Mississippi was just declared for Hillary Clinton. The Michigan polls close in about an 40 minutes. Here's what the polling tells us in Michigan:
Unlike in previous projections, we aren't able to make demographic projections based on previous exit polling because there wasn't a useful exit poll from 2008 in Michigan; Obama and John Edwards weren't on the ballot and the results weren't binding.
There was just one poll which included cellular phones; it was conducted by Michigan State University and showed the margin at just 5%. We've noticed a loose correlation between educational institutions performing above average in or near their home state. It occurred with Iowa State University, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Clemson University. This correlation needs to be investigated further, but it's something interesting to consider if the margin is single digits.
Michigan has 130 pledged delegates [1] tied to the outcome of today's election. There are 85 district level delegates across Michigan's 14 Congressional Districts. There are then 28 at-large delegates and 17 Pledged PLEO delegates. If the margin isn't single digits, but rather uniformly matches the polling in every Michigan locale, Bernie would suffer a 26 delegate defeat, 52 to Hillary's 78.
The graphic below illustrates the projected delegate allocations in each region allocating delegates; the "AL" denotes the at-large delegates and "PL" denotes the Pledged PLEO delegates:
These projections assume statewide polling holds in every region. As results are published, if they're provided by congressional district, I'll be periodically updating the projections. Our hypothesis is that the delegate allocations can be projected very early and very accurately due to he large presence of rounding. In most delegate rich districts (13 and 14), about 11% proportions a single delegate.
Update March 9 PM CT: The reference to MSU being the only pollster to include cell phones in their sample is completely wrong. Four pollsters included cell phones, not that it really helped given the actual results of a Bernie victory.
Updated on March 9, 2016 at 10:51:17 PM CT