Kos recent pronouncement that our long nightmare of Pie will end on March 15 unless Bernie does much better than expected has not been well received by many Sanders supporters. I think it will be helpful to explain a bit why that date will be determine the outcome of the Democratic primary and dispel some easy confusion about why.
The primary argument that Sanders supporters make is that under any scenario where Bernie wins the nomination March 15 is the peak delegate margin favoring Hillary, and that as states that generally favor him for demographic or ideological reasons vote the margin will close and eventually reverse. In fact that is exactly why we can be sure of the outcome on March 15. If Bernie’s best states had already voted and Hillary had outperformed as much as she has, the delegate count would be close at this point, but Bernie would just have to roughly split the remaining delegates to win. It is much easier to outperform when you are expected to lose than when you need to win. In order to win you have to win your own states big or lose your opponent’s states by less than expected. In order to win big you have to win your opponent’s states. Hillary has won her own best states by huge margins and piled up a big delegate lead. If she continues through March 15 by winning Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Florida she will have outperformed in all her states and won some of Bernie’s. In order to make up the difference Bernie would have to win big the rest of the way. But he already needed to win most of those states. Unless he can change the outcome in the next week he will need to win his own best states by 110%.
At this point we can anticipate the remaining benchmarks in the Democratic Primary with tremendous precision, even if the overall sentiment swings strongly in favor of Senator Sanders.
We have seen the tremendous strength of the Clinton campaign in the South where she is winning with 40-70% margins. Louisiana votes today, and Mississippi on Tuesday. Assuming the previous margins hold she will get delegate splits of 41-10 in Louisiana and 28-8 in Mississippi for a net gain of 50. There is a fair possibility that Bernie will not be viable in some or all of Mississippi and she will get all those delegates pushing her net to 66.
Bernie will win the caucus states this weekend. He has been winning similar states 60-40. That will give splits of 18-15 in Kansas and 16-9 in Nebraska He could manage another 3 delegates with an overwhelming victory in Kansas. Maine also awards 25 delegates on Sunday. Again 60-40 results in a 15-10 split. Bernie could get 3 more delegates if he gets to 70-30 but is unlikely to hit the next higher thresholds even in a best case.
Thus these five states the most likely outcome is a net gain for Hillary of 36 delegates with a plausible range from plus 24 (if Hillary is just viable in the Caucuses) to plus 51 (if she gets 85% in Mississippi).
Michigan also votes on Tuesday. All the static models that have Sanders winning require he wins Michigan, but current polling has Hillary ahead by as much as twenty points. Because of delegate math the margin does not actually matter much. Lots of districts award extra delegates at 50% so the winner gains a big edge. Our resident expert Torilahure projects this as 73-57 based on a single digit victory for Hillary. If Sanders wins he could flip that, The margin need to be Yuuuge to really change the Delegate allocation because the next thresholds are mostly above 60.
Next up is the Northern Marianas my guess is they follow Samoa and award most of their 6 delegates to Hillary, but it really isnt worth analyzing with no polling to go on. So fuck you Northern Marianas you wont count in this analysis.
That get us to March 15 and the Big State Primary. Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Florida, and North Carolina with a total of 691 votes. The current polling has Hillary averaging about 20 points up. Torilahure assumes a much closer race with Clinton winning all five states for a delegate edge of 83 based on a split of 387-304. Rather than analyze the myriad possible outcomes I will take that as the baseline for Kos’ “unless Bernie can win back some delegates by March 15”.
So far Clinton is ahead in pledged delegates 607-412, a margin of 195. By the end of March 15 that lead will have expanded to 1175-841 and a margin of 334 delegates using our conservative projections. If current polling holds up the margin will be over 400 delegates.
After that delegate math takes over. There are three remaining blocks of votes, the small western states, the mid Atlantic States and the Pacific states . Before NY votes on April 19 we will have Arizona, Idaho and Utah with 120 total delegates total on March 22, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington State, total 142 on March 26 and Wisconsin and Wyoming (100) on April 5. This is the best stretch for Sanders, but it even if he wins all these states he will have a hard time gaining many delegates back. The reason is more or less the same as why he is so far behind now. Small states give a disproportionate share of delegates to the loser because the threshold to win delegates in each district is lower than the percentage represented by each delegate. This ensures Hillary a lot of delegates even if she loses badly. How many? Assuming the vote splits overall 65-35 for Bernie (there is nothing to indicate this is likely or even possible) Hillary would get 130 delegates to 243 for Sanders. She would still have at least a 220 delegate edge 1305 -1084.
