all.  All Republican state primaries except Louisiana (an exception to everything!) use wta to select delegates.  Some states do this statewide, while others such as Maryland allocate many delegates by using winner-take-all within each of their Congressional Districts.  For Republicans this is typically done with 3 delegates per C.D., as in the 31 New York districts that yield 93 of the 101 delegates.  The other 8 are selected via the statewide winner.
    Democrats are different.  All Democratic states use proportional representation to allocate delegates.  But I'm predicting that we'll hardly see this unless we look closely, because Gore is too far ahead of Bradley to make this interesting.

**In Maine, winner-take-all prevails only if one candidate gains a majority; otherwise proportional allocation of delegates occurs.

    In general, I'm predicting that McCain wins the New England wta states whether or not the primary is open, because the relatively liberal and independent-influenced Republicans there are relatively hostile to the culturally conservative southern-centered wing of the party.  They are also realists who recognize that only one county in the six-state N.E. region voted a plurality for Dole over Clinton in the 1996 presidential race.  In fact, these states combined with the west coast states and N.Y. precisely to offset the former 'Super Tuesday' influence of the southern states in the second Tuesday or March.  Note that four of six New England states are also open primaries, excepting Maine and Connecticut.  (New Hampshire back on February 1 was open.)
    Everywhere else, Bush will win.  All closed primary states except Connecticut and possibly Maine will go for Bush, and I wouldn't be very surprised if Maine does, too.  The reason is that all national polls consistently show Bush well ahead of McCain with self-identified Republican voters, by almost a 2 to 1 margin.  McCain likewise exceeds Bush easily with self-identified independent voters.  But those voters only get meaningful impacts when they all troop into a party's primary, as they did in Michigan.
    Finally there is the South.  Georgia will go for Bush because it is southern, heavily influenced by cultural conservatives.  That overrides the effect of an open primary there.

Russell Renka
Monday, 6 March 2000

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