First, as a Clinton supporter, let me congratulate Sanders and his supporters on the important win in MI. Without going into a huge amount of detail, given that OH has a significantly lower percentage of African American voters than does MI, that should give Sanders an edge for that state next Tuesday, It also helps Sanders that of the five events next Tuesday, only Florida is a totally closed primary — important because even a rough glance at the data from MI makes it clear that Clinton clearly won the votes of Democrats and Bernie’s margin was powered by two things: (1) his significant advantage among non-Democrats, and (2) his ability to hold Clinton’s margin among Black voters to around 35% (65-30). Given that the margin by which Sanders won is about 20K voters, that there were a total of about 1.16 million votes, and that according to exit polls the electorate was about 23% Black, had Clinton’s margin been only up slightly, 75-25, that would have given her a narrow win. We will have to see if Sanders continues to do somewhat better with Northern Black voters than he done in the South.
IL and MO are open primaries, which helps Sanders. FL is closed, OH is semi-open, and NC is semi-closed. We will have to see how the population at large processes the results from last night, and how both candidates do in tonight’s debate. I can easily see Sanders winning OH and maybe MO, and certainly closing the margins somewhat in IL and NC, although I would still expect Clinton to win those states.
Final delegate elections from last night are not yet posted anywhere. Sanders will come out of MI with more delegates than Clinton, yet I doubt he will net more than 10 and it may be less: Clinton won the heavily Democratic (and Black) CDs by wider margins, and those CDs have more delegates. Them’s the rules. Assuming a ten-point margin, Sanders managed to draw some delegates from MI, but he will be swamped in what is now Clinton’s best state, with her netting at least 20 delegates and maybe more. In otherwords, he fell further behind in delegate margin. At +199 going in to last night, which is significantly more than the +137 that was Obama’s maximum lead, Clinton is still fairly heavily positioned to maintain a comfortable lead in elected delegates throughout the rest of the race. I suspect Markos will have no reason to change his edict one week from today, UNLESS Sanders can win either IL or NC — again, because FL is a closed primary, even with the appeal as a New York Jew that he may have with some around Miami, I still expect Clinton to win next week’s biggest prize.
With Trump having won 3 of 4, and with the real question on the Republican side whether Rubio will now pull out then making the question of whether Cruz could catch Trump there (doubtful), it is looking like the Democratic contest will (a) go somewhat longer than the Republicanm and (b) begin to get an even greater share of free media, which is good for the Party.
I fully expect Sanders to win some more states — he should win WI, he will probably win OR and WA. He will win some smaller states. I do not expect him to win NY, and he will get badly beaten in MD and DC.
Again, absent something beyond a narrow win in OH and maybe MO, I do not see him doing well enough to significantly narrow Clinton’s elected delegate lead, and therefore persuade super delegates either to switch from Clinton and/or commit to him.
I wonder if things might have been different had Sanders used some of his massive amounts of money to advertise more heavily in deep South states to cut Clinton’s margins there?
I will end as I began. Congratulations to Sen. Sanders and to his supporters for how he did in MI. He is justified for now to continue to contest the primaries as vigorously as possible.
Peace.