Sanders Needs Delegates. These 3 States Are Unlikely to Help.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Now it’s unclear whether Mr. Sanders will face mathematical elimination anytime soon.

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