Sanders’s Big Problem Isn’t the Delegate Math. It’s the Voters.

Bernie Sanders needed to fundamentally change the trajectory of the Democratic primary race after decisive defeats last week on Super Tuesday. After Tuesday’s contests, even a fundamental shift might not be enough.

Joe Biden’s victories in Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho confirm that he has seized a commanding national advantage, spanning virtually all major demographic groups and extending to every region of the country. It puts him on track to claim an all but insurmountable delegate lead in just one week.

The results are consistent with recent national polls suggesting that Mr. Biden leads by about 20 points, and perhaps even more in the states yet to vote. He swept every county in Missouri and possibly every county east of the Mississippi River, where most remaining contests will be held. He won black voters and white voters with or without a college degree. And he swept the mostly white rural parts of Michigan and Missouri where Mr. Sanders showed his greatest strength four years ago.

Mr. Biden’s broad support means there are few remaining opportunities for Mr. Sanders to claim momentum and improve his standing. The contests Tuesday were arguably his best shot. Four years ago, he won four of the six states.

Michigan was the signature win of his 2016 bid. Four years ago, he won more than 70 percent of the vote in caucuses in Washington and Idaho. Yet Mr. Sanders is not clearly favored to win Washington at this hour and lost Idaho, and his loss in Michigan carried even more weight because of his strength there four years ago.

The difference between winning and losing is not particularly relevant from a delegate standpoint. It is highly relevant for momentum: Victories bestow positive news coverage. A string of victories is one of the few ways that Mr. Sanders might hope to build momentum and change the course of the race, as he did in Michigan four years ago and as Mr. Biden recently did in South Carolina.

If Mr. Sanders is not clearly favored to win in Washington and lost Idaho, he’s probably not favored to win anywhere. There are a handful of primary states that might be just as close as these contests — like Oregon or Montana or Rhode Island — but few ought to be much more favorable to Mr. Sanders.

He might prevail in North Dakota, but the race is a so-called firehouse caucus — a party-run primary where voters cast traditional ballots at a small number of locations statewide. And support there for Mr. Sanders might not suggest success beyond the other small states with party-run primaries or caucuses: Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas and Wyoming. Indeed, he fared poorly along the Minnesota-North Dakota border on Super Tuesday.

At this point, Mr. Sanders has one realistic way to change the course of the primary before next Tuesday’s contests: the debate on Sunday. But by then, millions of voters will have cast early ballots in Florida, Arizona and Ohio. It would be too late to completely alter the outcome, much as Mr. Biden was unable to fully capitalize on his surge in the Western states because of significant early voting before Super Tuesday.

Once all of the delegates through Tuesday’s contests have been awarded, Mr. Biden will probably hold about 50 percent of pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, with Mr. Sanders at around 42 percent. To win a plurality, Mr. Sanders would need to beat Mr. Biden by a similar eight-percentage-point margin in the remaining contests.

The problem for Mr. Sanders is not so much the delegate math. It’s the voters, specifically his deficit of about 20 points nationwide in recent polling. Mr. Sanders is nowhere near mathematical elimination, but he nonetheless faces a daunting and probably unrealistic task: improving his standing by about a net 30 percentage points.

It would not be enough for Mr. Sanders if the race suddenly became close in national polls. Mr. Biden, who is on track to emerge from Tuesday’s races with somewhere near a majority of pledged delegates awarded to this point, could very plausibly still win an outright pledged delegate majority if the two candidates split the vote the rest of the way.

Mr. Sanders is not poised to split the rest of the vote. Without any sudden change in the race, Mr. Biden will most likely claim another series of victories next Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona. With his strong support among African-Americans, as he showed in Mississippi, he could carry Georgia by 50 points a week later.

By then, nearly two-thirds of the delegates to the Democratic nomination will have been awarded. If Mr. Biden posts big wins yet again during this period, Mr. Sanders will need to win the remaining one-third of the country by 20 points or more, just to win a plurality of pledged delegates. Mr. Sanders has not won the popular vote by 20 points or more in any state except Vermont.

At that point, it wouldn’t be mathematically impossible for Mr. Sanders to win, but it would not be realistic to argue he had a path to the nomination. Mr. Biden would have an all but insurmountable lead.

Source link