So interestingly, the nomination race is starting to creep into North Carolina, with Bernie Sanders in Greensboro this Sunday, and Jeb Bush in Garner (a suburb of Raleigh) this afternoon.
In past cycles, we were an afterthought at best because the state's primary was in early May, long after the primaries were typically decided. But two years ago, our harebrained legislature passed a law moving the primary date to the first Tuesday after the SC primary. Which moved us up to February 23 and crossed a line in the sand that the RNC had made, that nobody could jump ahead of Super Tuesday (other than the states already traditionally out in front) or they'd be penalized half their delegates to the convention.
The DNC had a similar rule but didn't threaten to enforce it, as the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, meaning that Democrats had no role in the snafu and no way to reverse it.
The legislature eventually caved and untethered it from SC, but was facing a $10 million+ pricetag to hold two separate primaries -- one for President, and the rest of the races on May 3 as usual.
So now they're planning on moving ALL the primaries (including local and statewide races) to March 15. Which has some interesting spillover benefits for incumbents in that it doesn't give their opponents nearly as much time to organize and campaign. Another change that was made is that previously our delegates were a proportional allocation. Now the GOP is planning on rewriting the primary law so that it's a winner-take-all event. We're so fucking desperate to be relevant that we've basically dipped ourselves in chocolate, put on a red satin bow, and called out "Yoo-hoo, come get me, boys!" in a sexy voice. (Which, considering the people doing this are almost entirely flabby old white guys...yeah, I'm sorry for the mental image).
The DNC also forbids winner-take-all allocation, but again...the DNC is not likely to penalize North Carolina because the Dems here are utterly powerless.
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In a side piece, one of my former professors
had an op-ed piece locally that called into question the recent SurveyUSA poll that showed Trump beating Clinton (the one that I said was an outlier and not to take too seriously). One of the things he noticed was that in the crosstabs, it showed 31% of Hispanics saying they would vote for Trump. The same Trump that seems determined to get 0% of the Hispanic vote. He noted that Romney only got 27% of the Hispanic vote, and there's no reason to think Trump is more well-liked in the Hispanic community than Romney was. Especially given the plethora of data showing Trump has ridiculously low favorability ratings with them.
It also showed 25% of African-Americans voting for Trump, when Democrats have won 90+% of the black vote for every candidate in the last 50 years. Again, no significant reason to think Trump would more than double the best Republican showing in the last half-century with black voters.
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Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1582227 times)