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Quatrarius  ·  2966 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: It's Not Over | Bernie Sanders

This grew a lot as I was writing it - apologies in advance for the infodump. If this was more information than you wanted, sorry about that too.

Intro to American politics/background to this election: Every 2 years elections are held for the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate. Presidential elections happen every 4 years, and 2016 is a presidential election year. Only two political parties matter: the Republican Party (generally right-wing) and the Democratic Party (generally left-wing). The Republican Party currently holds both the House and the Senate, but there's a Democratic president, Barack Obama. Obama is term-limited, so he can't run for president anymore, making this the first election since 2008 without an incumbent president.

Current state of the election: primary season, which is when both major parties hold elections in each state to determine who will represent them in the general election. Only two states have held primaries so far (Iowa and New Hampshire). Because they vote first, those two states have a lot of influence over what candidates will continue on. 7 candidates have dropped out already after doing badly in them. The Republican candidates still in the race are Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson. The Democratic candidates still in are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. On the Republican side, Cruz won Iowa and Trump won New Hampshire. On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders tied in Iowa and Sanders won in New Hampshire. Nevada and South Carolina vote next, then things start to get a little busy. Because they're so competitive this year, the primaries probably won't be decided until the majority of states have voted.

The candidates:

Ted Cruz and Ben Carson both represent the more religious, right-wing, anti-establishment wing of the Republican party.

Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush represent the more moderate establishment wing of the Republican party.

Donald Trump is the odd one out here. On some issues he's an extremist (immigration), but on others he's more moderate or almost left-wing (campaign finance reform). He is by far the most anti-establishment candidate, which is what makes it so shocking that he's currently the frontrunner.

Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate on the Democratic side, and her policies are essentially a continuation of Obama's. She has overwhelming support among Democratic elected and party officials.

Bernie Sanders is farther left than any other candidate in the race, which is why everybody on the Internet seems to like him. He was one of the few senators that were unaffiliated with either of the two parties, but in practice he voted with the Democrats most of the time. He's viewed as an outsider by most higher-ups in the Democratic Party.

Bernie Sanders is gaining ground against HIllary Clinton, but is still polling far behind her in most states. He has the momentum of a 20-point win in New Hampshire, but conditions for him there were abnormally favorable: New Hampshire borders Sanders' home state of Vermont, and also has very few minority voters, who tend to vote against him. The next few primaries are mostly in the South, and those states are demographically unfavorable to Sanders. Sanders' chances would improve greatly if he came close or won in those states.

The Republican field used to be a lot more crowded (13 candidates), but the first two primaries have cleared it down to 6. Donald Trump is the most popular candidate nationally, and is favored to win the next two primaries. Ted Cruz, who has the most support in the evangelical vote, is likely to do well in the Southern states after that. If he manages to beat Trump badly enough in those states, Cruz could claim frontrunner status. Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Jeb Bush, as the moderate candidates, are most likely to do well in more liberal states which tend to vote later. This could hurt them if either Trump or Cruz manage to build up momentum from their own earlier victories. Ben Carson has been mostly undercut by Ted Cruz, and I don't see him staying in much longer if he loses again.

Then when all this is over, the real election starts. Which might actually be the boring part this time around. Turnout is higher in presidential election years, which favors Democrats. Demographics do as well. Without knowing who will represent each party, it's hard to know for sure.