538: It’s Really Hard To Get Bernie Sanders 988 More Delegates

[RandySF]

After a trio of landslide wins in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii on Saturday — the best single day of his campaign — Bernie Sanders narrowed his delegate deficit with Hillary Clinton. But he still has a lot of work to do. Sanders trails Clinton by 228 pledged delegates and will need 988 more — a bit under 57 percent of those available — to finish with the majority.

That alone wouldn’t be enough to assure Sanders of the nomination because superdelegates could still swing things Hillary Clinton’s way in a close race, but put aside that not-so-small complication for now. The much bigger problem is that it isn’t easy to see where Sanders gets those 988 delegates.

If you’re a Sanders supporter, you might look at the map and see some states — Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Montana and so forth — that look pretty good for Sanders, a lot like the ones that gave Sanders landslide wins earlier in the campaign. But those states have relatively few delegates. Instead, about 65 percent of the remaining delegates are in California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland — all states where Sanders trails Clinton in the polls and sometimes trails her by a lot.

To reach a pledged delegate majority, Sanders will have to win most of the delegates from those big states. A major loss in any of them could be fatal to his chances. He could afford to lose one or two of them narrowly, but then he’d need to make up ground elsewhere — he’d probably have to win California by double digits, for example.

Sanders will also need to gain ground on Clinton in a series of medium-sized states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Mexico. Demographics suggest that these states could be close, but close won’t be enough for Sanders. He’ll need to win several of them easily.

None of this is all that likely. Frankly, none of it is at all likely. If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones, Clinton will probably gain further ground on Sanders. If they vote as state-by-state polling suggests they will, Clinton could roughly double her current advantage over Sanders and wind up winning the nomination by 400 to 500 pledged delegates.


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-really-hard-to-get-bernie-sanders-988-more-delegates/

[Merryland]

1. Keep on trying to discourage & demoralize

as the majority of American voters prepare to inaugurate President Bernie Sanders.

[brooklynite]

2. Why is stating thoughtful analysis "discouraging" and "demoralizing"

If the analysis is flawed, it shouldn't bother you, and you should be in a position to challenge the assertions equally thoughtfully. If not...sometimes the truth hurts.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

3. Well we thought she had this wrapped up...

Shouldn't you DINOs be preparing for the General election?

[brooklynite]

4. When someone has to resort to a personal insult, I usually assume they've lost the argument.

[DanTex]

5. She does. The thing is there seem to be a number of people who joined DU

in the last month or so and are pushing for a Trump presidency via the "Bernie or Bust" meme here in GDP.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

8. Don't you get tired of repeating that over and over...

...its just your opinion and people who are Bernie or Bust are also entitled to their opinion. If you cared even an iota about the issue you wouldn't be posting David Brock smears here.

[DanTex]

10. Of course Trump supporters are entitled to their opinion. Never claimed otherwise.

[JesterCS]

47. And another to go on ignore n/t

[Jackie Wilson Said]

55. Bernie or Bust, is that you? Are you a person who ascribes to that?

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

59. Nope

I'm a No vote for any "New Democrat"/Third Way/DLC types. A proud progressive

[Jackie Wilson Said]

60. Wait, what does that mean? Will you or will you not vote for Hillary if she is picked?

I ask because you accused someone who will support her a DINO.

So how exactly is someone a DINO by supporting the party?

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

63. "New Democrats"...

...Are DINOs. New Democrats also go by the name Clintonian Democrats. It is very unlikely I will vote for her but it doesn't matter for you. I am not in a swing state anyways. I will vote down ticket for any progressive democrats though

[Jackie Wilson Said]

65. So someone who wont vote for the Democratic Party in arguably the worst time

NOT to, calls others who will support the party pretend Democrats?

Do you even recognize what you are saying?

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

66. The rightward March is what is killing the party...

I will not support the continuation of the rightward March of the party.

When possible I will support progressive democrats hence why I support Sanders or would have supported Warren had she chosen to run

[Jackie Wilson Said]

67. So were you to be in a swing state you will facilitate a GOP White House, got it.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

68. Insanity is doing the same thing over again...

And expecting different results.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

70. So yes, you believe a Trump or Cruz presidency is not all that bad. Got it.

No other interpretation makes sense.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

72. I'm not playing your hypothetical game

I live in a repuke state and as such I am afforded the luxury to vote on principle.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

73. So do you have friends or family in other states? Do you tell them to risk the White House

going to openly racist assholes?

so we wont play word games, do you advise others , not tell.

