&gt; <i>It&#x27;s safe to assume independence in this case because the five primaries (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island) will all occur at roughly the same time, in the same time zone. It would be unlikely for the result of one of these primaries to influence the result of another, so we will assume that there&#x27;s no inter-primary influence.</i><p>No way they are independent. If the previous day he appears in all the mayor TV networks killing a kitty and drinking the blood, the probability of winning will decrease in all the states, so there is a lot of correlation.<p>(You can come up with a more realistic scenario.)