How Bernie Can (Still) Win and how "Northeast" Tuesday could make or break that effort

After Hillary's resounding win in the New York Primary, the Bernie Campaign's viability is on the ropes. And the upcoming Primaries on Tuesday, April 26th could all but eliminate Bernie as a viable contender. His campaign has long used the argument that the upcoming liberal blue Northeast and West Coast states will be where his greatest strength lies- and the five upcoming primaries on Tuesday all fit that heavy blue description.

News outlets are saying Bernie must win 59% of the remaining delegates to win the majority of Pledged Delegates- this is a roughly correct assessment. It will not be easy. The Sanders campaign has acknowledged that they will need Super (Unpledged) Delegates to agree to support their campaign in order to win.

For a quick review, Pledged Delegates are awarded based on the popular vote of each state, representing 85% of the total delegates to the Democratic convention. Super or Unpledged Delegates are party officials and represent 15% of the total delegates to the convention. Because the contest between Hillary and Bernie is so close, BOTH campaigns will almost certainly need the help of Super Delegates to clinch the nomination.

In the previous post, I made the case that Super Delegates behave as fail-safes in the event of a close contest (like this one) to prevent the Party from fracturing and give the nomination to the candidate with the mandate from the voters. In 2008 they did just that: despite Hillary Clinton being the Party insider (and originally endorsed by the large majority of Super Delegates), once Barack Obama pulled ahead Supers defected to his campaign. In summation of that previous post, here's what it would take (in two steps) for Bernie to earn Super Delegate support and replicate Barack Obama's 0.1% victory over Hillary in 2008. The first hurdle that he must overcome is to get a majority of pledged delegates. The second is far MORE difficult: earn the highest share of the popular vote. For more, please read the previous post.

Now that Wisconsin, Wyoming, and New York have voted, I did some deep number crunching to offer below the contest-by-contest targets (based on fivethirtyeight's demographic model) that Bernie MUST make in order to win the majority of Pledged Delegates and the majority of the popular vote.

How to read the following: CT 58% (32)     +115,000
For the contest in Connecticut Bernie needs to win 32 delegates representing roughly 58% of the vote in order to be on track to get a majority of Pledged Delegates. To be on track to win the popular vote he must get 115,000 MORE votes than Hillary in that state.

CT 58% (32)      +115,000

DE 55% (11)      +29,000

*MD 51% (48)   +65,000

*PA 58% (110)  +390,000

RI 62% (15)       +67,000

*IN 61% (50)      +210,000

GU 57% (4)         Caucus**

*WV 67% (19)   +107,000
*KY 58% (32)    +115,000

OR 69% (42)      +252,000

VI 57% (4)          Caucus**

*PR 57% (34)     Caucus**

CA 58% (275)    +934,000

MT 71% (15)      +92,000

*NJ 55% (70)     +197,000

NM 61% (21)     +86,000

SD 69% (14)      +80,000

ND 70% (13)      Caucus**

DC 46% (9)       -4,000

Total: 58.43% (818) Delegates +2,735,895 Popular Votes
*Key contests that I believe to be particularly unlikely to render the accompanying result.
**The remaining caucuses have negligible numbers of votes remaining, due to the low turnout at caucus sites.

The first five contests all take place this Tuesday (tomorrow) and represent about a quarter of the remaining delegates available, and about a quarter of the delegates Bernie would need to win. If Bernie loses all or most of them, his chances of winning the majority of pledged delegates becomes very slim indeed, perhaps needing a 30+ point victory in California or some other miracle to put him back on track. In fact, using this model, the only contest Bernie can "afford to lose" is the District of Columbia.

Remember: Bernie Sanders is undoubtedly favored in several of the remaining states- particularly out west: the Dakotas, Montana and Oregon. But at this point he needs to win those states by landslide margins in addition to netting the other wins to be on track for the nomination. As far as this Tuesday is concerned, it will not be enough to squeak out wins in Connecticut or Rhode Island while major Delegate hauls in Pennsylvania go for Hillary. Anything other than significant wins (except in Maryland) this Tuesday will be a strong signal that the support for Bernie is simply not high enough in most of the bluest of blue states. If so, it would undermine Bernie's central argument that once northern blue states start voting, he'll do much better. 

Without significant wins tomorrow, every win in the remaining contests can constitute a moral victory for his campaign, but it will almost certainly not be enough to claim a mandate from the voters.

Still, Bernie has made it clear that he will continue to fight until the final votes are cast, particularly in California where he is hoping for a moral victory. His influence at the convention could be relative to how well he performs in the remaining states, and the movement that he started may win significant concessions in the official Democratic Party Platform which will be developed at the convention. Even if Bernie is eliminated as a viable contender for the mandate from voters, he could have tremendous sway in the Democratic Party- especially if his energized base continue to be motivated to vote for him. The contest of ideas will go on far past this contest of personalities. Voting will be a part of that, but for those who are interested in keeping the Bernie or Birdie movement alive, the fight may soon have to shift away from the Democratic Nomination.

How Bernie Sanders Can Win

The Hillary campaign says it's over. Almost the entirety of the Democratic Party's membership in elected office has coalesced around Hillary. Some media narratives indicate that the nomination is a foregone conclusion- ready to write the retrospective on his campaign; perhaps opining that next time will be different.

The Bernie campaign begs to differ, saying that he has a viable path to the nomination with the momentum to carry his campaign forward. Social media and liberal outlets have been abuzz for weeks about how Bernie can and will win, how the MSM (mainstream media) has it wrong and is blacking out coverage (to say nothing of conspiracy theories that Democratic Party officials might be undermining the Sanders campaign). Meanwhile, a common outrage in the Bernie camp is that Super Delegates are actively stealing the election.

Which side is correct? Well, no conspiracies today. Let's start by getting some facts about delegates out of the way.

