Senator Sanders performed extremely well in the last six primaries, far exceeding my projections in Part IV of this series of stories. The only disappointment was Arizona. Even there, he did better than the polls suggested. Further, Owlaminerva wrote a story yesterday that the voting for 3 delegates initially awarded to Secretary Clinton had not been fully counted and remained very close so that potentially her Arizona win could be less than 10 delegates. That story can be found here. www.dailykos.com/...
Using the methodology from Part I of this series, which counts superdelegates that have committed to a candidate, but only from the states that have already voted (Part I can be found here www.dailykos.com/...), Part III of this series calculated that Secretary Clinton’s total delegate lead based on the available delegate counts as of March 17 was 538 total delegates. It was also calculated that Senator Sanders’ path to victory required him to win 60.6% of the total remaining available delegates. After Senator Sanders’ 5 victories and 1 loss and well as adjustment to previous delegate totals from the March 15 primaries, Secretary Clinton’s total delegate lead has been cut by nearly 100 delegates to 446. Senator Sanders path to victory now only requires him to win 60.1% of the remaining delegates. If he continues this strong run into the next 2 primaries, he will lower his path to victory even more. A revised spreadsheet with popular votes, delegates awarded and delegates remaining can be found here docs.google.com/.… It should again be noted that these numbers probably will not be final for another 10 days or so.
As reported in this morning’s Pundit Roundup, Nate Silver of 538 states he does not see a path to victory for Sanders. Senator Sanders’ team and supporters have done an amazing job in the caucuses, but those are about to end. I have read somewhere that Senator Sanders’ campaign office has said that they hope to hold New York to a 20 point loss. If that happens, it will mean a 200 delegate swing in Secretary Clinton’s lead under my methodology. Unless his campaign staff finds a way to be nearly as successful in the primaries as they were in the caucuses, I am afraid Nate Silver is right. But right now, it is still too early to say it is over, given Team Sanders’ amazing performance to date.