Discussion: Primaries And Caucuses In Arizona, Idaho, Utah Underway

Discussion for article #247731

According to AZ Central, long lines, long waits at many Arizona polling stations. Apparently they went from more than 200 polling places in 2012, down to only 60 polling places statewide, in order to “save money.” And then surprise, surprise – long lines, long waits, running out of ballots, etc. But of course this is a feature, not a bug.

4:45 p.m.: Workers at one poll site run out of ballots

At Church of the Beatitudes, at 7th and Glendale avenues, poll workers ran out of ballots late Tuesday afternoon. One poll worker emerged to give the news to voters who were in line. One voter said she overheard election workers say they had sent for more ballots, but they had yet to arrive.

Many voters at that location have been in line for three hours. The lines at this polling place continue to get longer as the day goes on.

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Re Arizona: “The state tests Clinton’s appeal with Latinos in the Southwest, who appeared to favor Sanders in Nevada.”

As I understand it there were some exit polls that made it seem like Hispanics were favoring Sanders, but in all the heavily Hispanic districts, Clinton won.

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Too bad they’re gonna shut down comments tonight as the results from the Mormon belt come in.
AZ is a dreamland for Trump. Not sure about the other two.

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Those voters need to pledge to themselves to turn out in similar force for all primaries and all general elections for as long as it takes to get rid of the folks who limited the polling places…

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Sanders will take ID and probably UT.

Some early vote info here at NBC.

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Correct. Probably a near-tie in reality. Bernie’s apparent lead among Hispanic voters in the entrance polls was within the margin of error, so there’s that. On the other hand, what the entrance polls appeared to show was Bernie winning with strong support among young Hispanics (which would be consistent with other polling) and these young Hispanic voters aren’t as concentrated in majority-Hispanic districts, which would account for the seeming contradiction between the entrance poll results and the outcome in majority-Hispanic districts. But which one of them actually won more votes from Hispanic voters in Nevada…the evidence is inconclusive. Either way though, I suspect must have been pretty close.

And yes, Arizona is going to be seen as a major test, though I would say more for Bernie than Hillary. As I recall Hillary won the Hispanic vote in Texas pretty handily. So it’s Bernie who has seemed to show strength with Hispanic voters in states like Nevada and Colorado, but due to shaky polling in the former, and as far as I recall none in the latter, it hasn’t really been measured with any confidence. Hopefully the exit polls tonight will be robust enough to offer some insight. Assuming enough people are still willing to talk to an exit pollster after waiting in line for 2,3,4 hours.

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I keep reading that Trump’s going to get thumped in Utah. Apparently Mormons, for the most part, just can’t stand him. And if there’s one place where Mitt Romney’s attacks on Trump probably cost Trump a meaningful number of votes, it’s Utah.

I believe Cruz is thought to be the likely beneficiary of this, with Kasich possibly acting as enough of a spoiler to prevent Cruz from winning by a large enough margin to take all the delegates, which means the loss would be less of a blow to Trump because he’d still get a portion. Not that there are all that many delegates there to begin with. But in Trump’s quest to clinch the nomination and avoid a contested delegate, it could come down to a few delegates.

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Early voting demographics in AZ look very good for Hillary. Plus it’s a closed primary. And she’s been consistently ahead in the polls there. So I think it’s fair to say Hillary’s the presumed frontrunner there, and if Bernie pulls out a win there tonight it will be an upset.

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Except that those polls are not of high quality. There was only one recent poll, by Merrill, and I don’t think they did cell phones with N = 300. So… I’d take it with some football size grain of salt.

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You’re right, that does seem appear to be the only recent poll. The last one was in February, and also by a lesser-known pollster. Thanks for the correction.

Well, turned out the Michigan screw-up hasn’t spilled over into other places yet :slight_smile: Merrill’s likely voter screen (apparently based on 2012) seems to have worked fine enough.

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