projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
FiveThirtyEight updated their pledged delegate tracker and some more good news for Hillary. She’s added +2 to her Michigan total, which helped her meet her target! The +4 net gain increases her lead to +223. The pledged delegate gap continues to grow, making it even more difficult for Sanders to overcome the math.
Nate Cohn has a nice piece in the NYT talking about Sanders upset win in Michigan and the reality of the pledged delegate race. Sanders basically needs to sweep many of the upcoming states and rack up huge delegate wins to close the gap and even then he says it won't be enough.
Good piece and worth reading.
Imagine, for instance, a brutal stretch for Mrs. Clinton, one where she underperforms the demographic projections by as much as she did in Michigan for the rest of the year.
She loses in Ohio and Missouri next Tuesday. States where Mrs. Clinton was thought to have an advantage, like Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, California and Connecticut, become tossups. Mrs. Clinton wins New York, but by just eight percentage points.
She gets swept in the West, including big 40-point losses in places like Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah and Montana, and 30-point losses in Washington and Oregon. She loses by 20 points in Wisconsin and Rhode Island, by 30 in West Virginia and Kentucky.
She still wins — and comfortably.
How? She’s already banked a large delegate lead, and it has nothing to do with the “superdelegates.”
The reality is that the Democratic delegate rules, which award delegates proportionally, make it extremely hard for Mr. Sanders to dig himself out of the hole he’s already in. Indeed, he fell short of winning 60 percent of the delegates in Michigan on Tuesday night, despite the upset win. As a result, his burden in future contests grew a little larger.
Mr. Sanders needs landslides to counter landslides. Not even the results from Tuesday suggest he’s on pace to get them, at least not in states with enough delegates to counter Mrs. Clinton’s lead.
There are 691 pledged delegates up for grabs on Mar 15th. Clinton’s target is, 365. Sanders target is 326.
According to Alan I. Abramowitz Sabato's Crystal Ball analysis, his model predicts FL and NC are safe Clinton. He gives Sanders a real shot to win OH and Missouri. He has Illinois leans Clinton, but Sanders could have a shot there as well. If the contests end up close in OH, MO, IL and Clinton wins FL and NC big, she will end up increasing her delegate lead.
Cohn’s delegate scenario going forward and in conjunction with Abramowitz Mar 15th model shows just how difficult a task it will be to overcome Clinton's big lead.
Note: Predictions have an estimated standard error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, which are reflected in the ratings.
Based on the race and region model, we can predict that Hillary Clinton will win three states and Bernie Sanders will win two states on March 15. Clinton is predicted to receive between 65% and 67% of the vote in North Carolina, between 64% and 66% of the vote in Florida, between 52% and 54% of the vote in Illinois, between 46% and 48% of the vote in Ohio and between 45% and 47% percent of the vote in Missouri.
Sanders fans have a lot to be excited about and rightly so, but Clinton fans should be excited as well. Clinton’s pledged delegate position is formidable and she’s in a great position to win the nomination.
One day closer to Mar 15th and another fun night of returns!