Tonight's Florida debate details

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will meet for their fourth one-on-one debate Wednesday evening in Miami — one night after Sanders won an upset victory in Michigan, reshaping their party’s presidential race as Clinton seemed close to clinching it. 

The debate is sponsored by The Washington Post and the Spanish-language network Univision. It will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. 

Viewers can watch the debate live on The Post’s website or via The Washington Post app for Apple TV. It will also be shown on CNN. Spanish-speaking viewers can watch it on Univision. 

This debate comes at an unexpected moment of drama in the Democratic race.
Clinton is still the clear leader, in terms of states won and delegates accumulated. She added to her delegate lead Tuesday by winning a lopsided victory in Mississippi and dividing Michigan’s delegates nearly evenly with Sanders. 

[...] 

In the debate, moderators will probably ask about immigration policy, a vital subject in Florida — and a subject on which Clinton and Sanders differ significantly from the GOP candidates. 

Both Democrats have said they support a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are already in the United States. And both have said they would preserve President Obama’s executive actions, which are intended to stop the deportations of undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children and of undocumented parents whose children are U.S. citizens or legal residents. 

Sanders — whose father was an immigrant from Poland — would go even further than that. He says he would issue an expanded order that would protect from deportation all undocumented residents who have lived in the country for at least five years.

Besides contrasting their views on immigration with each other's -- and Donald Drumps's -- expect these things to also play out.

FLINT FACT CHECK: At the Flint debate on Sunday, Clinton appeared to catch Sanders off guard when she accused him of not supporting the auto bailout -- an attack that Sanders the following day said was "categorically untrue." Both candidates have since doubled down on their attacks and released ads on the issue. Tonight they could likely take it up again in person. 

TESTY EXCHANGES: Clinton and Sanders tend to remain cordial, but at the debate on Sunday, things got contentious. Sanders told Clinton, "excuse me, I'm talking," which Clinton's campaign aides described as "disrespectful" and "rude." Sanders responded by saying he thought Clinton was the one being "rude” since she was the one interrupting. Either way, as they share a stage tonight, keep an eye out for who tries to override who. 

PRAISE FOR SANDERS: Despite what could be some heated back-and-forths between the two candidates, Clinton has tried to pivot her rhetoric and attention to the general election -- part of which may include getting Sanders (and his supporters) on her side. In recent days, she's had some kinder words for her opponent: She’s called him an "ally" and said she "would hope to enlist" him to help should she be the nominee. Thus tonight, don't be surprised if Clinton finds moments to praise him as opposed to just knocking him down. That said, Sanders told ABC News' David Wright that that language was premature. After last night's stunning upset, will Clinton have to change her tune again? 

A BREAK-OUT MOMENT: [...] The pressure is still on Sanders. Yes, he scored a major upset in a large, diverse state, but Clinton won one too and actually expanded her delegate lead with her overwhelming victory in Mississippi on Tuesday night. Though the Vermont senator has said he is confident in his path forward, realistically he needs to find a way to translate his Michigan win into more solid victories in that region and beyond in order to tighten that delegate gap. His performance tonight could be his chance.

Follow the Twitter machine at the top right for my takes or at the hashtag #DemDebate.

Sanders stuns pollsters, Clinton with upset in Michigan

Nobody saw that coming.

Bernie Sanders pulled off his biggest win of the Democratic presidential race on Tuesday, defeating Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary on a night which also confirmed strong anti-establishment support for Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination.

In an industrial state hit hard by the decline of manufacturing, the Vermont senator’s consistent opposition to free trade deals appears to have been a decisive factor, but he also showed signs of weakening Clinton’s dominance among African American voters.

The shock victory – 49.9%-48.2% with 99.3% reporting – comes despite Sanders trailing the former secretary of state by an average of 21 points in recent opinion polling.

538.com -- with the most egg on their faces and registering a much bigger loss than Hillary:

Bernie Sanders made folks like me eat a stack of humble pie on Tuesday night. He won the Michigan primary over Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 48 percent, when not a single poll taken over the last month had Clinton leading by less than 5 percentage points. In fact, many had her lead at 20 percentage points or higher. Sanders’s win in Michigan was one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.

Both the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus and polls-only forecast gave Clinton a greater than 99 percent chance of winning. That’s because polling averages for primaries, while inexact, are usually not 25 percentage points off. ...

The question I am asking myself now is whether this means the polls are off in other Midwest states that are holding open primaries. I’m talking specifically about Illinois and Ohio, both of which vote next Tuesday. The FiveThirtyEight polling average in Illinois gives Clinton a 37 percentage point lead, while the average in Ohio gives her a 20 percentage point lead. If Michigan was just a fluke (which is possible), then tonight will be forgotten soon enough. If, however, pollsters are missing something more fundamental about the electorate, then the Ohio and Illinois primaries could be a lot closer than expected.

The delegate math still favors Clinton.

