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Sanders Needs Delegates. These 3 States Are Unlikely to Help. Sanders Has More Time. He Just Doesn’t Have the Delegates.
(about 7 hours later)
When the results are final on Tuesday night, nearly 60 percent of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be in the books. If the polls and recent primary results are any indication, Bernie Sanders will face a deep and all but insurmountable deficit in the pledged delegate count. After another round of decisive victories — in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday — Joseph R. Biden Jr. now holds an all but insurmountable lead in the race for the Democratic nomination.
He would not be mathematically eliminated. The coronavirus, which has caused many states to delay their primaries, could help buy his campaign time to hope for a fundamental change in the race. But his deficit would be so great that even a fundamental change in the race would leave him far short of victory. Bernie Sanders has not yet been mathematically eliminated. And as the coronavirus outbreak causes many states to delay their primaries, it may be months until Mr. Biden wins an outright majority of delegates and becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
Mr. Sanders trails Joe Biden by eight percentage points in the pledged delegate count heading into tonight, with about half of the nation’s delegates already awarded. To overtake Mr. Biden, he would need to win the remaining half of delegates by a similar eight-percentage-point margin. But it is not realistic for Mr. Sanders to overtake Mr. Biden without a titanic shift in the race on a scale with few or no modern precedents. The results on Tuesday confirmed yet again that Mr. Biden holds a commanding national advantage, probably of at least 25 percentage points nationwide, spanning virtually all major demographic groups and regions of the country. He won nearly every county across Illinois, Arizona and Florida, three states that collectively represent just about every facet of American life.
The deficit facing Mr. Sanders is all but assured to be much greater at the end of voting on Tuesday. Florida, Illinois and Arizona represent around 8 percent of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, or nearly one-fifth of the remaining delegates. Mr. Biden is favored to win each state by double digits, and potentially by 30 points or more in Florida, the day’s largest prize. When all of the votes to this point are counted, Mr. Biden will probably hold a lead of around 54 percent to 39 percent in pledged delegates, with nearly 60 percent of the nation’s delegates now in the books. To overtake Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders would need to win the remaining delegates by around 20 percentage points. It would require a net 40-point improvement over his current standing.
If Mr. Sanders fares anywhere nearly as poorly as the polls or recent election results suggest, his deficit in the pledged delegate count will quickly worsen. So would his burden in the remaining contests. He might need to win the remaining 40 percent of delegates by around 20 percentage points to overtake Mr. Biden in the pledged delegate count. The breadth of Mr. Biden’s advantage denies Mr. Sanders any realistic opportunity for a comeback. Perhaps Mr. Sanders will win a party-run primary or caucus — in Alaska, Hawaii or Wyoming over coming weeks — as he did in North Dakota last week. Otherwise Mr. Biden is the favorite in every remaining primary state. And without victories, Mr. Sanders will be deprived of opportunities to claim the momentum and favorable news coverage to change the trajectory of the race.
The polls and results so far suggest that Mr. Sanders might be lucky to lose by a mere 18 points over the remaining contests, let alone improve by the net 36 points necessary just to fight to a draw. Mr. Biden has a built commanding national lead spanning virtually all demographic groups. If news media organizations projected the outcome of the national nominating contests in the same way they called national elections on election nights, Mr. Biden would be the projected winner of the Democratic nomination on this basis.
There is no state-run primary where Mr. Sanders could be considered the favorite. Many of his best states — often located in the relatively young, liberal or Latino West — have already voted. Of course, news organizations do not project the winner of nominating contests until a candidate amasses a majority of pledged delegates. Anything can happen.
It is important to note that Mr. Sanders does not yet face mathematical elimination. He needs to win by 20-or-so-point margins, but that’s not impossible, strictly speaking. It’s just very hard to imagine him making the nearly net 40-point gain necessary to pull it off. It would presumably take cataclysmically bad news for Mr. Biden — news so bad that it might be without precedent in presidential politics. The likelihood of any potential game-changing event becomes likelier with time. By this measure, the new delays in the Democratic primary schedule as a result of the coronavirus slightly widen whatever narrow path might still exist for Mr. Sanders.
Mr. Sanders would have more time to benefit from such an event because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has already led many states to delay their primaries. He would have faced an even greater deficit if Ohio had voted on Tuesday as originally scheduled, based on results so far. Georgia and Louisiana, originally scheduled to vote over the next few weeks, might have voted for Mr. Biden by 50 points or more. And Mr. Biden might have won an outright majority of delegates and wrapped up the nomination by late April. Now it is hard to say when he will clinch it.
Ohio, which moved its primary to June from today, was on track to vote for Mr. Biden by a wide margin, polling shows. Georgia and Louisiana, which also pushed back their primaries after originally being scheduled to vote over the next few weeks, might have voted for Mr. Biden by 50-point margins. Together, these contests were poised to give Mr. Biden a truly insurmountable delegate lead. He could have been on track to win an outright majority of delegates — and clinch the nomination — by the end of April. At least for now, the coming states that have not delayed their contests are relatively favorable to Mr. Sanders. Puerto Rico, on March 29, is a wild card, but that makes it better for Mr. Sanders than any remaining state.
Now it’s unclear whether Mr. Sanders will face mathematical elimination anytime soon. On April 4, Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming are scheduled to hold party-run contests, a format where Mr. Sanders has generally excelled. All of this leads into Wisconsin on April 7, which is probably a better state for Mr. Sanders than the nation as a whole.
None of this gives Mr. Sanders a credible path to the nomination. He has lost every county bordering Wisconsin, even if it shapes up as a relatively good state for him.
A candidate trailing by 25-plus points needs something more than a win in a relatively good state, like Arizona or Wisconsin. He needs to fundamentally change the race.
In theory, it’s not impossible for Mr. Sanders to win delegates by around 20 percentage points the rest of the way. For that matter, it’s not impossible for Michael Bloomberg to re-enter the race tomorrow and deny Mr. Biden a delegate majority. It’s just not realistic.