As Senator Sanders continues to bag smaller, predominantly white states, some in the media have started counting state wins instead of delegate totals. I get that. However, the crew at 538 did a great job analyzing Saturday’s results and reported the following:
Sanders won Kansas and Nebraska. That’s the good news for him. The bad news is he’s even further from the nomination than he was before the day started: He lost Louisiana, and, in doing so, fell even further behind in the delegate hunt.
Let’s take a look at the math. Sanders won 23 delegates in Kansas to Clinton’s 10. He won — preliminarily — 14 delegates in Nebraska to Clinton’s 11. That’s a margin of 16 delegates.
In losing Louisiana, however, Sanders only claimed 12 delegates to Clinton’s 39.
Combine the three states, and Clinton gained 11 delegates on Sanders.
Now you might be saying, but didn’t we expect Sanders to do poorly in Louisiana? Yes, that’s true. But according to our delegate targets, which takes that into account, Sanders is now 3 delegates further behind the pace he needs to win a majority of pledged delegate than he was at the beginning of the day. Considering he was already running 82 delegates behind his delegate goals, he needs to be exceeding his delegate targets.
Overall, it was actually a bad day for Sanders by the math, even with his two wins.
Senator Sanders can never catch-up if he continues to lose diverse states in such a massive way. He doesn’t have a signature win yet and Michigan might be his last best chance to stay viable going forward.
Senator Sanders will likely win Maine, they will split the delegates and race will remain largely unchanged.