To be sure, Clinton will emerge from Tuesday’s primaries with the bigger net gain in delegates. Her Mississippi landslide may have been more predictable than Sanders’ nail-biter in Michigan, but it was also more profitable. The latest estimates show that while Sanders will amass 8 to 10 more delegates than Clinton in Michigan, Clinton will scoop up 25 to 28 more delegates than Sanders in Mississippi. And so Clinton’s total delegate lead will only grow once all of Tuesday’s votes are tallied — despite Sanders’ miracle in Michigan. In the end, this is the only measure that matters.

Among the surprises from the Wolverine State is the statistical reveal that Bernie narrowed the gap with the demographic groups that have voted Hillary en masse.

Yet, more tellingly, Sanders also held his own among demographic groups that Clinton dominated in her 2008 battle against Barack Obama — demographic groups that could prove crucial in the contests ahead. He won white women by five points. He won whites without a college degree by 17 points. He won voters who make less than $50,000 a year by five points. He even won union voters (by two points). And he lost the black vote by a much smaller margin than he has in the South.

Wayne County, home to Detroit, was supposed to be her firewall but that theory got Berned, and there are more states like Michigan and fewer states like Mississippi ahead on the primary schedule. He must still begin claiming some Clinton-esque wins.

... Thanks to an 83 percent to 16 percent win in Mississippi, Clinton gained in the overall delegate count on Tuesday and leads Sanders by more than 200 pledged delegates. Her strong performance in Mississippi also put Sanders further behind his FiveThirtyEight delegate targets. That may not be as sexy as the tremendous upset in Michigan, but math is rarely sexy.

Sanders, however, can breathe a deep sigh of relief that all the states in the Deep South have already voted. He can hope that tonight’s Michigan win will help propel him to victory or at least make him more competitive in states with large delegate prizes left like California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. We’ll see if it does.

It might be the start of the political revolution, or it might be just one shining moment.  It could be the start of something yuuge, or it could be a flash in the pan.

On your teevee it's all about Trump. Turn it off.

Trump's ceiling, Cruz's rise, Rubio's last chance

The postulate that Trump's ceiling of support is somewhere between 35 and 40% has been, and continues to be, borne out by the polling and the results.  The latest:

Donald Trump’s facing a wall within his party, with Republicans who don’t currently support him far more apt to prefer Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio in a two-way race -- or even to favor a contested convention to block Trump’s nomination. 

Trump continues to lead in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, with 34 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents who are registered to vote saying they’d like to see him win the nomination. But he trails both Cruz and Rubio one-on-one. And preferences for Cruz, Rubio and John Kasich have grown as others have left the race, while Trump’s support has essentially remained unchanged for months.

Lots of in-the-knowers question the premise that Trump has a ceiling, or even whether it matters, but let's look at the numbers ... 

Iowa's caucus results were Cruz 27.6%, Trump 24.3 and Rubio 23.1.  Since that time -- just five weeks ago -- Trump finished first in NH with 35.3%, first in SC with 32.4, first in Nevada with 46.1, first in Alabama with 43.4, second in Alaska behind Cruz, 33.5 to 36.4%, first in Arkansas with 32.8, first in Georgia with 38.8 and in Massachusetts with 49.3, first in Tennessee with 38.9, first in Virginia with 34.7, and first in Vermont with 32.7%.

He lost Texas and Oklahoma to Ted Cruz by 26.7 - 43.8% and 28.3 - 34.4%, respectively, and he lost Minnesota to both Rubio and Cruz, ending third with 21.3%, and Puerto Rico by a mile, 13-71 to Rubio.  These last two represent Trump's low-water marks to date.

Last Saturday he lost Kansas and Maine to Cruz by wide margins, 23.3% to 48.2, and 32.6 to 45.9%, but won Louisiana and Kentucky with 41.4 and 35.9%.

Throwing out the high (Massachusetts) and the low (Puerto Rico) and averaging the remaining produces a 33.46 average percentage (even if averaging percentages is a substandard evaluation method, it tells us something).  The only way we'll know what the ceiling is for Trump is when the Republicans boil it down to two.  Delegate counts are a different story, and Trump leads Cruz by a 384-300 margin, with Rubio well back in third holding 150 delegates and Kasich, lapped a couple of times by the field, at 37.

Michigan and Mississippi both poll strongly for Trump, as does Idaho and Hawaii (no polling there) also voting today.  But the numbers are very consistent: 30% to 40% for Trump and the rest divided among the remaining field.  So there will be louder calls for mano y mano with Cruz tonight, and a week and a day from today, unless Rubio can win Florida in some kind of convincing fashion, and he will be coming from well behind to do so.

The GOP debate just ahead of the Florida primary happens Thursday night in Coral Gables, and Florida's devout Cuban-Republican contingent will be as riveted to the action as any.  Rubio will bear the brunt of the attacks from Trump and Cruz in a somewhat altered dynamic.  There may be some snarking at each other in Spanish (I sure hope so).

It's entirely possible that a week from tomorrow, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton are the last three people standing for the presidency.