After big wins in the Caucus states of Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and Utah, Bernie Sanders took to Sunday morning television shows spreading the idea that the superdelegates are going to eventually support his candidacy and dump Hillary Clinton. This is the path to success that he’s laid out to his supporters to keep them funding his campaign.
Before explaining how this will never happen, one needs to understand the purpose of the superdelegate and what s/he represents. Rather than embodying the establishment, the superdelegate system is designed to guarantee that a fanatical or a non-democratic candidate can’t overthrow the party. To better understand where the DNC is coming from, all you have to do is put yourself in the Republican’s shoes. If the RNC had superdelegates, they would effectively be able to prevent Donald Trump, a fake Republican radical, from taking over the party. As Devlin (2016) points out, “it should be abundantly evident that many Republicans now wish they had such an option to use against the obnoxious candidacy of Donald Trump.”
While Bernie Sanders is not to the DNC what Trump is to the RNC, there are two reasons that the superdelegates are not going to vote for Sanders. The first is because they are expressly designed to prevent a non-democrat from seizing the party. Sanders is not a democrat, has admitted that he is only running as a democrat to get media attention, to use DNC election databases, and to benefit from fundraising, and actually despises the democratic party.
The second reason directly contradicts the Sanders’ argument that the superdelegates should follow the will of the people in states that he has won. The superdelegates, as members of the DNC, are meant to represent democrats. If we look to the states that Sanders has won, he is consistently losing the Democratic vote.
While exit poll data is not available in a number of states, let’s take a look at the states where we do have this information in relation to the party affiliation of voters:
Iowa
Clinton won the state by 0.3 points. She won Democrats by 17 points.
Massachusetts
Clinton won the state by 1.3 points. She won Democrats by 20 points.
Ohio
Clinton won the state by 14 points. She won Democrats by 29 points.
North Carolina
Clinton won the state by 14 points. She won Democrats by 31 points.
Nevada
Clinton won the state by 5 points. She won Democrats by 18 points.
Arkansas
Clinton won the state by 36 points. She won Democrats by 61 points.
Georgia
Clinton won the state by 42 points. She won Democrats by 55 points.
Missouri
Clinton won the state by 1 point. She won Democrats by 11 points.
New Hampshire
Sanders won the state by 22 points. He won Democrats by 4 points.
Oklahoma
Sanders won the state by 10 points. Clinton won Democrats by 11 points.
Michigan
Sanders won the state by 1 point. Clinton won Democrats by 18 points.
In analyzing this data, it is extremely obvious that Clinton is dominating among Democratic voters. The superdelegates, who again are supposed to represent the DNC and the Democratic voters, are not going to betray the large majority of Democratic voters and support a candidacy that is only viable due to its strong non-Democrat support. Remember, this is what the superdelegates are designed to prevent.
Now that we understand why the superdelegates will never support Sanders, let’s move to the final argument that was presented in the title of this article. Sanders cannot win. We’ve already seen the analyses by election experts asserting that Sanders will need to win 58% of delegates in all remaining states to simply tie Clinton in pledged delegates. The only problem is that the 58% figure is only to tie Clinton in pledged delegates. When we take the superdelegates into account, Sanders would need to absolutely destroy Clinton in all remaining contests. As discussed above, the superdelegates are not going to turn on Clinton when she is overwhelmingly taking the Democratic vote even in states that Sanders won. Some have suggested that to overcome the superdelegate lead that Clinton has and will retain, Sanders will need to win all remaining states by 79.67%.
After his huge wins last week, Sanders’ supporters may think that he may achieve this feat. He did beat Clinton with around 70% of the vote in recent states, so he could hypothetically come close to winning the nomination if he’s able to retain these margins, right? The only problem is that Sanders is not going to come anywhere near winning 70% of the vote in many upcoming races. In fact, he is set to lose in a number of delegate rich states, such as New York (closed primary), where the average poll in March has Clinton beating Sanders 63-28. And don’t expect a big upset like in Michigan, where the open primary allowed for Sanders to win thanks to the support of non-Democrats who hadn’t been included in pre-election polls. Remember, Clinton took the Democratic vote by 18 points in that state, which is exactly what the polls had predicted. Sanders is yet to win a closed primary, ladies and gentleman.
As rightfully suggested by this Daily Kos diary (2016), “Beginning in mid-April, there are 6 Closed Primaries in a row with a total of 442 delegates at stake. With Sanders’ track record in Closed Primaries, I don’t know how anyone can say that he has a ‘good chance’ of winning a single one of them.”