[AgadorSparticus]

75. You don't go left by going right, either.

[FarPoint]

81. You have me scratching my head now....

Bernie Sanders has only been a Democrat for 10 months, having 50 years to switch from Independent......Hillary for over 30 years.....so, who is the real New Democrat by your definition?

[SheenaR]

14. Let it go man

You are the true one-issue poster. You cannot post anything without Bernie or Bust or Drumpf in it.

How many Bernie or Bust people are there actually here... Seriously.. because you act as if it were hundreds just on this site.

[DanTex]

19. Welcome to DU, but I was doing just fine before you showed up and started giving me posting advice.

[LonePirate]

40. Here's my take on DU's alleged Bernie or Bust population

Numerous times on DU, the hypothetical GE match-up between Clinton and Trump has been discussed because they are leading their respective races. There is widespread, perhaps even universal agreement on DU that Trump is incredibly unqualified and is possibly the worst imaginable candidate except for Cruz. Given how horrible Trump is, numerous Sanders supporters still refuse to state a preference for Clinton in this hypothetical. This leads other DUers to consider these people to be part of the Bernie or Bust crew. To these other DUers, no Democrat is as bad as Trump so the choice is an easy one, even if they personally do not like Clinton. So anyone who refuses to make or state the same choice causes these people to be considered members of the Bernie or Bust crew. To make matters worse, many of these people become very defensive and offer questionable reasons for this refusal which only reinforces the belief that these people will vote for Bernie and no one else. Keep in mind, no candidate besides the Democrat or Republican has any chance to win the election.

I have no idea how many Bernie or Bust people are here on DU. The number is definitely greater than 0 but I cannot quantify it beyond use of the vague "some."

[Demsrule86]

64. Some may be GOP trolls

On other websites, you post by facebook and you can look at people's facebooks...often the Bernie or bust people are Republicans who hate Obama and Hillary...more than a few are Trump supporters. They know that Bernie will be easier to beat...he will be painted as the second coming of Stalin. Clinton has been beat up extensively...no surprises...and the GOP has not laid a glove on Bernie...Koch even wrote an op-ed praising him...not hard to figure out.

[FarPoint]

77. Indeed!

My observation as well.

[Godhumor]

18. Let me check join date here...

Ooh, a 16 day member just called us DINOs. How cute.

[Sheepshank]

37. ...and the snarky one liners continues. n/t

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

45. Do you follow me around waiting for me to make a snarky comment?

All the while ignoring all the other commentary I make that isn't snarky...

[Sheepshank]

46. I don't follow you. What an absolutely ridiculous premise

how egomaniacle to think anyone would deliberately follow you around.

Here I am minding my own business reading through another thread, and there you are, just doing the same old shit. There have been several just form today, you are a busy little poster. I felt compelled to finally point out the obvious.

[upaloopa]

30. Math reality is what it is

The only problem as I see it is we should be fighting the repubs instead of each other.

We Hillary supporters know she will win the nomination. It is difficult to put up with the needless anti Hillary stuff on this board which is not contributing to anything positive.

But I realize you have to cling onto strings but just beware the longer you put off accepting reality the harder the fall will be.

[FarPoint]

76. Please realize...

Sanders remains very much behind Hillary Clinton.... He can not and will not make significant progress after Wisconsin.... He just can't leap over the high jump of Pennsylvania, NewYork etc in April... Hillary will acceleration, Sanders could never catch up.

[reddread]

6. for Who?

[closeupready]

39. for The Pet Shop Boys!

[reddread]

44. that was super cool, thanks

but you know, theres nothing like having to beg for help paying off campaign debts to
give you the blues.
heres one for Jerry Wexler, the oppressed, and broken hearts everywhere!

[onehandle]

7. Impossible, actually. nt

[morningfog]

12. Impossible has a specific meaning and you aren't using it correctly.

[SheenaR]

15. Yes

I am not quite sure it means what they think it means

[RandySF]

20. It's possible that Elvis will call CNN from Mars

But it's probably not going to happen.

[morningfog]

23. And here's another person who doesn't understand the meaning of the simple word

possible as opposed to impossible!

[RampageSnipa586]

9. Superdelegates

You also have to take into account the amount of superdelegates that Clinton has that could also sway in Sanders' favor. It's extremely difficult to tell what may happen considering the fact that if she refuses to debate in NY before the primary, then NY will be ripe for the picking for Sanders. And if he wins her home senator state, then this will be a large publicity upset for Hillary, possibly spiraling her progress downward and swinging those SD's Bernie's way. Definitely a lot of variables in the equation.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

11. She agreed to debate in NY before the primary...

Sanders Leads - Weathervane follows

[upaloopa]

34. Nothing in that post is true

No super delegates are going to flip there will be a NY debate and Sanders will lose NY

[RampageSnipa586]

84. Not if Bernie calls her out on all the lies she's told. nt

[woodsprite]

13. Isn't it 528 that screwed up big-time when predicting Michigan? n/t

[stevenleser]

17. 538 and all the polling agencies on which they depend. Which is pretty much everyone.