Next on the calendar are New York (143 delegates) on April 19th and the rest of the mid Atlantic states (384 total) a week later on the 26. After Hillary has won Michigan and Ohio the argument that she will lose these demographically similar northern industrial states including her home state of New York is pretty tough. Under the most likely scenario she will come into New York with about 1450 delegates and win a majority of these states to get over 1800 total pledged delegates. That will start to move her passed some important milestones. When she gets to 1748 Bernie cannot win without Superdelegates. Somewhere around 1850 she will have enough pledged and committed superdelegates to reach the 2383 necessary to win the nomination. That should happen on April 26 on the current path.
But we are giving Bernie every possible benefit of the doubt. Suppose he keeps NY close and actually wins PA and some of the other April 26 states for a split of 327 for Sanders and 300 for Clinton. That gets the margin back to where it was before today 1655- 1420.
That leaves 6 more weeks until California votes on June 7th and awards its 475 delegates. Other late states bring the total remaining to 1016. Bernie needs to win 606 of those to eke out a 2026-2025 edge among pledged delegates. He might get that if he wins by 20 points on average after next Tuesday, but then what? It is hard to conceive that the Superdelegates will give a tie to Sanders. Supporters claim that having won by such huge margins in the West, the supers will be compelled to follow the votes, but my guess is that Hillary actually has strong enough support to keep a majority committed to her and wins the nomination on the first ballot.
I dont think it could come to that. If the best Sanders can possibly do is to win a slight majority of pledged delegates and lose the nomination anyway in a bitterly contested convention, I expect the supers will step forward and proclaim the race over as soon as she gets enough total delegates (end of April) and I suspect that Sanders will concede and Hillary will win the remaining states convincingly.
The rec list diary that proclaims Sanders still has a chance is based on this diary by Sander’s supporter MattTx, who provides a worst case (for Bernie) scenario in which he could still pull out a narrow victory. In that scenario Bernie pulls to within 106 delegates after tonight, and holds Clinton to modest victories on March 15, winning Missouri. At that point he claims that Sanders must be within 184 delegates to have a chance. After winning Michigan on Tuesday and March 15 states Clinton will lead by more than 300 delegates and maybe as much as 450.
Unless Bernie can keep her margin under 200 delegates after March 15, Clinton is going to be the nominee. Period. Further attacks on her character will only serve to hurt Democrats in the general and make less likely that Bernie’s agenda of improving health care, providing education, fighting climate change and addressing income inequality will be addressed in the next four years. Kos is recognizing that, even if Sanders supporters are not.
That does not mean that people should stop advocating or voting for Sanders and his positions. Please make the case for addressing climate change, and income inequality. We will all be fighting that battle in November and years to come. Make the case that our campaign finance system is broken and allows billionaires to buy the legislation they want. Make the case for single payer health care. There is not a single item on Bernie’s agenda that is not widely embraced by nearly every Democrat including Hillary. But understand that when you turn from arguing for those policies to attacking Clinton personally, whether questioning her past votes or her current commitment or her emails or anything else, you are making it less likely we can move forward your agenda. Even if you are right, and Clinton is a complete warmongering corporate whore, a big Clinton victory and the possible Democratic control of the House and Senate is the only chance that major parts of the Sander’s agenda even get a hearing. We had this argument between mainstream Dems and the hard left in 2000 when Nader claimed there was no difference between the parties based on nearly the same arguments offered by Sanders and his supporters. Eight years of George Bush put the world on a path to apocalypse. We simply can’t try that again. We don’t have time to recover from a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz presidency and given Republican plans for voting and the Court, we would never get a chance.
This is a long diary. Here is the short version. Unless he cuts Hillary’s current lead by next Tuesday Sanders simply cannot win the nomination. Some rough benchmarks that Sanders must meet to get a pledged delegate lead at the end, along with current expectations
March 15 margin less than 200 delegates. Likely Hillary +400
April 5 margin less than 150 delegates. Likely Hillary +350
April 26 margin less than 100 delegates. Likely Hillary +400