Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s coverage of the Nevada Democratic caucuses and South Carolina Republican primary.
You can find our final forecasts for Nevada here and for South Carolina here. In Nevada, Hillary Clinton is a modest favorite over Bernie Sanders in our forecasts, and also figures to have a slight edge on the basis of Nevada’s demographics. But the lack of polling, coupled with the inherent challenges of polling Nevada for the pollsters that gave it a try, render any forecast as being little better than an educated guess.
In South Carolina, there’s been no absence of polling, and all of it has Donald Trump ahead. However, those polls also show the race tightening, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz having gained several percentage points over the last few days while Donald Trump’s numbers have declined. The whole point of starting out with a large lead is that you can lose some of it and still win, and Trump remains the reasonably clear favorite in South Carolina, with an 76 percent chance of a victory according to our polls-plus forecast and an 82 percent chance according to our polls-only forecast. But things could get interesting — and even if Trump notches a clear win, the placement of the candidates behind him will have big implications for the rest of the Republican race.
It’s going to be a long day, so here’s the run of show. The Nev-AD-a caucuses begin at 2 p.m. Eastern (or 11 a.m. locally). We may begin to see some nuggets of information from entrance polls at that time. But be wary: The networks call these “entrance polls” rather than “exit polls” because voters are asked about their voting intentions on their way into the caucus site — they can change their minds once they’re actually there.
The Nevada caucuses are officially supposed close at 3 p.m. Eastern, although that may vary a bit from precinct to precinct. We’ll begin to see some votes reported at about that time, but if past years are any guide, the vote-counting could be pretty slow.
Fortunately we’ll have something else to keep us entertained: South Carolina, where voting opened at 7 AM this morning. We may see some teasers from South Carolina exit polls as early as 5 p.m., but be cautious of reading too much into those; the earliest the networks will call the state is when polls close at 7 p.m.
So stick with us through it all.
(see updates…)
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