But there is a reasonable explanation. Primary polling depends on prior contested primaries. There hadnt been a contested Michigan primary in a long time.

[morningfog]

24. Like NY and CA?

[JI7]

54. CA was contested in 2008

[CalvinballPro]

29. Not to mention they were only polling likely Democratic voters and didn't factor independents...

...and in an open primary, no less. Polling malpractice, in other words.

[Yavin4]

61. Exactly. When you look at the Dems only vote, then their model was right. n/t

[Jackie Wilson Said]

57. But it isnt fully over yet, so I wish both groups would just allow the candidates to do

what they are going to do, while preparing for the inevitable.

And the inevitable is a political party that has already put into place a system which will disallow millions of voters from voting and millions of others who's votes will be miscounted.

I wish the primaries were over and the convention were tomorrow, but even then I dont know what can effectively be done to stop what is an almost certain stolen election, and if not the WH, surely many Senate and House seats will be stolen or will lose based on the most egregious gerrymandering in histroy.

[HumanityExperiment]

16. Math....

22 remaining primaries, 56% in each needed for Bernie to beat HRC

facts.. math... time...

let the remaining voters in those primaries vote their choice and see how this plays out at the end shall we?

[paulthompson]

21. Three things

I have three points to make.

Those numbers Silver lays out are daunting, indeed. It's a very rough road for Sanders. However...

A) Silver has consistently underestimated support for Sanders for the entire election. For instance, he predicted Sanders would win Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington, but narrowly, by less than 10 points each. Instead, Sanders won all three by landslides. Silver has been terrible on the Republican side too, consistently underestimating support for Trump.

B) Sanders is unlikely to win those states by the numbers Silver gives, barring some election-changing event. But there is one last great hope for Sanders: California. Silver has him winning there by 15 points. California is huge, with almost 500 delegates. If Sanders were to have a landslide win there, something close to what happened in Washington, that would make up for many targets he fails to make up in other states. It really all comes down to California, and there are good reasons to hope for a Sanders landslide win there.

For instance, the demographics. The one group Sanders has had the hardest time with are Black voters, and they only make up 7 percent of California voters, significantly less than in the other remaining big states. And he's winning a majority of Asian American voters (by a landslide in Hawaii) and they make up about 15 percent of California voters. Polls already show Sanders doing decently with Latino and Black voters in California compared to how he's done in other states; his big problem right now actually is that he's doing surprisingly poorly with White voters. If other state results are any guide, those White numbers are going to shift towards Sanders in a very big way.

C) Clinton's e-mail scandal. Silver doesn't mention that at all, but it's something that exists. We know the FBI wants to make a decision on indicting Clinton or not by mid-May. Nobody really knows what's going to happen there, nobody can see the future with perfect clarity right now. But if the FBI recommends the indictment of Clinton and/or some of her top aides, that could completely change the race. Even if there are no indictments, a stream of stories about leaks, hearings, FBI interviews, and so on, could play a big factor in voters' decisions for the rest of the primary season.

[hack89]

25. Silver gives Hillary a 86% chance of winning California

with 20 point margin

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/california-democratic/

[paulthompson]

32. Right, but...

Silver has been consistently wrong in state after state, almost always underestimating Sanders' numbers. For instance, he said Sanders had a less than 1% chance of winning Michigan, and we know how that turned out.

But that's hardly the only case. For instance, he said Clinton had a 99% chance of winning Illinois, even though the final polls had a Clinton lead of only two to three points. In the final result, Clinton won by 1%, which was close to the last polls, but wildly off from Silver's prediction of a guaranteed Clinton win. I could cite many other such cases.

Silver has been terrible this election! Remember his article from some months back that Trump had a less than one percent chance of winning the Republican nomination? Silver even has made an apology of sorts, admitting that his own bias against Trump probably skewed his reading of Trump's chances.

[hack89]

36. So you retract your second point? The one that depends on Silver's analysis? nt

[paulthompson]

41. What?

When did I ever rely on Silver's analysis? I said he and his website has been terrible this primary season.

That said, numbers don't lie. As Silver points out, Sanders has to win a lot of states by big margins, and that's true. But if I were tweaking the numbers to figure out the best possible scenario for Sanders, I would lower the margins Sanders needs in many states (compared to Silver's analysis) and up the margin of victory he needs in California. In short, put most of Sanders' chips on California. He should win California by a margin of at least 30 points, instead of 15 as Silver would have it.

