Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Rely on Minorities in California Primary

On June 7, five states–California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota–will hold their primary contests and 676 pledged delegates are up for grabs. According to the PPD Democratic Delegate Count and Tracker, which does include committed superdelegates, Hillary Clinton is just 25 delegates shy of locking up the Democratic nomination.

The Clinton campaign is hoping that New Jersey, where she has slightly more than a 20-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders, will put her over the top. But judging by polls and demographics, the California primary could deal a humiliating defeat at the end of a long nomination contest no one expected to go until June 7. Worth noting, Mrs. Clinton’s delegate lead margin is disproportionately due to the support she has enjoyed from minorities–more specifically black voters–and, even more specifically black voters in the South.

However, she once enjoyed a double-digit lead in the Golden State and now Sen. Sanders is just 2 points behind on the PPD average. California is no doubt the biggest delegate prize on Tuesday night. There are a total 548 delegates up for grabs in the California Democratic primary, including 317 in the congressional districts. Another 105 are at large, 53 are Pledged PLEOs and 73 Unpledged PLEOs.

“We’re going to have a very contentious campaign,” Clinton said late Sunday night at a rally in the California capital, “because I’m going to point out at every single moment that I can why I believe the Republican nominee should never get near the White House.”

And she could lose it. Let’s look at why and question whether her lead in the state was ever even that large, at all.

“We haven’t seen much change over time in our polling results among California’s Democratic Presidential Primary likely voters,” PPIC pollster Mark Baldassare said. “In the March PPIC Survey, 48% supported Clinton and 41% supported Sanders. In the May PPIC Survey, 46% supported Clinton and 44% supported Sanders.”

PPIC, which was one of two of the most accurate pollsters in the 2008 Democratic primary between Mrs. Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama, was again ahead of the trend in the state. While others were showing a larger lead for the former secretary of state, PPIC has shown a rather close contest, which is driven by the unique demographic makeup of minorities in the state.

“It’s important to note that age has been an important factor for the Democratic presidential candidate preferences,” Mr. Baldassare added. “The nonwhites have a younger age profile and the whites have an older age profile among the California Democratic presidential primary likely voters in our May PPIC Survey.”

We couldn’t agree more. The PPD Election Projection Model relating to the Democratic primary–among other variables–examines the percentage of a state’s primary electorate black voters represent and whether a state is located in the South. In other words, comparing our own in-house polling and recent public polls such as PPIC with previous cycles indicates the socialist senator from Vermont is succeeding in driving the percentage of younger voters higher than previous years, which undercuts Mrs. Clinton’s advantage among minorities.

Our model gives Mrs. Clinton a slight 56% chance of winning the California primary with a margin of around 2%, a result that basically leaves me no confidence in her ability to hold Sen. Sanders at bay. The model has underestimated his support in Ohio and Michigan and overestimated her support in North Carolina by margins large enough to conclude he has a very real shot at winning this thing on Tuesday night.

That said, the constant barrage of media coverage essentially designed to tell Sanders supporters the contest is over and not to bother may have an adverse impact on his ability to get younger voters to the polls. That’s just not something we will know for sure until we observe the traffic at the polls on Tuesday.

The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton cannot rely upon her support among minorities because there is so much overlap with younger, more leftist-socialist voters in the Democratic primary electorate. If she does win, then I suspect she will have cobbled together a less-than impressive coalition including older, less liberal voters and those on the fence swayed by the endorsement of the still-popular Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.