Pledged Delegates roughly represent the popular vote of the Democratic Primaries in each state. 85% of all delegates who vote to elect the Democratic Nominee are Pledged. Hillary Clinton has won about 55% of Pledged delegates in voting so far and about 43% of Pledged Delegates remain to be awarded.

Unpledged Delegates (Super Delegates) are party office holders, DNC officials, and important party personalities. These individual Super Delegates comprise 15% of all delegates who select the Nominee. They are not bound by the popular opinion of their state and can vote as they please. About 70% of Super Delegates have already publicly declared their support for Clinton and less than .05% support Sanders. The remaining 30% are publicly neutral. However, Super Delegates can (and do) change their minds and swap to supporting a different candidate before the Convention (more on this later).

So can Super Delegates steal the election away from the candidate with the clear mandate from voters?

They are highly unlikely to do so. Super Delegates have never "stolen" an election since the creation of the modern party primary (popular vote) nomination process. But Supers have historically used their role as a failsafe (to prevent the kind of Trump chaos happening right now in the GOP with a looming contested convention) stepping in to help the party come together around the eventual nominee and choice of the voters. So the key for Bernie? Establishing a clear mandate from the voters.

The first step in that process would be to win the majority of Pledged Delegates. Even in that case, Bernie would almost certainly need the help of Super Delegates to have enough votes to clinch the nomination (as would Hillary). If Hillary were to win the popular vote but Bernie were to win the Pledged Delegate total, Super Delegates might be inclined to step in on Hillary's behalf (difficult to argue with the majority of voters). The best option for Bernie to ensure the support of Super Delegates would be to win the national popular vote and establish the clear mandate.

Let's take a look at what would need to happen for Bernie to accomplish that feat in the remaining contests.

For the sake of argument, let's use a recent poll (conducted by the polling wizard Ann Selzer) which is one of the most friendly polls available to support Bernie's case that he's gaining momentum. (Other polls are not nearly so kind in their assessment of Bernie's support.) After splitting the tiny percentage of undecideds, we have a reasonably close snapshot of the race as it currently stands.

Bernie CURRENTLY has about 48.5% of the support in states which have yet to vote, and Hillary has 51.5%. Assuming this snapshot of the race is true, Bernie would have to win 10 points of Hillary supporters or about 20% of current Hillary supporters in those states over to his side. Converting 20% of Hillary supporters would likely be a pretty substantial task, given the amount of time that Democratic Primary voters have had to get acquainted with the candidates and make up their minds.

But let's suppose...

IF Bernie were to win over about one in five of current Hillary supporters in the roughly half of the population yet to vote, he would (if we take this poll as accurate) win about 58.5% of the outstanding popular vote. That number, roughly, also corresponds to the number of popular votes Bernie would need to rack up to win the overall national popular vote. We can project that number to be between 57% and 62%, depending on exactly how high voter turnout will be (and using the not-quite-right assumption that remaining delegate totals correspond roughly to remaining popular vote). Can't stress enough: This is a rough estimate based on previous states and previous voting turnout patterns so far in 2016.

But IF Bernie were to win that percentage of the remaining popular vote (>57.3%) he would be essentially guaranteed to win the most Pledged Delegates as well, since he already outpaces his popular vote percentage in delegate totals. For context, Bernie has won about 42% of the national popular vote and about 45% of the nation's Pledged Delegates. This is due to his success in low-turnout Caucus states that reward candidates with high proportions of delegates compared to the number of people voting.

Here's where the Super Delegates come in. Some of the more conspiratorial folks may be convinced that Supers will steal the election away from Bernie, even IF he wins all of these things: Pledged Delegates and Popular Vote. It is true that Super Delegates theoretically have the power to do such a thing. But with the numbers we just gave to Bernie, he would have vote totals that look very similar to Barack Obama's numbers in the 2008 primary where Super Delegates famously defected en masse from Hillary Clinton (the establishment favorite), in order to allow Barack Obama to win the nomination. In that scenario Obama had won the popular vote by only 0.1% (seriously); hardly an unequivocal mandate from the people. Hillary Clinton exploited this, hoping that Super Delegates would decide that in SUCH a contested environment, she was still the best candidate to represent the party. And yet the Super Delegates knew that the voters had spoken, and to deny our current President the Nomination at such a stage would be a disenfranchisement of the people.

I firmly believe that IF Bernie were to replicate Obama's 2008 numbers (even winning by 0.1%), Super Delegates would recognize the clear mandate, defect from Hillary (again), and Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination. At this stage (in this scenario) he would have had unequivocally commanding momentum coming into the nomination, winning the final states like California by huge (uuuuuge) double digit margins.

But... NONE of this is YET reflected in any current polling; at best Bernie is tied in big upcoming states like California and New York. Remember, 1 in 5 of expected Clinton voters would need to change sides for this fantastic scenario to materialize. It's not impossible. The polls could be wrong. Hillary's support might be more soft than anticipated. There could be a sudden shake-up involving the FBI email investigation. Something else unexpected could intervene. But in the meantime...

Moral of the story: Bernie's campaign and supporters have their work cut out for them. Bernie would need to win almost all the remaining contests and not just win them- win them convincingly. He is out of time for narrow wins and near-ties. On par he probably needs between 57% and 62% of the remaining popular vote. Bernie needs to win BIG to establish a clear mandate, replicating a semblance of Hillary's winning percentage in populous diverse states like Florida (heard anything recently about NY and Cali?). As you watch Wisconsin tomorrow and other states down the line, if you notice Bernie failing to hit close to those 57%-62% winning percentage benchmarks, you'll understand why political pundits have said that his campaign has little likelihood of winning, even with many narrow wins down the stretch.

But it's still possible. Democratic voters: Your move.