And that seems to be exactly what Sanders is planning to do. I saw in some article that Sanders made a comment along the lines that he's going to visit California more time than people can count between now and June.

The fact that Silver can't see that one big win in California is a better strategy than consistently winning by big margins in nearly all the other states to come is yet another reason why I don't put much stock in Silver's "expert" analyss.

[paulthompson]

43. And by the way...

My second point is all my analysis, from what I've seen of the California poll numbers and demographic statistics so far.

Other people have made similar observations. For instance, there was a thread here yesterday pointing out that the latest poll numbers in California actually have a good silver lining for Sanders. Even though he's losing to Clinton so far, he actually does BETTER with the non-White vote than the White vote in the latest poll results. That runs counter to the popular narrative that he only does well with White voters. All he has to do is keep those non-White numbers, and boost his White vote numbers to how he's done in other states, and he will have a landslide victory in California.

Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.

[mythology]

48. You seem to be confusing odds of winning with amount won

There is nothing contradictory between saying that it was 99% sure Clinton would win and the race being close.

[paulthompson]

50. No

Because even though Clinton did win by a small margin, it was never close to a 99% thing that she would win, as Silver claimed. I was watching TV that night, either CNN or MSNBC. And after Clinton won Illinois, the reporters said the Clinton campaign was pleasantly surprised because they actually expected to lose the state by a small margin.

So to claim it was a 99% chance Clinton would win was absurd. The way Silver came up with that number was because Clinton was crushing Illinois in the poll a week prior, when she had a lead of about 40%. But several polls from a couple of days prior showed that lead had narrowed to about 2%. Only an idiot wouldn't see that the popular opinion had drastically changed, but Silver is always slow on the uptake like that.

[Demsrule86]

78. Not true

He was wrong in Michigan...that is about it. NAFTA was a big deal and Hillary was blamed.

[Demsrule86]

79. Illinois

When Silver says she has a chance to win...he is talking about probablity ...not the closeness of an election...apples and oranges ...she won by two points...the last poll was 8 points.

[closeupready]

22. BREAKING NEWS: it's really hard to win. File under "The Chelsea Clinton Discoveries,"

under which is also filed her revelation, "9 months from now, we are going to lose."

[SHRED]

26. Bernie Sanders' Path to the Nomination

It won't be easy.
PoliChart -
http://polichart.com/interactives/bern-path

[Vincardog]

28. It certainly looks possible.

[SHRED]

31. More possible than the HRC camp let's on

But still tough.

[Vincardog]

33. When to going gets tough...

[Garrett78]

58. So, he's going to win NY, PA and NJ?

By 8 points (54-46), 16 points (58-42) and 12 points (56-44), respectively?

And he's going to win California by 16 points?

While losing Maryland by only 10 points and reaching 42% in Washington DC?

Hmm.

[DemocracyDirect]

27. What are you guys talking about?

Don't you have some campaigning to do?

It's great that New York and California are going to decide the nomination!

I'm excited!

[mmonk]

35. A revolution is not about delegates.

We are here forever. At some point, you will figure it out.

[UMTerp01]

38. Oh that pesky MATH

[Gothmog]

42. It will be almost impossible for Sanders to meet these targets

[ibegurpard]

49. Yes it is really hard

Everyone knows that.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

51. What is the harm of Bernie continuing? I think it makes both her and Hillary stronger.

[Optimism]

52. Hillary will not be President.

The only question at this point is whether it will be Cruz, Trump or BERNIE SANDERS.

(A little bird whispered that to me.)

[Demsrule86]

80. Not Bernie

He will not be the candidate and except for the Trump trolls any Democrat would pick Hillary for the sake of the courts.

[awake]

53. No one ever said it would be easy

It was not easy to get gay marriage legal in all 50 states, it was not easy getting woman the right to vote or the Civil Right Act passed...

[lunamagica]

56. #FeelTheMath

[Demsrule86]

62. It's math folks

If you go to the link and look what Sanders has to do in order to catch up...it is pretty much impossible.

[mcar]

69. K&R

[KingFlorez]

71. Sanders has a huge campaign account

Time for him to start paying off pledged delegates to get this revolution started!

[SidDithers]

74. DU rec...

Sid

[Bill USA]

82. now, you realize Bernie supporters are going to spit on you shoes for that, you horrrible person you

[PowerToThePeople]

83. Everything he has achieved has been really hard.

He is in it to win it.

#Bernie2016