Mother Jones: "This Is How Bernie Sanders Will Win the Nomination"
Link to This Is How Bernie Sanders Will Win the Nomination; excerpt:
After sweeping victories in three contests over the weekend, Bernie Sanders' campaign has a message for Hillary Clinton: "Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated."
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver made that statement on a conference call with reporters on Monday, during which top aides argued that Sanders can still overcome Clinton's delegate lead in the Democratic primary contest. ... "We are certainly in this to win it," said Weaver, "and there is a path to do so."... Going forward, the Sanders campaign said it would compete in all upcoming contests, including Wisconsin on April 5, New York on April 19, California on June 7, and even in Washington, DC, the final Democratic contest on June 14. The campaign was optimistic that it would overtake Clinton's pledged delegate lead—she is currently ahead 1,243 to 975, with 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination...
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in the rest of the country to win the nomination.
with a majority of pledged delegates.
If you like Nate Silver (and must Hillarians do), his state-by-state analysis suggests that Sanders is achieving about 92% of where he should be in the delegate count to be on track for a win.
That may sound like a steep climb, but it is actually good news for Sanders.
Nate Silver's projection is assuming that the race is tied and has been tied fro the beginning and will be tied through to the end (i.e., his projection is assuming a static race).
In February, Sanders was only hitting 81% of his target.
In the first half of March, Sanders improved to 84% and then 86% and then 88% of his target.
In the second half of March, Sanders improved to 89% and now 92% of the target.
This steady improvement has been the result of the fact that Sanders is not just meeting his targets to win in recent states; he surpassed his most recent targets to win in Democrats Abroad, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington.
Here is why:
That's a chart of all the live cell phone plus landline national polling of likely voters in 2016.
Nate Silver's "targets" assume a static race, BUT THE RACE ISN'T STATIC. Hillary's lead is steadily falling from 15% to 5% in 2016 (and if you consider that her biggest leads are in states that have already voted but which are nevertheless included in the nationwide polling, she is likely no longer leading in the part of America that has not voted yet). The fact that Sanders started the race hitting about 81% of his target and is now exceeding his targets by so much so that he has improved his overall performance from 81% of his goal to 92% of his target shows that Sanders' performance is improving dramatically.
In terms of where Sanders "should be" in the pledged delegate race to remain on target to win, he's only 92 pledged delegates short of where he ought to be in order to be on track for a win.
Hillarians like to pretend that she's crushing (because she did crush in the Bible Belt and she's been coasting on that delegate lead since then) but she's only 92 pledged delegates ahead of where she ought to be if she's on track to win.
The reason why Sanders is only 92 delegates short of his goal despite the fact Hillary is about 230 pledged delegates ahead of Sanders is that Hillary's best states were front-loaded onto the primary calendar and Sanders best states were back-loaded and he's only just started dipping into the progressive pro-Sanders part of the primary calendar.
As the national race tips more and more in favor of Sanders (as the graph shows), it should become easier and easier for Sanders to exceed his goals in more and more states and get to 100% of his total pledge delegate target by the end of the race.
Keep in mind, Hillary is still the favorite, and Sanders is still the long-shot underdog, but the race remains very winnable.
And they took note of the fact-based pushback to this narrative, as well:
